I kickstarted this game and it had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, 90% of the potential was poured into the prologue chapter released as a demo a few years ago. After the prologue, it very quickly sheds any pretense of puzzle solving / deduction and goes straight into a rigidly linear interactive fiction with player input affecting little other than whether a given interaction results in getting a Steam achievement.

Unfortunately, while I would have also been happy with a noir VN game, this too quickly unravels as the narrative jumps around and discards plot points it just introduced to focus on new ones, which it then casts off with equal vigor. While feeling lost with too many loose ends is indeed a staple trope of the noir genre, it makes for a very unsatisfying story when you take a step back and try to make sense of it all as a player.

Overall, I don't regret playing it, however I can assure other people that playing the freely available prologue demo is just as fun as playing the "full game" since it's clear that WAS the full game from a development stance.

The developers put in a lot of hard work and I'd be interested to see what else they produce, but I hope their next project sees them learn from their mistakes here.

Backbone would have been better as a visual novel. And even then, I'm not certain I would recommend it. Aesthetically, Backbone is consistently brilliant; the game's most important shortcomings are in gameplay and story. Given its narrative focus, there is some overlap between these two.

If you were excited for the full release after playing the prologue, you'll be disappointed to learn that the full extent of Backbone's gameplay is on display in that free first chapter. There are no puzzles past Act I, and only one very short stealth section that I can think of. There are certainly no instances of multiple ways to achieve an objective, like entering the Bite, or obstacles that require at least an inkling of critical thinking, like the Bite's kitchen. The remainder of the game is detective work at its most straightforward, which has you moving about a series of small locales and talking to NPCs to gather info that advances the game's plot. This is where Backbone shows its most egregious weakness, which for me seals this game as "Not Recommended": There are no consequences. Every dialogue option is a thin veneer of flavor atop a completely linear sequence of events. You can never offend a key witness so they refuse to talk to you. You can never manipulate someone into letting on more than they should. Choosing to use your real name or not (a dialogue option that comes up in every other conversation, it feels like) never amounts to anything. The game has prescribed every conversation an outcome already, and no pesky player is going to make a mess of the script. To be fair, even the prologue showed signs of this weakness — Johnny would always get you into the Bite even when the thread of the conversation gave him no logical reason to.

The primary issue with the story is that it just lacks focus. Is it about solving a series of grisly murders? Is it about class struggle? Is it about Howard's quest to find purpose in life? None of these things receive enough development to bring them to fruition, and the result is an unsatisfying mishmash of half-baked, orthogonal writing goals. There's also the matter of Howard and Renee's "partnership." It's insulting that their relationship is even framed as such, because the obvious reality is that he's taking orders from her. Renee makes the decisions, and Howard does the grunt work. I point this out because it is so poignantly reflective of the lack of player agency in the actual gameplay. But hey, at least that's ludonarrative harmony, right?

Backbone had a lot of potential at its outset, but the promises made in the prologue aren't kept in the full game. Give this one a pass.

My husband loves raccoons. I love detective media, including dark, existential and thought-provoking Scandi-noir.

We've been eagerly following this game's development for years and loved the demo.

As you have gathered from the other reviews, the game resembles the demo in theory only. What starts out as fun and intriguing detective fare abruptly devolves into something much less satisfying.

What kills me is that Egg Nut had the fantastic premise, setting and story to make their detective media stand out. There aren't too many popular indie detective games, let alone indie games with such beautiful graphics and a high level of polish.

It would have been very easy for this game studio to create a recurring hit with these assets and characters -- but I guess that goes against the "man is keeping me down, stop making meaningless art for public consumption and make half-hearted existential nonsense instead, as praxis" thread running through the game.

If you consume media outside of Disney+ and videogames, you will probably find the ending where the protagonist, possessed by a sentient alien life-form, escapes through the capital-W Wall to die in the desert a lot less original, interesting, and thought-provoking than the people who are defending the last third.

Ditto if you're exhausted by "we're all being exploited, this is about the economic downturn with some class critique thrown in" media. (I hope that the people who do disagree politically with the game know what they're getting into...)

The script reads like a Creative Writing 101 student's first attempt at writing something existential, then covering up writing flaws by being intentionally mysterious, then claiming "that's the point, it's a metaphor for how we're all alienated under capitalism."

The game reaches for basic dystopian plot features and then doesn't workshop them at all. The Wall, the boring in-game religion that doesn't do anything meaningful with Christianity, the animal-species racism...we're not exactly treading new ground here.

But the really terrible thing is how plot points emerge and recede with no resolution. Which is fine, I guess, for an existential thriller that marketed itself as a fun detective game. But the deliberate lack of resolution and the ambiguity aren't interesting. It's all just rushed, confusing and comes off as bad writing.

The demo's premise -- that the rich are literally eating the poor -- is so incisive that it could have carried the game. But it quickly gets lost in a morass of moralizing, competing plot points, and confusing motives.

People claiming that others "don't get it" are ignoring how poorly executed it is. We get it. It's just done badly.

This is all leaving aside how the gameplay totally changes from non-linear and puzzle-based during the playable demo, to a visual novel with no meaningful choices. This part didn't bother me, but I totally understand why it bothered others.

Everything I mentioned would be totally forgivable if the game was, as it billed itself, a noir detective thriller. Or if it handled what it was doing better. Or even if there was any warning in the marketing materials that it was headed this route.

I just wanted a raccoon detective game that resembled the playable demo in any way. This game failed to deliver. To add insult to injury, the first two hours (aka the refund limit) are wonderful before an abrupt slide into mediocre absurdist trash. We can't even get a refund, even though this game absolutely did not live up to expectations or resemble the demo at all in terms of story or gameplay.

I normally don't leave reviews, but I bought this game to play for my birthday weekend and am so wholeheartedly disappointed by the huge gap between the demo and the game. I hope the studio takes all of this feedback into account when creating their next game.

Games like this one make me wish Steam had a better review system than a simply binary "do or don't recommend" because I'm really on the fence about this game.

It tells the story of down-on-his-luck detective Howard Lotor and his investigation of a missing person in a beautifully rendered 2.5D city inspired by Vancouver. A noir story in its intent, but not execution. It's closer to the modern, bastardized concept of "noir" than the original works of B-roll movies from Hollywood's 1940's heyday. But still, it looks pretty and the soundtrack is very nice.

My biggest gripe with this game is the writing. It's a short game. My first run took less than four hours to complete and I don't think I rushed through. Part of that is a lack of content, but also because it doesn't tell a complete story. I won't say it ends on a cliffhanger, it just kind of ends half way through. All in all the way this story is written is really inconsistent.

The pacing of the story is not great, you get a really drawn out investigation part where you basically just go and do what another character tells you to do without a lot of choice of where to go and who to talk to. This builds to a big reveal/climax that doesn't seem to go anywhere and you end up spending time in a half-chapter that is completely pointless. You could just cut that entire part out and simply start from the next part on and it would have no impact on the story. Not exactly the hallmark of great writing. Then you're in another half-chapter where you just sit and wait for something to happen, which doesn't happen and then the game ends with a short epilogue told from the perspective of some of the other characters in the story. And again, nothing happens, it's just setup for a sequel.

It's also obvious that English is not the native language of the writers. I can't really say the grammar is bad or broken language, it's just that the writing is kind of stale. The language is simple and boring. You don't have the snappy dialogue that exemplifies real noir pieces like the works of Raymond Chandler and the other noir mavens.

In the end I landed on a "don't recommend". I don't think the game is bad, it's just bland, inconsistent, lacklustre, and unambitious. For the price though I suppose it's worth picking up if you like pixel art games like this, just don't expect anything special.

Prologue: Wow, strong start
Act 1: I'm starting to feel invested in the main character(s) and the story
Act 2: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, what a story
Act 3: Okay, this is kinda getting out of hand
Act 4: What is happening? Why are we shifting genres?
Act 5: So, we are not even pretending to finish the story?
Epilogue: Where is the rest of the story?



I got hooked so fast on the story, the world, the characters ... and then the game just stops its story, does a 180° and drives off a cliff.

I haven't been so disappointed in the ending of a detective game since Thimbleweed Park...

Even after a long delay, the devs delivered only a fraction of what was promised on the Kickstarter campaign.
The game feels very short and lacking, even disregarding the expectations the campaign set.


Many reviews here will tell you Backbone feels like a rushed, unfinished product.

Some refer tothe ending. Indeed, I found it unsatisfying. The game is open-ended. And that is something hard to pull off. I don't feel it worked, here. Too many questions left unanswered and I didn't find the outcomes it suggested very intriguing or thought-provoking.

Others talk about the gameplay. And this is where I feel I really have to chime in.
I was a backer of Backbone on Kickstarter and developers who don't deliver what was promised to crowdfunders miff me, a lot.
I'll go over the devs' promises on Backbone's Kickstarter campaign page:

"Collect evidence, interrogate witnesses, connect the dots and follow leads on your own. No hand-holding - move forward through the game by your own rules. Every case has numerous trails, and it’s up to you to decide which one to follow."

This simply isn't there.
The GIF below this text[ksr-ugc.imgix.net] shows Howard using his nose to follow trails. This doesn't happen in-game. The closest there is aredialogue options in which Howard sniffs evidence (that I'm not even sure influence the story other than those few dialogue lines). That's all.
Also, there are not multiple cases, let alone multiple paths within cases. There is onlyone relatively short case that, then, spirals into the main plot of the game.
I wondered if any of the plot did branch and the outcomes could be influenced (didn't feel like playing the game multiple times to check, though). If other reviews here are to be trusted, that doesn't happen, either.
Comments on this full video walkthrough seem to confirm this.

"In the animal world, smell is the most powerful sense. Hide in multi-level environments, mask your scent in garbage bins, follow suspects and escape the chase."

None of this is present in-game.
There are some very short stealth sections, that amount to Howard crouching and hiding behind objects for a few seconds. And that's it. No sense of smell involved.
There are no multi-level environments. There are no chasing sequences like the one portrayed on this GIF[ksr-ugc.imgix.net].

"The Artifact is a unique ancient technology with unknown origins and purpose. If you learn how to use it, it might change the regular order or destroy it."

There is no combat in the game, with or without special abilities. The scene depicted in the GIF below this text[ksr-ugc.imgix.net] is not in the game.It wouldn't even be possible, actually, due to the role The Artifact plays on the game's plot.

One thing to take away from this, though, is that The Artifact was always a planned plot element and not something introduced by the devs later on, for lack of creativity, as some reviewers here have suggested.

"A rich, living and breathing world waiting to be explored. Backbone takes place in dystopian Vancouver, BC, featuring real locations and breathtaking pixel landscapes."
"The planet is sprawling with anthropomorphic animal species. The streets of Vancouver are overgrown with ivy and humongous trees, branches and vines piercing through the concrete, and huge flowers nesting on top of the roofs."

I'm not from Canada and have never been, so I can't say if the locations portrayed have anything to do with the real city of Vancouver. From what little I know, from the internet, it doesn't seem to be the case. Also, city maps featured in-game have the name "Vancouver" on them (and, perhaps, they follow the real city's geogrpahy, IDK), but, AFAI can recall, the name isn't mentioned in any other context.

What I can say is this: there is no noticeable overgrowth, humongous trees, branches, vines or huge flowers. The closest there isare brief nightmare sequences that happen when Howard is infected by The Artifact, that feature some of these things.
This scene[ksr-ugc.imgix.net] isn't present in-game andwhat little we get to see of the World beyond the Wall, at the end of the game, looks nothing like what's depicted in this GIF[ksr-ugc.imgix.net].


The stretch goals panel posted by the devs[ksr-ugc.imgix.net] claims the funding for voiceover was achieved. However, the only vocals present in-game are some songs, which have lyrics.


The campaign finished in 2018/05/27. The estimated time of release was July 2019. The game keys were delivered on 2021/06/07.
It took the devs 2 years past the estimated release to deliver a product very inferior to what was promised. And it's not on Early Access, either, which, to me, seems like they consider it a finished project that won't be added upon, anymore.
Even though, on the campaign page, they claimed: "Right now everything is ready for production: the game structure and scope, story and plot outlines, character arcs, world building, level design, and production schedules. All that remains is to get the team working full-time, to release Backbone without wasting any time on other projects.".

The changes between the game described on Kickstarter and the final product are so great, it's not even the same genre.
There is no investigative, stealth or action gameplay. It isn't even a point-and-click, as there are so little environment interactions and dialogue options are so limited.
It plays like a very linear and short (I played through it in a little more than 6 hours) visual novel/walking simulator.
If that's your thing and you feel the price is worth it, go for it, but knowing what to expect.

I enjoyed the game to some extent.
The pixel art is nice, the soundtrack is actually very good and the plot itself is good,apart from the ending, as I said above. It really does feel like there was much more to the story, but the devs simply stopped, after some point.

But I simply can't recommend something that feels so less complete than what we backers payed for.
For the very same reason, I wouldn't trust EggNut with a sequel – or any other project, for that matter–, before it is actually released.

Saddest thing is: the game, on its own, is OK-ish and I'd probably recommend it (Not for its asking price, but, still.), as a short indie title, if it wasn't for all those promises.

First, one very important point, the ONLY puzzle in the game is in the (free) prologue. there are none in the maingame, thats so dissapointing... i cant see a reason why they did that.
Since the day the Prologue came out I was looking forward so much to this awesome game. I love the art, the gameplay, the story in the prologue. But honestly, the Prologue is better then the maingame. The maingame is very short (5 hours if you play slow, includes the Prologue), but thats not the problem, there are some ways to play different some parts so you can play it a second time.
The mainproblem is the story. While the prologue sets the tone for a epic masterpiece it really is the first 3 chapters of the game, of those 3, the prologe is the best chapter by far. its the only chapter with a puzzle AND with a different choice how to enter a building. After Act 2 it starts all of a sudden to turn into a mess, and even after the Epilogue chapter (where you for no reason all of a sudden control a different character) it makes no sense at all. Its so sad, because without that weird turnaround the story was really set to be great.
In the end it didnt even matter at all what happened in the Prologue, they switched the story at one point to a different story and both storys did not finish, so you are just left with questions. A bad outcome for a short singleplayer game. It is really sad it turned out like this.

This is probably the first negative review I've ever felt bad about giving. Mostly due to the fact that I was *really* looking forward to playing this game since I saw it and played the prologue back in 2019.

I loved the way this game started out. It had a lot of potential, and it looked amazing. I was hooked right into it at the beginning, found it to be really interesting. Then, as the game goes along you start getting into more details, you get a lot of questions that you want answered. You begin to think that there's going to be some sort of big revelation, that maybe you'll get those answers and have some kind of big mind blowing event, or at least something...

Unfortunately, the game, after the third act, just kinda putters down and falls flat... very flat.

It's really unfortunate that I can't give games a "mixed" option for reviews, because in all honesty this game is a mixed bag. It's story started out great, but then it completely fell apart toward the end. It took me 3 hours to beat this game and that's only because I took my time looking everywhere I could, trying to get as much out of the game as possible. That's how much I was invested in the game for the first three acts. Then, for the final half-hour of the game, which includes another two acts and a epilogue, there's a big nothing burger. You basically get blue balled, and are left with a lot more questions than answers. It really seems like there's a huge amount of story to be told here, but unfortunately the game doesn't go out of its way to explore it. I really wish there was more, or at the very least a continuation or an update or something. However, by the way the game ended and based on developer response... we're stuck with what we've got.

And that's honestly the most disappointing thing.

After playing the prologue a few months back, this game immediately went on my wishlist and I was eagerly anticipating its release. I loved the art style, was interested in a private eye story, and enjoyed the puzzles (different ways to get into the nightclub, figuring out the code for the freezer, etc).

I purchased and started playing the day it was released. Sadly, the rest of the game fell short of what the prologue made it out to be. There were barely any other puzzles throughout the other chapters. All it felt like was (I hate to say it) a walking simulator while having to talk to a lot of people. The conversations felt very linear as well, as if every situation is already set in place and the dialogue you choose has very little impact on the story.

I wanted to like this game, I really did. I understand that this seems like it was created mainly to tell a story, but comparing the prologue/demo to the fully released game leaves much to be desired.

I wanted to love this game. It was one of the games I was most looking forward to, especially after playing the Prologue, which was one of the best detective adventure games I'd played in a while. The 2.5D pixel art graphics are beyond gorgeous. The music is atmospheric without being irritating, boring, or overwhelming. The gameplay is very intuitive. Some of the writing is even pretty good in the first couple of chapters.

So what happened?

First and foremost, the issue is that the prologue is misleading. The prologue allowed different pathways through the story and dialogue; it allowed some clever sneaking around; and, most importantly, it had puzzles. In adventure games, it's a must to either have inventory object puzzles (where you can combine or use objects in your inventory cleverly to solve your way through video game logic predicaments), OR to have puzzles where you need to whip out a notepad and solve a code to get you through a lock. I'm a big fan of the latter, and it really looked like Backbone was going to deliver on that front.

After the prologue, no further puzzles like that existed. There was one moment where you had to search a room for information to get into someone's computer, and another moment where you had to sneak through an area without getting caught, but besides that, there was no more work required of you as a player. Click through dialogue--doesn't matter which choices--wander around observing things, and eventually, you will run into the ending.

And boy, did it feel like you just RUN INTO the ending. What you first think is a small-scale operation turns out to be part of a vast conspiracy that is part of a vaster conspiracy--or is it? Who is good? Who is bad? Who knows. The narrative stacks strange ideas on top of world-building on top of other strange ideas until it collapses under its own weight. Before you know it, the gritty, almost nostalgic noir vibe of the prologue gives way to what is essentially a visual novel about a dystopia you don't really care about.

These were great characters in the prologue, and as your choices started to matter less, so did the characters themselves. There were shifts in tone, shifts in gameplay, and at one point, bizarrely, a several-minute cutscene where you listen to a song at a campfire. I picked up so many objects throughout the game that I never thought about or used again. Did I miss opportunities to use them? Maybe. And I haven't even touched on how weird the plot gets.

I hate posting "Not Recommended" on a game. I wanted to love this. When I read the mixed reviews, I prepared myself for what was essentially a visual novel and hoped the story would carry it. But even knowing that, I was still disappointed.

The amount of love and care the devs put into this game really shows in the artwork and gameplay, and even in the storyline to some extent. But I hope they will take the feedback fans are giving about this game and, if there's a sequel, turn it into the game we all hoped Backbone would be.