Backpackward

As I’ve mentioned in a couple of previous reviews in this thread, I’ve been getting back into Star Trek lately, for reasons that are probably not too hard to guess if you look around (I remember finding the idea that the central event of the mid-21st Century would be “the Eugenics Wars” incredibly funny back in the day). As I’ve been tiptoeing into the last decade’s worth of franchise effluvium, I’ve heard a lot of people recommend Lower Decks, which is an animated comedy that makes fun of the tropes of Star Trek, but folks say also clearly has a lot of affection for them too, and adds solid character work to boot. Sounds great! But I bounced hard off the one episode I watched, because while the substance was indeed as advertised, the style was incredibly off-putting to me – the characters are all yelling at each other all the time, there’s a lot of intentionally-unpleasant visual jokes based on nudity and body fluids, and a strain of stoner-humor runs through the whole thing. I can see how the cocktail could work for some – this is pretty much exactly the aesthetic that made Rick and Morty super successful – it’s just not my bag.

So yeah, Backpackward.

This choice-based game is working in a classic genre (in this case, portal fantasy, where an unwitting protagonist is transported to a fantasy realm), with a solid density of funny jokes (the very first one – your dead-end job of choice is working in a smoothie shop named “Jack of All Fruits” – took me a minute to get, but is legit clever; the fact that they sell a smoothie called the “Mango-Carta Madness” made me disappointed I couldn’t read the full menu board), and a fun mechanic to boot: there are occasional options along the lines you typically see in a choice-based game, most hinging on whether you’ll release your bottomless rage at your marginal existence, or try to keep it bottled up, but they mostly seem to have only cosmetic effect. No, the real interactivity isn’t based on what you do, but what you have. Per the title, at key junctures you’ll have a chance to snatch a potpourri of items and try to cram them into your backpack – stealing a page from action-RPGs like Diablo, this involves playing inventory-Tetris and making hard decisions about what to leave behind, since the available space is strictly limited. And it’s the presence or absence of key items like a light source, a lucky die, or a can of Febreze that impacts how well you navigate the myriad challenges of trying to storm a castle in the fantasy world, and find a place to crash after you piss off all your friends in the real one.

This is all pretty well done – the backpack especially is cool, with lovely graphics making the process of agonizing over what to take feel nice and tactile. But it does all the same stuff I found so grating in Lower Decks: the main character is an aggrieved and aggressive jerk, the game can’t let go of running jokes like how funny it is to step in sheep dung, and yeah, one of the items you can prioritize is a bong. I don’t mean to knock the folks to whom this stuff appeals at all – everyone has their own taste in humor – but I just don’t find it that funny, and in fact running “gags” like the protagonist’s extended flirting with the wife of the one peasant in the fantasy world who’s nice to him feel grating and unpleasant to me.

Often I don’t mind a narrative aesthetic that’s not to my taste as much if the gameplay is grabby, but here Backpackward runs into difficulties because the item-collection mechanic is also pretty random. The game does signpost a few of the items that will be most useful – it’s pretty clear that you’ll want a lighter and some explosives for the endgame, and you’d have to be intentionally sandbagging not to wind up with them – but for the most part, your choices of what to bring are made blind, which makes them feel either inconsequential (I kept a DnD miniature figure through the game because it felt like it had to pay off somewhere, but all it wound up doing was open up a couple opportunities to shove it in people’s faces) or incredibly weighty (by the time I realized that a broken shield would be super helpful to have, I was half the game away from the one moment when I could have grabbed it). Sometimes this can pay off – a half-eaten pack of Cheetos I’d stuffed in the backpack and forgot about wound up being the key item I needed to save my peasant “friend” when we were menaced by attack dogs – but fortuity only takes you so far, especially since there appear to be noticeable negative consequences if you don’t happen to have the right item on you (another issue is that I know this because the ending text I got seemed buggy and didn’t realize I’d used the Cheetos – it told me the peasant had died).

Speaking of the ending, Backpackward isn’t a complete story unto itself, ending on a cliffhanger, and while that can be annoying, in this case it makes me optimistic. See, if there is a sequel, it’s a chance for the characters and world to bed in a bit, develop some nuance now that the basic contours are established. The various setbacks suffered by the main character might also get him to gain a little self-awareness, which would be very welcome. I am planning to take another run at Lower Decks after the Comp, since I hear that it calms own after the first episode – here’s hoping the same is true here!