Backpack Hero (2023)

The core concept of Backpack Hero is one with incredible potential for an awesome conbination of two classic genres, but the result feels slightly muddled and confused in the final product. Where the foundations are solid, convoluted and poor explanations of complex mechanics lead to an experience that left me scratching my head more than a few times, and not in the intended way. Despite oozing with personality from the very beginning, and offering a wide variety of content to sink your teeth into, I didn't find myself meshing with the offerings on show here. Sometimes less, is undoubtedly more.

The core mechanics with the backpack are ingenious. It's not unique, and there are now several games with similar mechanics, but it remains fantastic. Packing your backpack as skillfully as possible and creating a deadly build for your character is fascinating over and over again. Unfortunately, most of the other aspects of "Backpack Hero" are mediocre at best. The story is boring and becomes almost unbearable due to a miserable font. The construction of Haversack Hill is confusing and unnecessarily complicated. The fights sometimes lack balance, which is why you are quickly too strong or too weak. In addition, the menu control with controller and virtual mouse cursor is neither pleasant nor intuitive. Nevertheless, the core mechanics manage to entice you again and again with another run and have fun with it.

Despite floundering a bit with meta-progression mechanics, Backpack Hero is still a thoroughly entertaining deckbuilding roguelike. Its use of item management as a central game mechanic is wildly inventive, and I consistently wanted to reenter the dungeon just to explore new item synergies. I do wish the town sections didn’t drag the pace of the main campaign as much as they did. But even if you strictly use the Quick Game mode, Backpack Hero is still a worthwhile venture.

Backpack Hero is a novel game that can be enjoyable at first but its awkward controls and repetitive dungeons get stale rather quickly.

Backpack Hero offers some neat adventures worth experiencing, but you'll have to grapple with a persistently irritating interface and other rough edges to find them all.