Back to the Dawn Review – Choose Your Own Prison Break

Back to the Dawn Review

Back to the Dawn is a CRPG that takes place in a world where every character is a different kind of animal. It uses different animals as coding for character types, the same way Animal Farm, Maus, and Fritz the Cat have in the past. It’s a compelling backdrop for a story of an impending mayoral election twenty-one days away from the start of your character’s prison sentence.

At the start of Back to the Dawn, there are two characters to choose from. Thomas is a fox and a journalist wrongfully thrown into prison. Bob is a black panther who’s on an undercover mission in prison. They have different stats for strength, agility, intelligence, and charisma. Each character also has a choice of three starting builds that each have a positive effect and a negative effect on certain stats, as well as two different abilities. The game warns that Bob’s path is more difficult than Thomas’. Each character also has four difficulty options, with the Champion difficulty unlocking upon game completion.

Time Management

Back to the Dawn’s story is the setup for a very addictive gameplay loop. The core of it is about managing your time in prison. The time of each day ticks away, and the chosen character has to build relationships with other inmates. Every action uses time. And everything costs prison money, so the player has to perform tasks to earn money. Usually, this plays out as the game giving the player a goal, like making a phone call, and the player having to put together all the steps to get there.

The phone call costs money, so the player has to earn some. They could do a job for the prison warden. Or they go to a gang and see if they have any work. Whatever job they choose will also involve going to another section of the prison. Talking to people, figuring out how to get that job started, then maybe doing a minigame is how everything will play out. Maybe another inmate will try to shake you down for money, and you have to perform a skill check. Fail, and you have to fight them in a turn-based JRPG battle. Maybe the player will waste all their time trying to figure out how to start the job.

Everything Has a Cost

There’s a great variety of types of things the player can be doing to occupy their time. But everything costs time, and the clock is always ticking to the end of the day. It’s like a CRPG version of Persona, without the dungeon crawling or demon fusing. Most of the prison activities involve timed minigames and/ or dice rolls. Almost every conversation involves making choices. They’re all meaningful, and lead to dozens of different outcomes. Replaying the story is a huge part of Back to the Dawn’s appeal.

Back to the Dawn is at its strongest when it’s focusing on the time management and choose your own adventure gameplay aspects. The combat is more like a minigame. There’s also an overwhelming menu system and UI with a bunch of submenus and stats that makes Back to the Dawn feel more like a shallow attempt at an RPG. The game would be much better if it stripped away these superfluous CRPG game mechanics, and kept itself a time management adventure game. It doesn’t need the combat, dice rolls, and oceans of cryptic menu items.

Synth Prog

Back to the Dawn has gorgeous top down 2D sprite art. But there’s a lack of polish to the visuals. As still images, the game looks phenomenal. But the sprites move like flash animation. The dialogue text font is also ugly, making it look like a port of a mobile game. Text also isn’t always aligned the same way in text boxes, which makes the presentation look a little rough around the edges. Back to the Dawn’s music is phenomenal though. It’s a synthy prog rock score that constantly had me excited to listen when I wasn’t playing the game.

Back to the Dawn ended up being a bit of a mixed bag for me. I loved the story and aesthetics, especially the music. It works wonderfully as a choose your own adventure-style adventure game. Time management, puzzle solving, and minigames are all fantastic. But the CRPG elements felt tacked-on. Back to the Dawn was probably initially envisioned as a CRPG, but grew into something different. With a bit more polish, focus, and elegance, it could be a really fantastic experience. If everything I’ve shared sounds good to you, then definitely don’t hesitate to give Back to the Dawn a few playthroughs.

***Switch 2 code provided by the publisher***