Backpack Hero is yet another roguelike dungeon crawler. Go through a randomly generated dungeon, hit stuff with your sword, block stuff with your shield, fight the big boss at the bottom of the dungeon, go back to town. What makes Backpack Hero a little bit different is that the way you sort your inventory has a direct impact on how effective you are in the game.
You are Purse. A mouse whose mother was lost in the ever-changing dungeon. You grab a magical backpack and proceed to go adventuring in this same place.
This magical backpack is the focus of the dungeon part of the game: When you go up a level, your HP doesn’t go up. Instead, your backpack gets bigger. Carry more stuff!
Randomly get stuff after a battle or from a chest. Change out your sword for a club or a bow, maybe. Drop your shield and pick up some armor. Some items rely on where they are in your backpack to help you. Pick up a helmet? It has to go in the top row of the inventory or it’s worthless. Pick up some boots? They have to go in the bottom row. Arrow have to go to the right of the bow. Go back into the backpack and re-arrange.
Some of the enemies you’ll be fighting will know about the whole “backpack” thing and, instead of attacking you, will attack your stuff. Maybe the bees will coat your items with honey and make them sticky, maybe the snails will coat your items with slime.
Then back to town (either because you beat the boss or because you got “knocked out”) and do some light town management.
Unfortunately, the town management is downright awful. Not because of what you’re asked to do, mind. That part is pretty normal. The *INTERFACE* is awful. If you can get past that, though, you’ll build stuff like a shop and a job board that will give you missions and an archery school and farms and so on and so forth. Have conversations with the townsfolk and some will give you missions in the dungeon (beat it like *THIS* and I’ll give you stuff!) and others will move the story along.
It’s a cute game and, at the price point of twenty bucks, it ain’t bad. Granted, I heard “the game’s dynamics are based on your backpack?!?” and I immediately started imagining a different game entirely and that’s not the fault of the actual game at all. The game has me looking forward to Backpack Hero 2. Maybe *THAT* will be the game I was idly daydreaming about.
If you can get it on sale, pick it up. It’s cute.
So… what are you playing?
(Featured image is the splash screen from Backpack Hero. All screenshots taken by the author.)
Finally, the inventory management game devs always knew we wanted.Report
I was almost even excited when I heard about the game and the mechanic.
Playing it… well. It’s okay. It’s not bad. It’s okay.
If they went the roguelite rather than roguelike, I’d probably have a game closer to what I had in my head when I purchased.
So I don’t know how much of that is on the game and how much of that is on me.Report
What would you say is the difference between roguelite and roguelike? Is it mainly that in -lite games certain things carry over from previous runs? I found a couple sites with definitions but they didn’t agree with each other and neither quite matched how I usually see these terms used.Report
Roguelike is one where, every run, you start over as level 1 with nothing.
Roguelite is one where it’s possible to hit checkpoints and you can start future runs with more hit points, or better equipment, or better stats, or whathaveyou.
I suppose that this game gives you the opportunity to start with a somewhat different build, under certain circumstances… but the builds aren’t “better” as much as “merely different”.
Like, do you want to start with a plate of food (two bites of food, two extra action points per bite) or do you want to start with a couple of roses instead (opponent takes HP damage per rose when he hits you).
It’s not like, eventually, you’re going to start with a special golden rose that does triple HP damage or anything like that.
It’s more like the choice is “go as a rogue” or “go as a fighter” or “go as a mage”. If you get the distinction.Report
Yup, makes sense – thanks. Re the concept, that’s basically what I thought too, but one site suggested that it had to be a lot more similar to Rogue to qualify as roguelike (turn-based combat, grid layout, etc).Report
We probably need an additional 4 or 5 terms.Report
Only 4 or 5?? That doesn’t begin to scratch the surface — these guys came up with 15, separated into high- and low-salience: https://www.roguebasin.com/index.php/Berlin_Interpretation
I wonder if anyone has done a linear regression…Report
Sorry, this is classification, so I should’ve said logistic regression.Report
I LOLed (just so you know).Report
When I return home from the memorial service and family visit resulting therefrom, I’ll get back to Starfield. The good: the main quest somehow feels engaging, if pretty tightly railed; the two rival nations feel more realistic; the cities feel like actual cities. Also the minigame for lockpicking is better than the Skyrim/Fallout mechanic. The bad: there’s a lot of walking around barren planets with little to do. The ugly: Bethesda has never ever figured out how to handle inventory.Report
I can’t wait until the modders get their hands on a devkit.
Skyrim changed *COMPLETELY* when the modders started doing their thing. Starfield promises to be even better.Report