Backpack Hero Reviews

Fun little puzzle/organizing game. Scratches a bunch of itches, collection, puzzle, rpg.

Very fun concept and unique experience to the "deck-building?" rogue-like genre. Items seem to be pretty balanced and there are many ways to beat the game. Tonnes of different items and synergies. There are some that become overpowered pretty easily and you become unbeatable. Definitely has elements from games like Slay the Spire and such.

Game delivers, its as addictive as in demo I played, super fun, can recommend

It's a good game, not a great one. The story mode falls pretty flat, in my opinion. I've unlocked most items, all the characters, etc, and it feels tedious more than rewarding. A large part of the early game is spent running the same build constantly, because you don't have a lot of options yet. The quick game aspect is very fun. The different challenges give you a chance to play a lot of different builds, and you get more gameplay in the same amount of time by skipping the town. You also have access to all the items. This is a weak recommendation, mainly if it's on sale. There's great concepts here and I'm willing to update the review if they streamline story mode or add more challenges.

Mechanically a really fun game. Having just played through the story mode, it feels a bit shoe horned into the game systems as a way to justify the meta progression side of this roguelike. The base building stuff is a bit arbitrary. Overall, a great game regardless and well worth the reasonable price if you're looking for an interesting roguelike to sink your teeth into.

Game is fun, but full of buggs and glitches that end runs prematurely or make certain characters impossible to play

I feel like this game is wasting my time. After 6 hours of story mode I haven't even unlocked the 2nd level and being able to only play the first level in a rougelike is not fun and feels like a pointless slog. I did beat arcade mode first try and that was cool but I don't get the gatekeep in the story mode at all

This game was a huge surprise for me; I didn't know much about it and got it as part of a bundle with Peglin which I was initially more interested. It turned out that Peglin was a simplistic appetizer and this game was the creative and satisfying main course. This is a roguelike, and you'll see the tag says it's a 'deckbuilder'. But don't be fooled; most of the gameplay doesn't have you waiting for specific draws like other games (except one character), instead this is all about organizing items to both optimize space and effects, leading to a system that seems simple at first but continues revealing new depth as different items and characters are unlocked. The Good: - I don't normally mention music first, but this game has some amazing music. None of it ever got old, which is saying something because there isn't a huge variety of songs in the game. The boss music is especially standout, and I'll give a mention to one song for clearly taking inspiration from DKC2 (you'll know it when you hear it) - The core gameplay loop is a engaging and addictive. You start with a limited grid of space and usually enough items to fill it out. You immediately go into battle and use those items based on the rules of combat and the item's effects, as well as your own energy meter. As you gain experience you get to customize how your backpack expands, giving you more space. Each battle ends with a selection of items to grab, plus there are shops and other opportunities between combat. The game basically floods you with items and you get to continually refine your existing strategy or try to transition to a new one. The items are varied and there's a lot of interactions that are possible to make even mundane weapons or armor really shine. - The game starts you with one character who has a very straightforward combat/backpack organization loop. But as you get further in story mode, you unlock 4 other heroes that each have their own unique extra mechanics that play with the existing structure. Some of these work better than others (if you really want the classic deckbuilding experience, use Tote), but even when I feel like they are a bit limited, I still can't help but appreciate the variety and creativity that went into them. - The gameplay has a meta-loop, but it's not a roguelite; when you finish a run, whatever you survived with is taken back to a hub town where you can sell it off for resources to build structures. These can be arranged largely how you like, and different structures unlock lists of items and quests to make more items appear in future runs. This creates a great incentive to win runs, adds a fun town customization option, and allows a real sense of progression as you see your town grow and your runs get more and more interesting options. - The graphics fit the game extremely well. It's a pixellated 'retro' look, but with great pixel density to include lots of detail. The artstyle feels very cohesive. I also like how all of the characters and enemies are Redwall-inspired smaller mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and a few gastropods. - Enemy variety and tactics are good here. Each enemy is consistent in the kinds of moves it uses so you can learn them and figure out how best to strategize. The later areas really ramp up the difficulty on status effects and summons. - The story mode has missions for each character (though the lion's share are given to the first character). Completing these allows you to gain items that are used for progression and better resources, and some of them also unlock new relics, items you get after beating a boss that usually have a good and bad thing that you have to consider. These missions are great; some act as a tutorial for a type of build archtype, while others give you really interesting restrictions that change the way you have to think about your actions. I wish there were more of them! The Mid: - The game's story is...there. There's an attempt to make some epic lore in the game and I appreciate the hints of it, but mostly speaking it's very much a simplistic 'get further in the dungeon for reasons' situation. The actual writing is also fairly average, with the one main standout being Mayor Quillswish. - There is a dungeon that you navigate between fights though, using a map. I think this is mostly good, but I would have liked to see a little more variety; I would say there's just enough different events and map items to keep things interesting, but if they removed even one thing it would probably get too stale. - The font is mostly readable, but there are a few things that were made exceedingly small; the status icons below characters in combat and the numbers shown for forge upgrades are tiny for no good reason I can think of. It makes both seeing what the current value is and hovering (especially with controller) unnecessarily challenging. The Bad: - This game has some absolute jank and bugs. There were times where item information would refuse to display, so I couldn't easily get the list of all effects that I had on something or re-check what an unfamiliar item does. I somehow ended up with duplicated items back in town that can't be sold because they are mission-related. I also have seen the game cause some bizarre locking on my computer when alt-tabbing or changing from windowed to fullscreen. - The game is playable on controller or kb+m and I've done both. Both have some awkwardness; on controller, some of the button choices feel a little odd and many actions require holding a button instead of simply pressing it. And the game has an invisible grid that you navigate with left analog or d-pad, but right analog moves the mouse cursor, and doing the latter can confuse the game on snapping back to the grid correctly. On kb+m, the game's layout and size of clickable area for things feels inefficient. - The game has a ton of items, and multiple types of potential builds, which is great. But on any given playthrough, I find I generally don't have much luck if I want to go after a certain build; I have to just hope that all the random drops and events and shops coordinate to let me use cleavers or be an archer or whatever. I know there's logic in the game to try and provide items with good synergy, but I think it needs more work. - Not all characters are created equal; the first character you unlock has multiple interesting systems, but his fights are largely trivialized by one of them. Tote feels out of place in the game; she basically takes the most unique thing abou the game, being able to choose items to use and organize them effectively, and bends it by making you draw them randomly every turn and often discarding them, making it more like slay the spire. The last two feel like they are on 'extreme' mode, where you can do amazing things but if you make one mistake your run is over. I feel like the balance is a bit all over the place. - The enemies have an odd scaling behavior; inexplicably, they'll start doing more and more damage without any clear status or ability being used to make it happen. This is especially true of bosses. Once you know this you realize that it's not enough to get a build that can take out the current area's enemies; you are almost required to have a build that can win an arms race with the next boss. It can be damage, status effects, defense, or whatever, but you need to have something that can get larger numbers every turn because the boss certainly will. I am on the fence about this; the lack of explanation bothers me, and while I get it's an effective pressure tactic, it takes some of the fun out of trying out interesting item combinations, because you know they just won't scale. Overall, I loved playing this game, and will probably play more in the future. If you like roguelikes and are looking for something where your choices are extremely important and strategic, this isn't one to miss.

This game is such a shame. I love this game. But the support is genuinely the worst. I have had a game breaking problem for months now, and all they've told me is to make sure I haven't installed any mods. No one else has ever had this problem before, and they never got back to me with anything useful. This game is great, don't buy it. If something happens, then you don't get to play anymore

To sum up my review: The game used to feel like a deckbuilder with a focus on builds and strategies, but now it's a game about filling a bag with items that are just generally good. I used to play this game like crack in early access. But like others have mentioned, this game doesn't really feel like a deckbuilder. It used to - but the game has changed a lot since early access. The game used to be focused around building a bag. You find a cool or rare item early, and try to build the rest to support that archetype, just like any other deckbuilding games. Find a cool bow early? You would start building a ranger. The game today doesn't feel this way. The game is less about building and supporting archetypes, and more about filling a backpack with stuff. There doesn't seem to be any focus or payouts for building certain ways. When rewards or items are presented, you're mostly going to be picking up items that are better than what you currently have equipped. I mainly play purse. One of the ways I used to like playing was building a wizard bag. Compared to a warrior or ranger build, this build focused on mana and manaflow. The entire game was focused on building a bag that maximized mana/damage while balancing defense. The way items drop now, you're not going to be able to build a wizard bag. Instead, you pick up a wand if you have the room. What used to feel like something to build around is now just something you pick up. They also reworked the relics. I am really not a fan of these changes. Even though my entire review so far has been about how there are no archetypes, relics are 100% archetype dependent. In order to "break" these archetypes, (which are kind of boring to play around) they come with a downside. There are enough relics to where a good chunk of the time, there isn't a relevant one to chose from, and the relics end up being curses more than anything. I find it underwhelming to defeat a boss only to skip the reward. The game also has an unnecessary story mode. It just feels so out of place. The gameplay has nothing to do with RPG, and the story/collecting could have been done in the same game interface. It's like if pong had a story mode. I really wanted to like this game. The game was in a good direction, but it's like it tried hard to just add everything and kind of muddied the waters doing so. It doesn't feel focused anymore.