“Backpackward” is a choice based game tagged “No emotional growth.” At last, the randomizer has served up a good old fashioned stoner comedy. Written by Zach Dodson for Interactive Tragedy, Limited.
Fired from his job at a Smoothie joint in the local strip mall, the PC goes home to his dysfunctional family to smoke a bong and sleep in his neighbors cellar. There, he discovers his backpack “Jansport” is actually a “Jansportal” to a D&D world where he has the potential to be a hero.
Oftentimes throughout the game the player is asked to choose his emotional response “push the anger down” or “let it out”. I toggled back and forth during play to see what differences these choices made in the short term. I don’t expect they make any difference in the long term, except that as a player I became increasingly likely to choose “let it out”, which I imagined as sort of a character arc.
The more significant mode of interactivity is graphical. Several times the player is invited to reorganize their backpack, adding new inventory or cleaning things out. The number of inventory slots is limited, so the player has to make choices about which items to equip. I’ve not seen this kind of graphical inventory management in the IF comp before, but it’s a common mechanism in the world of graphical role playing games.
The backpack inventory plays a big role in what happens in later scenes, determining what objects the PC might have available for defense, gifts, commerce, self-care or other uses. There must be a ton of Easter Eggs in this game, given how many different inventory objects are available over the course of play, and how frequently specific items are mentioned in the running text. In particular, the final outcome depends on the choice of inventory, So while I was able to reach a final “win” state, I suspect my outcome might have been even better if I’d carried an additional gift item.
The game has an extensive list of collaborators, with a highly polished and professional feel about it. I wish the dialogue styling had been done differently; the text felt fragmented and hard to read. But the graphical inventory management system was especially attractive and well designed. The text is amusing, even wildly funny in places (I loved that I could cure Seward’s fleas by gifting him a Rhinestone studded flea collar from the future world). The large cast of colorfully written NPCs also lend to the success of this work.