KickStarter Backbone — pixel art detective adventure inspired by noir

[Nekot-The-Brave]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...t-detective-adventure-inspired-by/description

About
Backbone is a pixel art cinematic adventure with stealth and action elements. As private investigator Howard Lotor, you are set to solve detective cases, interrogate witnesses, explore the intriguing and dangerous world around you, and sneak your way to safety using smell-based stealth mechanics.

Backbone combines the visual and social contrasts of film noirwith anthropomorphic animals, retrofuturistic technologies, and dystopian fiction. Crawl through the dark alleys of pixelated Vancouver, and experience the impactful storyline focused on themes of power and prejudice.

A rich, living and breathing world waiting to be explored. Backbone takes place in dystopian Vancouver, BC, featuring real locations and breathtaking pixel landscapes.

Stroll through the rainy streets reciting your favorite film noir quotes
A stylistic and thematic fusion of film noir, anthropomorphic animals, retrofuturism and dystopian classics. The world of Backbone is something you’ve never seen before but always wished you had.

Get under the pelt of Howard Lotor - a raccoon private investigator
Challenging, thought-provoking storyline featuring themes of power, corruption, social decay and systemic discrimination. Backbone tells a tale about how our environment shapes us, and how we influence it in return.

To be released in 2019 with your support!

Detective work. 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.

Sniff out the evidence and follow the trail
Stealth & Action. 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.

But remember that you smell too
Special abilities. 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.

Raccoon with a bear claw? Sure.

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.

Dystopian Vancouver is a hauntingly beautiful place
The Great Apes call themselves the founding fathers of this world, and they are the moral, ethical and political compass of society. Citizens are divided into informal classes according to their species. The political and underground power is corrupted, and the glass ceiling seems impossible to break.

Everyone is in the right place beneath The Great Apes
Vancouver is surrounded by high walls from every side to make sure that no one from across it intrudes. It is strictly forbidden to cross the wall, and the only thing waiting outside is savage hostile creatures.

Smugglers are the only ones brave enough to cross, bringing back unknown technologies to break and trade
Howard Lotor is a raccoon and a private investigator who doesn't feel like he belongs. His mundane life is interrupted with the appearance of a powerful technology that can blur the lines of conventional order and change society forever.

- Hello, detective Howard. I have a case for you

Backbone's visual style is a modern take on the classical retro adventure look. While conceptualizing the world of Backbone, we knew we wanted to take the best parts of our favorite city and combine it with hi-res pixel art.

It all starts with the sketch
Vancouver is one of the most beautiful and noir cities in the world, and we knew right away what streets, landmarks and favorite spots to include in the game. Vancouver finally plays itself!

Iconic Vancouver locations (and Roxy Burger) play important role in Backbone
Every character and environment element is animated frame by frame. It is a tedious process, but creating life and charisma out of a collection of pixels is magic we wouldn't trade for anything else.

Evolution of Howard Lotor's walk cycle
Combining pixel art with 3D effects in UE4 like multi-layered backgrounds, parallaxing, dynamic lighting and lens flares adds to the cinematic feeling of the game. Sprawling city, contrasting silhouettes against the setting sun, dust particles, neon signs and steaming sewer hatches enhance the noir atmosphere of the city.

Setting up light sources on the 3D scene with pixel art sprites

An important element of noir Vancouver is the music coming from jazz bars, noisy alleys, night fish markets and industrial blocks. Backbone’s composer Nikita Danshin is combining jazz and electronic music to create a viscous soundtrack that feels like a dark, enveloping veil of bebop and cinematic soundscapes.

Backbone will release on Windows, Mac and Linux in Q2 2019. Platform releases are going to be announced if this campaign reaches the stretch goals.

EggNut is a game development studio from Vancouver, Canada. We got together in 2016 and decided to start making video games. We all have stories to tell, and games are the best medium for conveying the complexity of the human condition.

We might come from different backgrounds and live in distant countries, but we are united by strong determination to create meaningful experiences. Every member of EggNut has years of experience in IT, art, design and music industries, and we're bringing it into our own project to create something new and inspiring.

Project status.

We have spent the majority of 2017 in pre-production - assembling the team, prototyping the game of our dreams, and working out the pipelines and workflows. We started producing content for the trailer in January 2018, and we'll reuse every asset that we created in the actual game. 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.

We developed a Backbone demo level with storyline and core mechanics: walking, running, crawling, stealth, smell, dialog, inventory, and action. We want to polish it with the assets we prepared during our proof of concept stage, and publish for all backers this Summer.

 

[Tom Selleck]

if it were humans i'd be a billion times more excited

 

[Curratum]

Why did it have to be furries?

 

[CryptRat]

Strong Blacksad vibes, which is great.

I would have preferred a less action-oriented game, like without any action at all in fact, but it still looks interesting, especially the assumed freedom and absence of hand-holding.

 

[Life of the Party]

Backed.

 

[taxalot]

Someone's read Blacksad

An official Blacksad game has been announced, incidentally.

 

[LESS T_T]

Steam page:

 

[CryptRat]

The Blacksad is strong in this one :

Source : https://www.kickstarter.com/project...detective-adventure-inspired-by/posts/2840184

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[CryptRat]

This parallax scrolling is very nice. Whether the game is going to be good I don't know but unless it has nothing to do with what the trailer suggests then at very least the setting and atmosphere should be good.

 

[Neuromancer]

There is a demo out on GOG (and possible Steam as well), for anyone who wants to try:
https://af.gog.com/game/backbone_prologue?as=1649904300


I only played the beginning of the prologue, since I had to quit and later noticed that the game didn't save.
(I didn't see any save feature, but maybe I overlooked something.)

First I must admit, that I am not a big fan of anthropomorphized animals (or "furries"), so this was already a turnoff before starting.
Nevertheless, I must admit that the Film Noir atmosphere is nice and the graphics are especially great.
Puzzles (as far as I played) were mostly dialogue puzzles and some stealth sections. There are multiple solutions to some puzzles, which is nice.
Difficulty was pretty easy - only problem for me was a specific stealth section, but only because I didn't know what the game wanted me to do.

If you don't mind the animal characters, this game could be something for you.

 

[lukaszek]

and possible Steam as well

yeah its on steam, surprisingly 1.6gb

 

[lukaszek]

controls are way too simplistic. Not a fan of adventure games and clicking everything on the screen to progress but this overs implication is too much

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[lukaszek]

are you guyz aware that this game expects you to recognize dog breeds?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Played a smidge of this since it's on game pass, mixed bag so far. Visuals are great, there's been a single puzzle which took a minute to figure out mainly because I was overthinking it, and I'm not sure how much (If any) C&C is going on. There have been quite a few moments that feel like the game might be keeping track of you, both your actions and your character's feelings toward others, but it's hard to say if any of it matters and/or is being tracked. Like without spoiling anything as to be expected with something like this you have a twist on your case, but the game's acting like I've been made and I need to be on the lookout while I got through the bit without being seen or really drawing attention to myself and their dialog options even have obvious "I AM PRIVATE EYE I AM LOOKING FOR MAN" and bullshitting even to the point of using a fake name, and naturally I wasn't telling anyone anything. Not sure if it's sloppy writing/design because it's acting like that because THAT'S HOW THE STORY GOES or if it's sloppy because there were other ways of getting through it that would make that more accurate. Then there are other potential little C&C things like after talking to a character you break away for a strange interlude of talking to yourself like asking yourself what you think about her. Is that there simply because in a detective story they think you need to have an inner monologue and thus they have self-dialog spots, or is picking an option of how much you trust her something that'll come up later in the game? Probably the first one.

Other than the bit of grumbling about the one puzzle (Which didn't make sense in context but whatever, not moon logic nonsense at least) it's alright. Wouldn't be plonking down $25 for it as of yet but as a freebie on game pass I've done a few minutes here and there and been satisfied. It is gorgeous though, definitely have to give it that.

 

[MRY]

This is another of those games where the contrast between player ratings and major sites’ ratings is pretty stark. Clearly something in the game really appealed to RPS and Screenrant but simultaneously irked a lot of players, who not only left negative reviews but also flocked to upvote other negative reviews. I’m not sure I’ve seen any adventure game (if this even is one?) that elicited such a strong negative reaction.

 

[Neuromancer]

The answer to your enigma is "furries".

 

[MRY]

But why would someone buy that game if that wasn’t his taste to begin with?

 

[WallaceChambers]

This is another of those games where the contrast between player ratings and major sites’ ratings is pretty stark. Clearly something in the game really appealed to RPS and Screenrant but simultaneously irked a lot of players, who not only left negative reviews but also flocked to upvote other negative reviews. I’m not sure I’ve seen any adventure game (if this even is one?) that elicited such a strong negative reaction.

It's because the game is super short, ends abruptly with unresolved plot threads, doesn't incorporate the puzzling or stealth from the prologue in the rest of the game. Reading through a healthy chunk of reviews these are the most common criticisms. It seems the story was undercooked and at some point the devs decided to go from detective adventure to "full blown talking simulator." Paraphrasing from their stream.

Which isn't great considering this is still the gameplay description on their steam page.

Backbone's gameplay is a modern take on the classic point-and-click adventure, featuring stealth, exploration, and elaborate dialogues inspired by old school CRPGs.

As Howard, you will:
• Make meaningful connections with a diverse cast of characters in pursuit of truth
• Explore both flourishing and decaying districts of a now walled-off Vancouver
• Uncover clues and collect evidence
• Solve puzzles and sneak around
• Be a raccoon

They needed to more clearly communicate that the game they pitched on KS, and that people played in the prologue, was a pretty significant departure from the game they ended up making.

 

[MRY]

That makes sense for negative player reviews. But why the glowing press reviews? Less interest in gameplay/Kickstarter promises?

 

[WallaceChambers]

Yeah, I think that's probably it. If you go in with no expectations and get a nice looking choice based adventure/novel game you're gonna be more receptive to it than if you expected a detective adventure where you're making deductions, solving puzzles, stealthing around and whatnot.

Plus idk if I'd call the press reviews glowing overall. I know meta doesn't aggregate everything but it's sitting at a 77 right now, which isn't bad, but maybe more of a shine or a glimmer.

 

[MRY]

The aggregate is not great, but there are a number of extremely positive reviews that seem out of place when the Steam rating is 62%.

 

[Hobo Elf]

That makes sense for negative player reviews. But why the glowing press reviews? Less interest in gameplay/Kickstarter promises?

My guess is that it's because journos don't finish the games they review before the review is published. All the negative user reviews I read mention that the game's plot is cut abruptly and since the story is the main focus of the game it feels like a very unsatisfying experience. A journo who didn't get to the end yet wouldn't run into that same issue.

 

[JarlFrank]

The aggregate is not great, but there are a number of extremely positive reviews that seem out of place when the Steam rating is 62%.

If the prologue is great and the game radically shifts its focus halfway through, that explains why journos praise it.

They rarely play games to the end, they write reviews based on the first hour.