For my money, Backbone had the makings of a GotY candidate. When the demo was released in 2019, it oozed with potential: a gripping plot high-stakes, nonlinear gameplay a unique, noir setting consequential choices. Second only to Larian Studios’ Baldur’s Gate 3, Backbone was my most anticipated game for 2021. It genuinely pains me to write a bad review of this game. TL DR If the Backbone demo was Game of Thrones season 1, then the full game faithfully captures the confusion and letdown of GoT season 8. If you still want the full game, wait for a 50% off sale and it's probably worth your time. ![]() and if you pay full price at $25 for all seven hours or less of it (my experience was 7, other people report finishing in as little as 3), it might actually make you feel ripped off. The remainder of the game, aside from the scenery and such, is at best a letdown. The Prologue is still worth your time, and still free on Steam. If you can imagine getting some pasta in a lovely bowl with a fine silver fork, and then you discover that the sauce is decent but the noodles were botched - well, that's this game. There's tons of details in the scenery, and also quite a few "sidequests" which add occasional tender moments. All of that being said, the art, atmosphere, music, animation and ambience are all top notch. The result is a jumbled mess of incomplete and occasionally incoherent plotlines that stumble along before dying in a literary wasteland. It seems like the writing staff was more of a committee and everyone just agreed to throw everyone else's ideas into the mix. These and other instances of misplaced real-world commentary come off sounding like Alex Jones ranting about gay frogs. This same person claims that the post-apoc society in which she lives treated women as second-class citizens and therefore what she's doing is trying to launch a revolution - great idea, except nowhere in the game do we see women as a class being treated worse than men as a class. Another major character, late in the game, attempts to morally justify mass murder against these same "class-warfare" victims by saying they're all violent towards women (despite the protagonist having first-hand knowledge that this isn't always the case). You know, the middle-class and rich types. One major character, for example, is angry about the rich abusing the poor in a very specific way that I won't spoiler, but in the actual game the poor are never targeted in this way - bankers and the like are. Character motivations seem sandwiched in, reliant on real-world sociopolitical viewpoints which either aren't shown in the game or are directly contradicted by it. ![]() The original plot twist from the Prologue is quickly discarded, new plots are launched, and none of it is ever resolved. This is not a bad thing if the novel has good writing - but Backbone's full game appears to have been written by committee consensus. From there, no further puzzle-solving and no deductive gameplay exists - the game shifts directly into an on-the-rails visual novel and stays there through completion. If you played and enjoyed the original free Prologue that's been out for over a year, then you've played and enjoyed the only actual gameplay If you played and enjoyed the original free Prologue that's been out for over a year, then you've played and enjoyed the only actual gameplay and most of the good storytelling.
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