Backpack Hero (2023)

• Playtime: 1,5 hours

• Played: 2026

• Context: I think "roguelike" is almost always an excuse for lazy design, but i saw some praise for this.

Review

Backpack Hero is very roguelike - it's a turn-based dungeon crawler. Each run you start with a basic sword, shield and food for absolutely no good reason. You fight enemies, loot stuff, do random encounters. Then you sell everything because re-using items is illegal or something. Twist #1 is you use the resources to build up a village. Based on the area given and various requirements it seems like it would take dozens of hours.

The other 'twist' is inventory tetris. Some items get bonuses/penalties based on proximity to other items or their location in your inventory. This is neat at first, then you start a second run and your items are gone. So build-crafting is completely dependent on getting the right items from the ~25 items you get on a run. There are also no skills or classes or whatever to spice this up initially. You can unlock other heroes but i don't know when that happens, and frankly the combat is so incredibly basic (90% is just attack/block) it's just not worth the time to find out.

Backpack hero clicked with me, it really did. I loved the backpack mechanic and found it refreshing,. It felt like a more lighthearted Slay the Spire. I dug the additional characters (Tote) mechanics and while the town stuff did not excite me, it was something to do.

HOWEVER, after 50 hours of play time, the game (or the Epic store) just went and deleted my game save. One evening I'm going through a dungeon, the next morning, all I have is "start a new game".

Fuck this.

I like the "inventory tetris" idea, where buffs depend on relative position of items. But the rest of the game feels like grindy busywork for me. And combat lacks variety. Also I found the inventory space to be limited: you either leave loot out, or risk dying in a fight if you take too much loot. Felt more restrictive and grindy than risk & reward.

Maybe I'll enjoy "Backpack Battles" more, since it loots more streamlined.

Backpack Hero is still fun after now 12.6 hours. I made it to the end for the first character ( a mouse thief) and I can tell you: The cheese is not a lie!

Proof (tiny but tasty spoiler)

I am not going to play a different character with different abilities soon. I always need some time between succeeding with one character until I can get into a different one in the same game. I don't know why, but if I would try I would the whole time think that the first character was more fun. When I leave enough time between different character playthroughs it feels like a complete different game and I have fun again. Happened with Slay the Spire and other similar games the same.

Is this just me? Do you start over with the next character immediately in these games? When do you give a star rating for an Early Access game?