Back To The Dawn Review | Lost In The Darkness (PC)

Back To The Dawn is a title that prides itself on the ideas on its sleeves. There’s a lot to try and compete with with an intricate system of health management, friendship building, and puzzle solving. This is a story of corruption and tragedy, so you’ll be on the wrong side of the prison system trying to find your place as a hero. You can play as Thomas the Fox, Bob the Panther, and many more. It’s all about our Fox journalist who gets in jail for refusing to take bribes from corrupt officials. Framed and determined to escape, you start your adventure!

With a killer soundtrack and great attention to artistic detail, this minimalistic roleplaying game has a lot to offer. Unfortunately, while there’s too much on your plate, most of it doesn’t go together, being a weird mash-up of several different features. The basic use of stat management, friendship building, job skills, and dice-rolling systems makes a confusing mess of features. Back To The Dawn seems like a title more interested in the story itself and not the gameplay mechanics behind it. As a result, Back to The Dawn needs to be taken back to the kitchen and brought up to temperature. It has some good, some bad, and some ideologically ugly pieces. 

Back To The Dawn is available now for 19.99$ on Steam!

Straightforward Story

Back To The Dawn offers players a unique take on the prison system, based on Hollywood movies, and inaccurate depictions. Primarily you will be playing the role of Thomas the Fox, a journalist framed by a corrupt mayoral election official. Along the way, you can escape prison, work in gangs, and get your story told. In this corruption story, you’ll have to not just make the most of your connections with prisoners but also exploit them. Back To The Dawn offers players a way to get new and otherwise unavailable items by making as many social situations as possible. To make sure you make it out of this hell hole alive, each character has different options, dialogue, and means to an end! 

The largest critique is that many of the scenarios you’re placed in are done without tact. There are absolutely zero warnings before violent acts are perpetrated on the player, and you’re forced to endure the scenes. Additionally, the story will force you to overlook terrible ideologies in the name of commentary such as police inequality to succeed. There is absolutely zero discretion taken when showcasing completely out-of-pocket ideas that stem into the line of racism. Most of what the developers would like to say about the story is skewed by the improper and utterly hamfisted ways they’ve portrayed it.

Sub Plots

Several subplots in the story will both weigh down your time in prison but also expand on the prisoners. There are three major gangs in Back To The Dawn on the verge of a war, and another inmate plotting an escape. No matter what, you’re going to have to make the most of the materials and connections you’re given. With every action you take, your body and mind will be constantly drained, making it hard to get things done. You’ll also need to keep your wealth up by doing different jobs for gangs. You’ll have to rely on systems like RNG to decide whether or not you’ve succeeded. Put all that together, and you get a survival escape game that focuses more on the Hollywood escape of the convict than the prison system. 

Thomas the Fox, journalist and reporter, was framed by corruption and sent to prison so he wouldn’t speak out against the mayor

Weak Gameplay And Puzzles

For a game that’s built around intricate systems of stat management, puzzle solving, and dice rolling; there’s a lot left to be desired. For one, puzzles and quests seem superficial and their success rate is purely defined by probability. Unlike a game like Dungeons and Dragons, these dice don’t seem to have advantages or disadvantages based on stats. Instead, it is entirely luck-based with an arbitrary success rate that does not equate to the difficulty of the roll. For instance, one roll may only have a 2% success rate, and will always succeed, while something with a 98% success rate will fail consistently. This creates an environment where the player is incapable of actually succeeding in the game unless they constantly restart their playthrough.

The puzzles and challenges in this game are equally as easy as they are meaningless. From working out using keyboard randomization typing to stopwatches and ironing, nothing has a purpose. They made a bunch of arbitrary mini-games to fill time while leaving little reason to play them. The majority of things give you stat points or money, but they’re so small that you can skip them. Additionally, while Back To The Dawn has stat points and perks, they rarely do what they say they will. For instance, something that says hot water will offer you one satiety does not do so, instead giving you a return on mind points.

Headcount acts as your means of getting announcements in the prison, useful if you want to take advantage of your opportunities.

Overly Complicated Point Systems

You’ll have to consider a lot of things in Back To The Dawn. From your mind and body points to your action points, to friendship meters, to skill points and stat points. It’s like the developers thought that the more points they have in the title, the deeper it would be. Everything ends up being surface-level, which takes away from the story’s goal. Make scenarios where you can’t read a book because you don’t have the physical action points, but you can fight people. To this end, combat is just more of the same dice-rolling action with the same arbitrary ideas centered around them. Because of this, combat is both easily avoided, and struggles to stay relevant in the course of the story.

On top of this, you have energy, good conduct points, and five types of skills each with their individual point systems for leveling up. There are nightmare points, violence meters, sanity, cleanliness, satiety, and many others. Most annoyingly though, quite frequently you will have to stop everything you’re doing and sprint to the bathroom because Thomas needs to take a number 2. These are all useless systems that both encumber the mechanics and add unnecessary unoptimized code. With the sheer depths of the point systems, it seems like almost none of it matters when escape is imminent. 

Alternative Ideas

There are a lot of systems to consider, but the game lends itself well to playing more than once. You’ll try and fail several times. When you mix a dice-rolling system with skill-based points, you’re bound to run into some serious problems. These dice rolls may get easier over time if you train in a skill in other games that use RNG. Sadly, even though success rates go up, you’re more likely to fail something you should be sure to succeed for whatever reason. When you fail simple tasks, you get frustrated, but when you succeed, you feel unrewarded. 

A clunky dice-rolling system sometimes replaces skill-based activities, working widely off arbitrary probabilities.

Stunning Retro Graphics

Since we’ve completed the list of terrible features of this game, the graphics are relatively good. Impressively, a great amount of detail has gone into the design, lighting, and animation of this title. This all works together to create a surface-level game that’s relatively charming to look at. Unfortunately, this very cute-looking art style gets skewed by the story and narrative of the title. Using a retro game style that lends well to the prison atmosphere, it makes the most out of a minimalist approach. Dialogue, emotions, and animations feel clean and well put together. The use of emojis to tell certain emotional aspects is a great method of portraying emotion easily and reminds me of classic feelings.

Colorful, chunky art-style characters stand out against the greys and whites of the prison. You get an eerie feeling from the whole place due to the lighting and darkness. Yet inside your cell, and in places of opportunity there’s a light of hope all around you. While they try to hide their references behind fourth-wall humor and pop culture, everything has a cute external appearance. From proud and powerful lions to scrawny possums who try to trick people out of their money. It makes you squint, however, at least it’s easy to look at.

Unique Charm

In this department, not much should be changed as the visuals hold up well. Backgrounds, themes, items, and characters have their unique charm that’s hand-crafted. It’s a shame that graphics and audio were the best parts of a game with such a rich story. They show frustration when they fail an activity with subtle emotional flares in their ears or tails. Quite a bit of time was spent sculpting this location and the feel of the prisoners. The only thing that could stand to improve is that towards the staircases on either side of the map, shadows sometimes make navigating to the top floor difficult. 

The Black Claw gang is notorious for their violence, and smuggling operations with their control over the recreation room, and kitchens.

Amazing Audio Soundtracks

Finally, the last great thing about this title is the music, as it holds your hand and stays with you throughout the title. There will be moments of casual jazz, suspenseful guitars, and just a generally good time all around. Even though Back To The Dawn has a lot of confusing mechanics and gameplay ideas, the music holds it all together. It’s not enough to save the passengers, but at least we’ve got something to watch while we wait. Moments of emotional resonance are treated well in the mournful song while you’re shanked and assaulted dehumanizingly. 

Because of this, we need an original soundtrack album for Back To The Dawn, since replayability isn’t worth it. I like the music in the game, but I can’t keep playing it just to hear it. Like a distant memory of freedom, it sits in my head imprisoned like Thomas, causing guilt. Because out of anything trapped in this game, the perfect sound design is its star prisoner. There’s a sense of urgency to the basic soundtrack, but there’s also a chill electronic rhythm underpinning it. Compared to other titles with repetitive and boring soundtracks, this one is much more enjoyable. 

Assisting Sound Effects

Sound effects are used in mass to try and produce a real feel of prison from closing gates during a loading screen, to the eating of food or opening of doors. Each lends itself to this experience well as they almost stylize each menu for the place you’re going. Characters lack voice acting, but given their in-depth dialogue with the player, this can be overlooked. This lack of voice acting reminds me of classic role-playing games, which are more about mechanics and story than visuals and audio. Despite this, Back To The Dawn is a truly beautiful-looking game, with top-tier music tastes.

So you’re sure to find something charming about this title, even if you have to overlook some aspects of the character design. Using several audio cues, sound effects, and musical choices were made to enhance the game’s feel. This is both commendable and encouraged as it greatly seasons what could otherwise be a lifeless attempt. Instead, graphics and audio greatly improve the standing of Back To The Dawn!

Back To The Dawn was reviewed on PC with a key provided by PR Outreach!