In addition to numerous Souls clones and metroidvanias, indie studios suddenly took on point’n’click adventures in the traditional pixel style. Company EggNut, for the most part consisting of Russian-speaking developers, released a neo-noir adventure game in early June Backbone…
Positioning itself as an adventure detective novelty tells about the difficult life of detective raccoon Howard Lotor in the city of anthropomorphic animals. A private investigator lives in a hierarchical world of nature, where raccoons are a class higher than various rodents, such as rabbits and mice, and rule the show in the humanoid kingdom of monkeys and cats. Naturally, predators have all the benefits of civilization, such as special areas and closed clubs, while everyone else has to cope with odd jobs. However, the theme of animal racism in history has not been brought to some logical conclusion and rather serves as a background image of an interesting world. The world of animals is separated from the outer wasteland by a wall, but what is beyond it, the authors did not tell, leaving intrigue for a possible continuation. There are many other unfinished storylines in the game as well.
Backbone starts as a classic detective story. A client comes to Howard, who asks him to track down the missing unfaithful husband. Beginning in a closed club for the elite, the investigation leads to a world conspiracy and the powers that be, who hide a grandiose secret. However, on the scale of the plot twist and the development of events for the third chapter, the main drawback of the project lies. Backbone from a very stylish noir adventure turns into a fairly secondary science fiction with a focus on a non-existent sequel. In addition, it is noticeable that the first episode, which was previously available for free, clearly stands out against the background of the remaining four chapters with excellent elaboration of details, interesting characters and well-chosen visual, script and musical elements. It offers a slight non-linearity, players can try out stealth mechanics and solve simple puzzles with a reference to Fahrenheit… Then the game becomes too linear and less interesting. Everything that follows after the laboratory, including the ending, causes only general disappointment and bewilderment.
Backbone, although it looks like a pixel adventure, the authors actually use well-detailed characters and three-dimensional backdrops, which, together with dynamic shadows and volumetric fog, creates a fairly bright and rich picture. The music offers some great and ambience-setting tracks, but during the special scenes the authors don’t offer in-frame dynamics, which is somewhat disappointing. In addition, the music, as it appears in these special moments, just as suddenly disappears.
Another offensive drawback of the project is that Backbone was made by natives of Russia, but at the same time the game still does not have Russian localization. On the other hand, the English version comes through with noticeable rough structures and crooked turns, not quite typical for native English speech.
