Mid-Year Indie Double Feature ("Backbone" and "Emily is Away 3")

Howdy folks, and welcome back to another double review where I take a look at two indie titles that are too small to warrant individual reviews. When I'm lucky, these double reviews come to be because the subjects are similar in some way. When I'm not, they come to be because I'm behind or all the subjects have in common is their size. This is an example of the former. Both titles I'll be touching on today do what they do incredibly well, they both have interesting stories that I got invested in, I'm recommending both of them, they both end underwhelmingly, and the only real difference (other than, you know, style and what the stories entail) is that only one of them had a good, justifiable reason for its underwhelming end. As I said in that classic Right Trigger run-on sentence, I'm recommending both of these games despite the fact that one sticks the landing far better than the other, and I bring this up because THERE WILL BE MAJOR STORY SPOILERS FOR BOTH OF THESE GAMES in this review. There's simply no way for me to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these narrative-driven experiences in a satisfying, meaningful way without delving into spoiler territory. So if you came to see if I recommend either Backbone or Emily is Away 3 before buying, know that they both get my seal of approval, and just go play them before coming back. For both of these reviews I'll be using my smaller game scale, meaning that while I normally can only take off a maximum of 1 full point for any given negative, for these I can take off a maximum of 2 full points, given that they're smaller games with less that could go wrong. So, let's get started!

Available for: Microsoft Windows, MacOS (At a future date: Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One)

Reviewed for: Microsoft Windows

Backbone takes place in a post-noir Vancouver inhabited by anthropomorphic animals, and before I get further into that I'd like to say this: one of Backbone's greatest strengths is how it subverts the expectations that come with the whole "anthropomorphic animal society" concept when it needs to and totally conforms to them when it's beneficial. For instance, the villain of the game is Clarissa Bloodworth, the head of the Bloodworth crime family. Now, when you think "female mob boss in a post-noir animal society," what animal comes to mind? Probably not a polar bear, right? But Clarissa is, in fact, a polar bear, and this subversion of expectations works shockingly well. On the other hand, if I told you that the protagonist's cab driver best friend whose dialogue is usually along the lines of "so I tells the missus that if she gets any bigguh she won't even fit in the cahhh" is a beaver, that would probably not be as surprising. Which character is what kind of animal is always smartly done, and I have to applaud the creativity on display here. But back to the topic at hand. You play as Howard Lotor, a raccoon private investigator in a suitably post-noir trench coat. At the start of the game, Howard is visited by an otter who is convinced her husband is cheating on her, as is often the case (in both senses of the word) with plots revolving around private investigators. Howard takes the case and sets out into the city to find out if his client's suspicions are accurate, and if so, to get hard evidence. His investigation eventually leads him to an infamous nightclub known as "The Bite," which is run by none other than Clarissa Bloodworth. After being kicked out of the club, Howard finds another way in and accidentally finds himself in the super secret lower levels, where he finds his target dead on a table. From there, Howard realizes that Bloodworth is having certain patrons chopped up into little pieces. Now, you may wonder why that would be a surprise, given that the joint is run by a polar bear, but that's another way in which Backbone subverts expectations. There's no sense of "carnivores" or "herbivores." All the animals are just "people." Howard's panicked thoughts upon making this discovery aren't about how carnivores can't be trusted or about how he could be on the menu because of the kind of animal he is. His thoughts all revolve around "but people don't eat people!" and he reflects on how he could be next on the menu because he popped up on Bloodworth's radar and left a bad impression. From here, Howard teams up with a fox journalist named Renee to investigate the situation and discover how deep the rabbit hole (no pun intended) really goes. The mystery is intriguing the entire time it goes on, and I found myself reading every little detail I could in my investigations to get more of the lore and see if I could maybe start trying to piece things together. 

That's why it's so devastating to me that Backbone has the single worst downward spiral in quality in it's final act that I've ever seen in my life. Never before has a game's story fallen so horribly far so quickly. By the time the credits roll, few questions are answered, more questions are raised, and what little closure we get is...less than satisfactory. 

You see, the only major question that really gets answered is the original one: why would someone chop people up and sell their flesh to the apes that run this society? Well the reason...let me put it this way: I've had a hard time deciding if the reasoning sounds more like an incel manifesto or the manifesto of some bitter freshman girl who has just been introduced to the concept of feminism but doesn't quite get it yet. If it sounds like it really shouldn't be that hard to choose one or the other, bear with me (again, no pun intended). See, Clarissa Bloodworth had people butchered in her basement and sold their flesh to the apes because women are oppressed...I mean, that's a little bit of an oversimplification on my end, to be fair, there's all this convoluted stuff about getting on the apes' good side to see about getting in on their secrets to find something to help kickstart a revolution against them, but in the end it all comes down to "so women won't have to kill to be successful anymore." That's either an ultimately well-meaning but misguided first draft at a feminist manifesto or the insane ramblings of a beanpole incel saying "this is what the feeeemales want!" and I go back and forth on it. 

Now, here's the kicker: it's not like this game isn't political! For the whole runtime, things like class disparity, crippling drug addiction in economically disadvantaged communities, and racial/speciesial prejudice (there is no law that rodents can't be doctors, but they have no shot of ever getting hired as one, for example) are touched upon extensively. If you're sharp, you'll notice that I never mentioned "gender inequity," and that's because it never shows up even once the entire game...until it's the motivation for chopping people up into tiny pieces. That's part of why it's such a ridiculous left-field thing. They already had a bunch of well-established societal problems to draw from as potential motivations for our villain, but they went with none of them. Hell, it's revealed that Clarissa made it a point to provide jobs to people from the poorer districts, so why not go with class disparity as the motivation? The devs could even throw in racial prejudice, as Clarissa also hires rodents to fill medical roles in her organization. All the pieces are there to make a perfect gray villain who commits horrific crimes but does good along the way because "the apes have created a society that keeps everyone but them down, it's time for us all to band together!" But instead, we get a disjointed villain who commits horrific crimes and does good along the way because "I had to kill a bunch of people to get where I am, I want to make sure no woman has to do that ever again...oh and maybe we can also have a revolution." It makes Clarissa end up feeling wildly divorced from the world she inhabits. I just can't fathom why this wasn't a "we are the 99%" kind of narrative. Yeah, it would've been predictable, but that's the narrative they set up and they didn't commit to it. And if all that didn't sound like enough of a downward spiral in quality, I haven't even touched on the fact that Howard ends up getting inhabited by an alien parasite that he found in the ape science labs that makes him gradually talk more and more like the reapers from Mass Effect OR the almost David Cage-level arc that comes from that! But I've rambled for too long already about story details, so let's move on. Suffice it to say that by the end, Backbone feels less like a creative vision from a passionate studio and more like a desperate rush to get the game out in a timely manner. And to make matters worse, it gives you the illusion that you can make things go down differently. After saying out loud to my PC screen "you can't be serious" as the credits rolled, I decided I needed to play through the game again to see if I could get an ending that wasn't terrible. However, pretty early on, I realized something. In my first playthrough, I was trying to be discreet when I first entered The Bite, so I didn't talk to anyone except Clarissa. Then, when Renee first appeared and I asked who she was, she said "did you hit your head on a rock? I'm Renee" and I figured "ah, she's a character Howard knew before the start of the game." But when I started a second playthrough, I noticed Renee sitting in The Bite, and when I talked to her, it was clearly the two characters' first time meeting. Then, at the same point that I had met Renee for the first time in the first playthrough, I had the exact same dialogue exchange ("did you hit your head on a rock? I'm Renee"). In addition, in my first playthrough, I lied to Clarissa about who I was, got called out, and got kicked out. Then, when Renee asked what my impression of Clarissa was, my dialogue option was "Smart. She saw right through me." In playthrough #2, I was totally honest with Clarissa, and then got kicked out for seemingly no reason. Then, when Renee asked the same question, my dialogue option was once again "Smart. She saw right through me." She didn't see right through me, I told her everything! It's clear that the choice the game wants you to think you have is an illusion. That would be fine if all roads didn't lead to the worst conclusion I've ever seen in a game, but I was so devastated by the realization that literally everything was going to go exactly the same way that I couldn't bear (once again, no pun intended) to go through my second playthrough any longer. The journey to get to this horrible destination is so strong that I still give Backbone my recommendation, but it's just so sad to see such potential go to waste in the end. 

So now let's move on to an area that Backbone handles incredibly well: the technical side of things! I'm not really a pixel art kind of person, but holy moly, the pixel art in Backbone is beautiful! The character animations are fluid and lend more personality than you might expect. The environments are vividly detailed and feel lived in. For example, the first part of Vancouver you investigate is one of those "businesses on floor one, apartments on all other floors" kinds of city streets, and as you walk through this area you'll sometimes see a squirrel leaning out his window and smoking a cigarette or the faint glow of a tv through a closed window. Every environment is given as much detail as possible to make the world feel inhabited, so even if the artwork itself weren't so stunning it would still be an interesting world to explore. Given that this is a pixel art game, it should perhaps come as no surprise that the framerate is silky smooth, but I don't know, I guess I figured that the sheer quality and amount of things happening on screen at any given moment would take a toll on the game's performance, but I was wrong! I played on the unlimited framerate mode and never had any sort of slowdown. Adding to the kind of immersiveness that naturally comes from a great art style and stellar technical performance is Backbone's soundtrack. As you might expect, it's mostly trumpet and piano-heavy jazz ambiance that underscores whatever your current objective is perfectly, but then there are times where the developers really lean on the music. The example that quickly jumps to the front of my mind is a segment about halfway through the runtime where Howard investigates the house of a horribly impoverished, not very smart, and emotionally devastated rabbit mother whose missing daughter might be involved in Bloodworth's schemes. This scene begins with Howard beginning to search the daughter's room as the mother waits in the living room, and it becomes clear that the daughter's PC is going to be where the answers are. From there, Howard begins combing through the house looking for clues that might help him answer the security questions required to gain access to the PC, and during this rather mundane investigation that takes place in the afternoon in a well-lit home, a track starts to play. The name of the track is "I Wonder" (for those curious to hear it), and it's this chilling song sung by a smokey, deep-voiced female jazz vocalist, and this investigative section that, in hindsight, might well have been lacking otherwise, is elevated to perhaps my favorite part of the game because of this touch. The point is that the developers clearly knew when and where to use each track in their ost. In addition to all of this, I never had any glitches, texture pop-in, audio bugs, animation glitches, etc. There seemed to be times where the "interact" button wouldn't immediately work, but it was a little difficult to tell for sure. All-in-all, a solid technical package.

Folks, it was a little difficult for me to wrap my head around the horrific drop in quality that Backbone sports in its last act or two, and given that the game is maybe 6 hours if you really take your time, that means that the drop in quality makes up a larger percentage of the runtime than you might expect. Normally that would be grounds for a non-recommendation, but as much as I hated how this game turned out after so much potential, I just can't bring myself to hate the game itself. In fact, as you already know, I recommend it even knowing what I know. It's rare to find a game that does so much so right that one can forgive the large amount that it does worse than anything else, but Backbone is such a game. If you can be satisfied with just being in an interesting world for a while enjoying some excellent art and some quality post-noir ambiance, then I think you'll get plenty of enjoyment out of Backbone. If, for you, a story can't just be a good journey without a good destination, however, you're going to end up disappointed. 

Let us review: 

Absolutely horrendously bad climax - 2.0

Lazy illusion of choice - 1.0

The final score for Backbone is...

7.0/10 - Good

Decent work, Eggnut, decent work.

Available for: Microsoft Windows, MacOS

Reviewed for: Microsoft Windows

I've been a fan of Emily is Away since the first title. Developer Kyle Seeley just. Keeps. Knocking. It. Out. Of. The. Park with every entry in this saga, and Emily is Away 3 is easily his best work to date. For those who are uninitiated, Emily is Away is a saga set in various old social media site clones in the mid-to-late 2000's, and you always play as a high school boy talking with (and sometimes dating) friends. The goal of these games is to transport people around my age back in time to high school and give them nostalgic memories of keeping friendships going and flirting with their crushes in those days. It started with AOL chat, I honestly don't remember where the second game took place, and in Emily is Away 3, our setting is now a Facebook clone in 2008, "Facenook." You once again play as a self-named high school boy (I went with my high school nickname and BOY did that make this game nostalgic), but this time around things are slightly different. 

Like any well-done story, Emily is Away 3 actually shows its cards from the very beginning, though I defy you to realize it until the story is done. But we'll get to that. The first act of the game is pretty simple: You, your best friend Mat, and Mat's girlfriend Kelly are going to go to one of two summer parties together, and they've left the decision entirely up to you. One event is a BBQ hosted by the titular Emily, the other is a raging dance party hosted by Evelyn (the other love interest from the second game, though these kind of have a multiverse feel rather than sequel feel), so the purpose of this decision from a narrative perspective is pretty clear: you choose the party of the girl you want to pursue, and before making your decision you talk to both girls to get a sense of who they are. I'm more of a BBQ person myself, but I prefer a punk GF over an indie one, so high school me and my friends went to Evelyn's party, got totally wasted, and hit the dance floor. I'm not going to go through absolutely everything that happens in every act of the game in this review, just the events needed to really set the stage. Fastforward to the next act and I was all chummy with Evelyn, not so much with Emily. I went through the usual high school flirting steps: "of course, I'm always here if you need to talk," compatibility quizzes "just for the hell of it," etc, and by the end of the act I'd successfully put a heart on her page hear-heart on her page and made it Facenook official (you're welcome). Fastforward to the next act and Mat and Kelly have broken up. Mat was taking it pretty hard, but after having a Heart2Heart (ok I'll stop now) with him, he ended up feeling better and asked if I wanted to hang out and play videogames like we used to do. Because I happened to have a date planned with Evelyn that night, the purpose of this decision was, like the first one, pretty clear. Did I want to be there for my best friend in his time of need, or did I want to spend more time with my girlfriend who would 100% understand if I chose to spend time with Mat instead? I think you'd have to be pretty stupid to choose option #2, so obviously I chose to be a good friend. Fastforward to the next act, and Mat came to me with a concern: this guy Steve had been posting on Evelyn's wall, and because I wasn't friends with him, I couldn't see the contents. After logging in as Mat, I was able to see that there were several flirty interchanges between Steve and Evelyn. However, I decided to approach the matter maturely, so I brought it up to Evelyn and trusted her word when she said it was nothing. But then the next chapter came and Evelyn asked to go on a break because of some faux-mature bulls**t. Mat then instantly messaged me to ask if I wanted him to call her something along the lines of "Dickmuffin," and after talking with him, he decided he was going to do for me what I did for him in his hour of need, and we spent the evening gaming. Now, I figured the next chapter was probably going to have Evelyn dating Steve and I'd have to choose whether to call her out or just stay silent and have Steve eventually get ho'ed over too. But nope, the game ended after my second night gaming with Mat. As the credits started rolling, I said to myself "whaaaat? Come on, man!" But it wasn't the same kind of experience that the end of Backbone was. There was something I felt I was missing, and I spent a good deal of time thinking about it. Then it struck me. The very first conversation of the game was between me and Mat. Before the girls were even in the picture, our friendship was. The main talking point in the compatibility quizzes that Evelyn and I took (other than "do you have a crush on anyone" because High School) was about whether I would prefer a significant other or a group of good friends. Perhaps the story goes a different way if you pursue Emily, but at least for the path I went down, it hit me after I thought about that. The girls weren't the point this time around. The story here wasn't "friends to lovers who eventually fall away" like it was in the other games. This wasn't a game about trying to keep a romance going in spite of the odds. The point of Emily is Away 3 was Mat. This was a game about how much a good friendship can help you in your darkest hours. And the more I thought about that and the ending I got, the more I liked it and the more warm and fuzzy it made me feel. I went from kinda bummed that the story with Evelyn didn't end up really resolved to being, dare I say, proud of the ending I got. Even though the story ended quite abruptly, it now felt like it was more than enough. It was an Emily is Away game whose ending was happy in spite of the fact that the romantic subplot ended the way it normally does. 

So that's the word on the story, and there's really not much else to talk about. Emily is Away 3 is an excellent nostalgia trip with great writing, a compelling narrative, and (at least as a result of the decisions I made) a satisfying ending. Pair that with the fact that there's nothing wrong on the technical side of things, and I really have no complaints at all.

The final score for Emily is Away 3 is...

10/10 - Masterpiece 

Excellent work as always, Kyle Seeley, excellent work as always.