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By Manuel  Players: 1 Platforms: Nintendo Switch, XBox, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC Are you like us at A-to-J and have a lot of roguelike games recently, but long for one that changes up the standard formula? What about one that takes deckbuilding, but uses items in place of cards, and even adds in a Tetris-like level of item management? If this sounds like something you've been waiting for.... well, that's kind of weird that you'd think the same things as us... BUT, it also means that we have just the game for you! Backpack Hero recently dropped onto consoles following an Early Access release on Steam earlier this year, and we're going to be taking a look at this backpack-filling roguelike to see if it's one that you're going to want to add to your collection, or if you're better off leaving it in the dungeon.
When I first started researching this game for review, I was surprised to learn that it started life on Kickstarter. Kickstarter has a very hit or miss track record when it comes to video games lately, and I will admit that I was a little put off when I learned of Backpack Hero's origins. Then I looked up the original campaign, checked out its regular updates, and realized that this is the rare example of a game that uses the process properly, and delivers a product that matches or exceeds what the developers originally set out to do. I only mention any of this at all because I was truly impressed by how smoothly this project went for them. The Kickstarter launched April of last year, spent a year or so in development before it hit Early Access on steam April of this year, and then recently got this current full 1.0 release on PC and consoles. Besides the fact that I prefer some of the game's original art, mainly those involving Purse, it's amazing to see how little was changed or compromised along its quick journey to release. This isn't a review of the Kickstarter though, so I'll leave it at that. I just really wanted to give credit where credit was due, and start this review out on a good note. Backpack Hero drops you into the shoes of Purse, a mouse that has a look that made me miss the fact that she's a female protagonist until I looked up the game's original Kickstarter. Not that the character's gender really changes anything, but I am a sucker for strong female protagonists. Anyhow, Purse is a resident of a local village known as Haversack Hill which has definitely seen better days. It's actually destroyed at the moment, and Purse lives a hard life with her father. The residents of the former village live hand-to-mouth, and mostly scavenge to get by. To make matters worse, Purse's mother disappeared some time before under mysterious circumstances. Near Haversack Hill is a dungeon, and this dungeon is not only a potential source for much-needed resources, but it's also where Purse's mother might have gone to before she went missing. Ever the inquisitive rodent, Purse enters the dungeon and stumbles across a magic bag that allows her to carry out more items than she ever could before. In addition to this great find, she also comes across a locket that appears to belong to her mother. Purse returns with these and resolves to keep exploring the dungeon in spite of the dangers that such an endeavor might bring. Filled with a new resolve, it's up to Purse to rebuild Haversack Hill, find out what happened to her mother, and keep the King's men at bay as they are none too pleased to learn that people are taking things from what is technically the King's property. Perhaps they're also hiding something down there... Purse isn't alone in this journey though. Besides a cast of villagers that rivals that of Animal Crossing, there's also four other adventurers that join up with Purse during the course of her adventures.
Adjusting items in your backpack is key to survival, and there's quite a lot of variables to deal with when it comes to this. You start most any run your backpack being a single 3x3 square. As you level up you get the ability to add new squares in most any direction in your bag. You can try to add an entire new row or column, or build out in single squares so you can potentially hide items in there from to keep them from the rest of your inventory. Since this can't be undone, it's best to consider what build you may be trying for as you open up slots in your bag, as many of the best items have limits or bonuses that are determined by how they are placed. Some armor is most effective when placed at the top or bottom of a row, and others won't do anything unless you place them in a very specific spot. The same goes for weapons and items too. Some offer bonuses, but only to other items directly adjacent or diagonal to the first, and others will spawn new items if there is an empty space near them. Not everything is good though as cursed items can affect things next to them, make it so that you're forced to constantly deal item placement, or even directly harm you for every battle turn you're carrying it. There's a lot to think about and juggle mentally when it comes to maintaining your inventory, and that's just concerning the items you're keeping on your actual person. Since space is limited you often have to make tough decisions on what items you're going to try to shove in your bag, and which you're going to leave behind. Selling items, or having them get delivered back to Haversack, aren't things you can do at will so you often have to make these decisions on the fly. Thankfully you can rotate items if you only have a thin slot, and some items even have odd shapes that mean you can place them in spaces it doesn't look they should be able to fit in. This Tetris-like aspect of inventory management reminds me a lot of the older Diablo games, but with the added worry that you'll accidentally break your character by moving an item on accident. This all may sound daunting, but since just about every other aspect of gameplay is tied to inventory management, you'll eventually understand all the ins and outs by sheer repetition at the very least.
Combat is a core aspect of the game, and it can be vary greatly in difficulty depending on what items you are carrying. At its core the two main aspects of battle are attacking and defending. Defense comes either passively, or by readying a shield each turn. You can see the amount of damage you're expected to take from the enemies at most times, and you can plan your attacks and blocks accordingly. The best rounds are those where your character doesn't take any damage, but enemies are able to block your attacks too. Besides planning the best way to attack and defend based on what your enemy is planning to do, you also have to keep an eye on your energy. Using a shield or using a weapon most often uses up at least one energy, and you rarely have enough to go around for everything you want to do each turn. There are a lot of factors that change how much energy you start with, but as a rule of thumb Purse starts each turn with three energy. Battles at the start of every run usually follow the same format of only attacking and defending, while making sure you use each bit of energy in a smart way. Not everything takes up energy though, so it often works best to amass weapons that have a 0 energy cost to do massive amounts of damage at the start of each turn. Couple this with food items and accessories that can actually restore energy, and you can find yourself taking some really long turns each battle. Some items and weapons can even cause status effects like burn or poison, and enemies can also curse you, cover your bag in slime, or burn items if you're not careful. Since a lot of things can happen in even the smallest of encounters, it's best to not enter any fight unprepared. Dying instantly ends any run, and barely scraping by is often just as bad as losing since healing isn't exactly easy to do. Each enemy you kill grants experience, and if you win the battle you're able to loot the corpses for items. Picking up items from battle works a bit differently than other items pick-ups as you're only able to take a fixed number of items with you. While both combat and item management might sound daunting when reduced to a few sentences, they are easily the best part of the game and keep you on your toes at all times. Besides combat, exploration is most of what you'll be doing in Backpack Hero. Each floor of the dungeon has a map that shows the layout in the form of spaces on a grid, similar to a board game. Empty spaces are exactly what they sound like, and are the only ones where you can save in the dungeon. Question mark spaces usually offer visions of what's upcoming, and exclamation point squares are events. Events can be in the form of playing a minigame, gambling for better items, encountering a food vendor, or stumbling across an NPC that wants to trade. You can also find treasure chests on the map, some locked and some unlocked, and chests offer the unique opportunity to actually be able to take all the items you find, if you have enough space to carry them all at least. You can also find statues that heal, piles of coin that add to your money count, shopkeepers who buy and sell items, and a lot more scattered throughout. Monster encounters usually block intersections, with some paths actually close off sections of the dungeon if you take them over others. While most monster attacks come from static spaces, some encounters will actually chase you if you get too close to them. These are rarely more powerful than the normal encounters of the floor you're on, but can be annoying if you are trying to avoid encounters. Other special spaces you'll come across include a healer, a blacksmith, and a package service that lets you send items back to Haversack in the case of you dying. For the most part the first two floors of every area are the dungeons main sections, with the third usually just housing a boss. Depending on if you're on a mission, or if you're on a regular run, you either proceed to a different section of the dungeon following the boss encounter, or you return to Haversack Hill.
Backpack Hero doesn't just offer dungeon exploration, it's also a city builder too. Haversack Hill is in shambles when you first start the game, and it's your job to bring the town back to life by clearing the rubble and literally rebuilding the town one structure at a time. Building requires resources and these are acquired by selling items you've found in the dungeon, or by building up your town to the point where it creates resources on its own during your runs in the dungeon. Some buildings only increase resource acquisition and population, but others perform "research" that unlocks new items and equipment. Research is done by using items or items types, along with town resources, to unlock new items. For example you can bring back various types of swords to unlock a better sword which will now be added to the RNG shuffle that occurs whenever you come across treasure. Similar to research are bounties, which unlock in a similar fashion, but offer special runs in the dungeon instead of new item drops. In short missions are runs in the dungeon that have specific rules to complete them, and items that you're forced to keep in your inventory at all times. These offer a unique challenge, and also give you awards that can only be found in them. These can technically only be completed once, but are often essential to keep unlocking content that eventually drives the story forward. Speaking of which, once you reach a certain level of population, beat the dungeon a set number of times, or complete a side quest or mission, the main campaign progresses, usually in the form of new areas to explore. If you do really well, and complete certain pre-requisites, you can even unlock other playable characters that have abilities, missions, and bag formats unique to them. Gameplay loops are important and Backpack Hero has a really satisfying one. Every run, whether it's successful or not, usually sees something change when you return to Haversack Hill. Once you start completing runs, and perfecting your resource management, you'll find that things just keep building one on top of the other. Since this is a roguelike, there isn't really any way to increase your character's base skills and stats, but you can definitely unlock better equipment and items as things go on. The amount of missions you get, and the items you need to complete research, keep you going back and forth to the dungeon, and it's you'll eventually start to discover strategies that get you through even the toughest of challenges. Of course there is a lot of RNG present in a game like this, but you can usually swing things in your favor if you plan your steps carefully. The missions also act as a sort of tutorial for play styles you might not otherwise use. There's even an Easy Mode that you can open up through bounties that makes the game more accessible to casual players, though I don't think the game is particularly hard as it is. Even though you're doing the same thing over and over, the constant addition of new things keep things from ever getting stale. I've played a lot of roguelikes over the past couple of years, and it's rare when I see one stand out as well as this one does. It really takes the genre in new directions, and is a game that seems to be made for everyone, not just those that like the randomness and challenge that the roguelike genre is typically known for.
I'm all for retro-inspired graphics, but part of me feels that Backpack Hero would've benefitted from a more modern look. Since the game has a strong emphasis on your bag, and the map that alternates in its slot whenever it's not in use, that means that very little of the screen is relegated to actions in the dungeon. This may not seem like a big deal, but it means that there's very little variance from one area to the next. Can anyone really tell the difference between The Cave, The Brambles, and The Crypt? I know I couldn't when I was sorting the screens, and I was the one who played the game. Also, since the game is pretty much always in what's an underground dungeon, everything is dark and in a limited color palette. This admittedly do change up when you go back above ground, but it made me long for a more varied look. Things don't actually pick up visually when you get back to Haversack Hill either. I find it pretty hard to describe unless you're playing it yourself, but if things in the Haversack screenshots look like they're very zoomed out, it's because they are. For reasons that are probably due to this being a PC game at heart, everything in town is viewed very far above. All the characters and buildings start to look tiny and undefined, and the way characters zoom around the screen make it hard to find NPCs you may want to/need to talk to. What's odd is that this view still doesn't seem to reveal all that much. Once again this is hard to explain unless you're playing the game yourself, but the entire above ground sections could've benefitted from a camera whose zoom you could adjust yourself. It may sound like I'm picking on the game needlessly, but there's another thing regarding the town that I'll talk about later on. While I still feel that a more modern look would've helped the overall sameness of the dungeons, and could've somehow fixed my issues with the town, I must admit that the pixel aesthetic has a charm of its own. Since this is an all-animal cast, I couldn't help but get Redwall vibes here. I'm a huge fan of that series and seeing a town of all animals, with a rodent main character, made me look beyond some of the other issues I found with the game's visuals. When things aren't tiny blips on the screen, you begin to notice that all the characters look very unique. It made me wish that there was a way to see them better as many of the town NPCs rarely can be seen in all their glory. Thankfully one can appreciate the characters and monsters more easily in the dungeon sections since their sprites are quite a bit bigger there. Most of the monsters have a unique look to them, and I even began to fear some of the encounters I knew would be trouble when the game notified me that they were just around the corner. I just wish the graphics weren't such a mixed bag in general, and that the two sections of the game had a more cohesive feel visually.
Okay, I have some issues regarding this game's performance that I have to talk about. Let me start by saying that I played the game on the Nintendo Switch, mostly in Handheld Mode. I'm not sure if these issues exist in other versions of the game, but they only got worse as the game went on and it got to the point that I had to edit this review in the middle of writing it. I mentioned earlier that everything in Haversack Hill is very small, and that the characters all zoom about on their own. Well, this leads to the biggest issue I had with the game: slowdown. As Haversack Hall grew bigger I couldn't help but notice that the game ran worse and worse with each new addition. Once the population rose above 50, and I had over two dozen buildings, I began to notice that slowdown and framerate issues started to pop up. It wasn't just that either; entering buildings to do research would literally freeze the game for a few seconds, and then the research menus themselves would run even worse than walking around the village itself. There's no way to fix this on the player's end, and since you need to build up the town to progress in the game, it's something that every Switch player will eventually encounter. I actually have nowhere near a full-sized town in my save, and I'm beginning to wonder if I will ever be able to experience that considering how bad things are running now. I hope that all this can somehow be fixed by a patch, but seeing as we're already a few weeks into the release I'm not sure if that's just wishful thinking. I'm going to assume that these are just issues with the Switch port, but I can't really be sure of that. What's odd is that the game doesn't feel like it should be able to bring the Switch to its knees, but it does a good job punching above its weight class I guess.
Outside of the issues I had with the Switch version, I guess the other weak point of Backpack Hero would be its music. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad by any stretch, it's just not as noteworthy as the gameplay. I can't think of many track that stood out to me, even though there were several that I heard regularly on each playthrough. Some of the battle themes, and the main theme of Haversack, fared better than most of the rest of the music, but the dungeon themes all seemed to stick in my head for the wrong reasons. I also found that the sound mixing a bit off by default. The music felt too low, and the sound effects far too loud and crunchy compared to everything else. I ended up keeping the music at max, but lowered everything else so that it wouldn't be drowned out. Not sure if this was needed though, since I've already made my indifference to the soundtrack clear. That said I did enjoy the sound effects more than the music itself. They all have a cool retro vibe to them that I really liked. The squishiness of slime spreading around your bag, the pop when you clear it from your items, the thwacks and thunks of striking enemies, and the clanks as you ready your shields are all well done, and far more memorable than the music itself. My last point has to do with voice acting, or more accurately the fact that there isn't any here. In place of voice acting you get typing sounds that are meant to sync up to a character's personality, and that scheme works well for the most part. There isn't a lot to talk about when it comes to controls since they're pretty simple all things considered. Moving a cursor around to do a lot of in-game selection can be a bit clunky at times, and I'm still not sure if I was always able to grab every item on-screen. Also, there were times when the game didn't want to let me submit items for research. Not like it was denying the item, but the cursor refused to stay on the box after I clicked it. I'm still not sure what caused this bug as the only way I was able to fix it was by moving the cursor around and approaching the selection box from another side. Issues like these aren't worth going on about at any great length, but I'm willing to bet that all the problems with the cursor aren't present in the PC version.
I seem to have randomly started ragging on Backpack Hero towards the end of this review, so let's swing back around to the positives, since I really do think this is a great game beyond the very real issues I found. Something that is very clear is that if you pick up Backpack Hero, you're going to be in this world for quite a while. There is an insane amount of content here, and it got to the point where it almost felt overwhelming. Every time I thought I was finally clearing out all the missions and sidequests available to me, I'd suddenly get a bunch more. Every time I thought I had the game mastered, I'd unlock a new character that played totally different than the one before. I don't think I'll ever beat this game, but I definitely see myself trying my hardest until my town eventually causes my Switch to implode. I could play this game for weeks and still most likely not see everything it has to offer. This is a game that really used its time in Early Access to perfect itself, and it's a rare example of a game going from Kickstarter to completion without sacrificing anything regarding content and vision. This is my long-winded way of saying that you get a ridiculous amount of content for its current price of $19.99. I know this is an indie game, and that's a standard price for a game of this size, but I would gladly pay more for this one. (Never mind that this was a free review copy.) There are countless games that cost twice as much as this one that have only a fraction of its fun, originality, and replayability. I really can't praise this game enough, and I hope that this is the start of a new series.
Seeing as I didn't really have any strong negatives to say about the game, I guess it's pretty obvious that I'm going to have to give Backpack Hero a strong recommendation. I guess I might add an asterisk to the Nintendo Switch version due to the performance issues, but I'm going to keep my fingers crossed on them getting fixed in a future update. That aside, it's on just about every platform imaginable, so you definitely can get to playing right now if you want to. Purse's family isn't going to save themselves, and there is an entire dungeon to explore and loot. Drop what you're doing, grab the game, and get to filling up that bag! The bag of holding has nothing on this backpack! Check Out Backpack Hero on The Nintendo Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/backpack-hero-switch/ Story: A- Gameplay: A- Graphics: B+ Music/Sound: B Value: A+ Overall: A Pros: + A unique take on the fairly bloated roguelike genre. + Mixes life sim, roguelike, dungeon crawling, and even puzzle elements all into one very neat package. + Features a huge cast of characters that will all grow on you after a while. + Each of the five characters play dramatically different from each other, offering lots of variety and replayability. + The insane amount of main, side, and optional content mean that you can bury yourself in this one for a long while. Cons: - The music and sound design leave a bit to be desired. - Some of the graphics, especially those in the town of Haversack, are small and not very detailed. - Mild performance issues on the Nintendo Switch at the time of writing keep that version from playing as smooth as it should. - There almost feels like there's TOO much to do at times. A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.  It's clobberin' time! |
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