humor was pretty okay. Music was also amazing. Story was not.

Tho the whole concept of being inside an smartphone was fun enough.

Never thought my knowledge on Asdf movie videos would be useful one day lol

Backfirewall_ kann mit seinem Humor, Artstyle und kreativen Ideen en Masse punkten und ich hoffe, dass das nicht das letzte war, was wir vom Schweizer Studio gehört haben. Die Entscheidung sich vom Medium Film erst mal abzuwenden und ein Spiel zu entwickeln war auf jeden Fall die richtige, wenn ich mir angucke, was dabei herausgekommen ist. Wer wieder einmal Lust auf ein nicht allzu langes Indie-Spiel hat, das man in ein paar Stunden auch schön am Stück durchspielen kann und generell Fan von unkonventionellen Ideen ist, sollte hier definitiv einen Blick riskieren.

The humor is inconsistent, the narrative is very loose and honestly drops many opportunities to elevate its emotional attachment. I can say that only 1 plot point really got to me, and it built momentum for absolutely no payoff. The twist carried frustration for being too late and lackluster. You walk and talk and occasionally solve easy puzzles.
For a unity game this game had performance hiccups despite very basic lighting and a lot of surfaces having textureless colors. I'm not gonna put down indie devs or act as if developing even for unity is easy, but as a user I can say that the technical issues were genuinely affecting my experience.

TBH this feels like a Pixar-ish world with the humor of a Warner Bros production. Cool concept but gives the vibes of - God forgive this sinful souls for uttering such words - a Reddit tier game.
This has been my 404th game logged so it's a nice coincidence.

I often have to remind myself to contextualize how I feel about a game(or movie) with two questions. What was it trying to achieve? How well did it manage to achieve it's goal?

Backfirewall_ is a story and character first puzzle game. A gauntlet of programming and tech user jokes decorate a fun and playful style and setting while the player navigates emotional highs and lows. With multiple routes and endings and a swath, but very purposely not an over abundance, of collectibles that are specific to story expansion, this game has strong replayability, which bolsters the otherwise terse campaign duration of somewhere between 4-8 hours.

The puzzles are never too complex, nor are they the main event. Some levels in particular explore the narrative through the puzzles, which I think proves this to be intentional. In the event the player feels bogged down by the puzzles, there's a mixture of nudging from the narrator as well as an optional more direct hint system, both of which are in character and canon to the story. A nice touch, especially since the automated hints are very conservative in how quickly they appear.

The supporting characters are unique and memorable without being overdone or cliché. The main character, which is actually not the player, evolves over the course of the game and manifests the stages of grief in a deep and thoughtful way. The game often asks the player to encounter or experience human experiences and emotions through the guise of playful tech-themed characters and situations.

So. I think the developers wanted to give us an interesting, fun, and memorable story that we can connect to, while going through a series of puzzles that pace it along. With that, I think they did a marvelous job achieving this. Inspirations are clearly drawn from games such as Portal and Anitchamber(though perhaps not what you're assuming), they expertly navigate a fine line between being overbearing with jargon and technical details while having cute quirks for those in-the-know to enjoy.


I highly recommend this game for a wholesome, but optionally, deeply insightful, game that will require you to turn your brain on but not shoot smoke out of your ears. It's highly likely you'll find yourself keen to replay and see alternate routes and endings, and the bonus underlying story is also very interesting in its own right.

So, will you upgrade?