Looking at Back to the Dawn, it’s difficult not to think of Tails Noir, formerly known as Backbone. Both games feature anthropomorphised animals as characters, follow a protagonist trying to solve a mystery, and both have point-and-click mech🍌anics. Both also have pixel art aesthetics, though Tails Noir uses high-resolution art to create a more realistic look while Back to the Dawn looks more traditional with a top-down, cartoony vibe. The similarities are obvious.
I played 20 minutes of Back to the D꧙awn at Tokyo Game Show, and was surprised at the turn it took. The game told me I was a journalist and asked me to choose what kind of journalist I was – I picked undercover, the kind that entrenched themself in seedy underbellies to root out stories. I was reporting on pollution in a river, and implicated the mayor in a story of corruption and deliberate inaction. The next thing I knew, I was face to face with the mayor, who was trying to bribe me into shutting up. I said no. As I left the diner we were talking in, police pulled up and started searching my car. They found drugs in the boot. That isn’t mine, I’m being framed, I insisted. And then I was in jail.
The game revolves around trying to survive in jail and get out, and I found it surprisingly compelling. My first step is to call my lawyer, but someone’s hogging the phone. I try to convince him to leave so I can use it for just a minute, but I fail my roll because my charisma isn’t very high. Fine, I think, I’ll bribe him instead. I shell out and he leaves. Finally! I walk up to the phone, just to find out that I need to pay a ridiculous $90 to make a call. I assume this figure is the result of a localisation issue and not the actual price. I’ll pay it,ꦦ but I don’t have $90, so I’m going to have to work one of the prison’s many jobs to come up with that cash. The laundry has vacancies, so I try to worm my way in there.
But wait! I need to be certified with a clean bill of health, otherwise I can’t work. I head to the doctor’s office, and while waiting for her to file the paperwork, I snoop around her office. It feels like I’ll have to be snooping around a lot – this game doesn’t seem as straightforward as I’d assumed it would be. Everything I do finds me stopped🌌 in my tracks by an obstacle, and I’m sure the intel I collect in this doctor’s office comes in handy. I get my approval, and head to the laundry room.
I’m not a fan of the minigame that working forces me to do, but I guess that’s the point – it’s menial. I have to iron clothes for a certain number of seconds to get a good score, counting down in ♏my head to get just the right timing. The higher the score, the more money I make. I somehow scrounge together a $100 from a couple rounds of ironing, and get the money I need to call my 𒐪lawyer. Finally, I do it. He tells me that my appeal will most likely be struck down because of the mayor’s influence, but I’ll have to wait and see.
I go on with my day. I talk to the inmates 𝓀around me, many of whom are interesting in their own right. There are prison gangs that I somehow get tied up with due to guard corruption. I have lunch, picking someone to sit next to and trying to convince them to give me their pie because I can’t afford one myself – I fail the roll, again. Damn you, charisma checks. I go out into the rec yard, and get into a fight with someone trying to intimidate me into giving him whatever’s left in my wallet.
It’s a very compelling portrayal of trying to survive life in prison, and I wanted to know what happened next. Would I manage to get out? Would I have to escape? Would I manage to expose the mayor after all? Would I eventually get shanked? I have so many questions, and the only way to answer them is to keep playing. I’ll have to create makeshift tools with the materials I can find, manipulate people into doing what I want, and find every secret the prison is hiding. Surprisingly, despite the game’s flaws, I can&rsquo꧙;t wait to do it.