Over 90 percent positive Steam reviews speak for themselves: story fans shouldn’t miss this incredibly powerful prison break.
When a book, series, film or – yes, you guessed it – a video game begins with the protagonist being thrown into a high-security prison, then he or she is guaranteed to be innocent. This is also the case in Back to the Dawn, a highly acclaimed role-playing game.
What’s unusual here, though, is that the heroes aren’t human. Metal Head Games and Spiral Up Games transport you to a world that may seem charming at first glance, with its cute pixel art graphics and anthropomorphic animal characters, but behind it all lies a harsh prison life full of intrigue and danger.
Surrounded by shady characters and a system that would rather see you silent, you fight for survival and try to prove your innocence.
On Steam, Back to the Dawn has an impressive 92 percent positive reviews from over 5,000 players. The two-year early access phase was exemplary with numerous updates, and the final version 1.0 was released on July 18—and it’s remarkable.
Behind Swedish curtains
At its heart, Back to the Dawn is a mix of role-playing and life simulation, cleverly combining elements of survival simulation, tough resource management, and complex social dynamics. You start your adventure with an important decision: Will you choose Thomas the Fox, a reporter who has been drawn into a nasty business, or Bob the Panther, an undercover agent with an explosive mission?
Each of them brings their own story with over 20 hours of gameplay, which branches into different endings depending on your decisions. The prison is not an empty cage; it is teeming with over 40 unique animal inmates and countless other NPCs. Each of them has their own routines, personalities, likes, and dislikes.
Beziehungen zu diesen Charakteren aufzubauen, ist absolut entscheidend. Not only do they unlock new story snippets, but also special talents and insights that can help you survive and escape.
A crucial factor in the game is the meticulous management of your daily time, similar to the Persona games, your resources such as hunger and cash, and your various body stats. The game puts you under pressure: you have 21 in-game days, after which you have to start over. Every decision you make carries weight and has immediate or long-term consequences.
A sophisticated character development system allows you to customize your abilities and even forge alliances with the various prison gangs. And yes, there is a turn-based combat system. However, it is usually smarter to avoid combat whenever possible.
There is a but…
With two different characters, over 100 quests, numerous escape routes, and various endings, Back to the Dawn offers between 30 and 60 hours of gameplay. The game is explicitly designed to be played multiple times, with a clever memory function helping you learn from your mistakes and optimize your strategies in subsequent attempts.
The captivating narrative and brilliant writing ensure that you will soon look past the funny appearances of the animal inhabitants and into their hearts, and really begin to get excited about their stories. What’s more, many of the dialogues are hilariously written. But be warned, you’ll need a good knowledge of English, as the more than 500,000 words of text have not yet been translated into German.
The time limit is another factor that may be off-putting at first. In addition, the learning curve is steep, which is appropriately brutal for a prison game. However, for the final release, the developers have also released a so-called Game Modifier Toolkit along with the second story campaign. This allows you to fine-tune how much damage the protagonists can deal and take in combat, for example.
Editor’s conclusion
Back to the Dawn is an insider tip for me that I didn’t have on my radar for a long time. Yes, it’s tough at first – a second attempt is almost mandatory just to understand what to do with my limited time to advance the story. But if you stick with it, you’ll be rewarded with one of the most intense and satisfying prison break experiences since the first seasons of Prison Break. Through detective work, planning, and cleverly influencing guards and cellmates, I’m getting closer and closer to my goal. The dialogue is excellently written, and the relationships you form in prison feel real and meaningful. You’re not just on the run, you’re inevitably drawn into the dramas of the other inmates. The only drawback: to understand them, you absolutely need to know English.
