Backstage

Hello!
As you probably know (and if you do not, just read the next lines) I alternate reviewing new games, with less recent games and old glories, or games I played in the past a lot of times ago, and I sometimes re-play again. Most of them were really popular, like for example A Blurred Line, Sunset over Imdhal, Onyx, Alter Aila, of more recently Nigsek. Well today it's the turn of Backstage, a survival horror by Max McGee, the author of Iron Gaia, a sci-fi party based rpg adventure I reviewed years ago (here).

But Backstage is a totally different game, not sci-fi and not rpg, instead this is a dark survival horror game in which we play as a single protagonist, Tom Keller, that will find himself trapped in a dark world of nightmares, not unlike some other games I've already played in the past (like for example the more recent german Dreamland by Kenji) or Silent Hill, just to name one of the obvious sources of inspiration.


Even dogs are against Tom Keller! This place really hates him!

But first let's start from the end! Yes, I can tell you about my playthrough of he game: it took me about 3 hours and 15 minutes to complete fully, I got the Revenge ending (that I liked a LOT! Yes!), because there are in fact multiple endings, and my final rating was... D! (anyway if you read the description you'll learn that the rating system is broken, well is this a problem? Not for me!) Uhm ok I'm not a great fan or expert of survival games (I'm more fond of jrpgs and adventures), so it's ok because it was overall an enjoyable experience. Ok, we've finished here... nah I was joking! Review is just started.

Backstage 1 (because there is a demo sequel that I will probably check another time) is the story of an apparently normal guy, Tom Keller, that was just left by his wife and kicked out the house! Aw, sounds bad enough, but the worse has still to come: while he is in downtown he will find himself in a terrifying place, and this place is Backstage! But he is not alone, since he will meet other characters like Alice, an enigmatic dark woman, and Detective Wilks, that is tracking a killer in a hotel downtown (and is also playable for a short but quite disturbing segment). But the real star here is Mask, someone that surely isn't just a simple man since he feels as home Backstage, and claims he is there to help Tom, unfortunately his way of helping seems more like torture than anything else!


Alice is one of the other important characters of this game. Is she a friend of a foe? Play and see!

Yes, there aren't many characters in Backstage, but trust me, the story is absolutely the best part of the game. Maybe not the beginning, but as the adventure unfolds it becomes really intriguing, especially after the first half. I was in fact constantly doubting about everything: is Tom really an ordinary guy? Has he already met Alice before eve if he doesn't remember that? Do the monsters really exists or is Tom hallucinating? Who knows!

The gameplay is exactly what you could expect from a survival horror: explore dark urban loccations looking for useful items like flashlight and keys, avoiding traps and solving puzzles (that are never too hard, but after all when I played Resident Evil that is THE survival horror I never struggled at all with the enigmas) and sometimes killing monsters and bosses. Ok, here I will explain combat, since it's a bit different from what I expected: like in more recent horror games like One Night, you simply collide with the opponent and Tom will use the equipped weapon. Even if it is a ranged weapon. Yes, for some reason this games plays the opposite compared to some other horror games where you shoot from distance and avoid contact with hordes of zombies. No, here you instead avoid the enemy projectiles to reach and kill them, but when you can of course! I mean, aside from the obligatory boss sections (like the lich, to name one), there is no incentive to kill every enemy you meet, and that's appropriate for a survival horror. Run, and do not waste the resources, there are no experience levels or loot, just monsters that want you dead (and are very dangerous, especially during the first half of the game)!


Detective Wilks is another co-protagonist and we will control him in some sections. As you can see he killed one monster to escape, but he wan't waste more time to kill the second!

I spoke about monsters, and I must say that while their behaviour isn't very different there are many of them: gargoyles, feral dogs, undeads, strange beasts that walk on four legs, and so on. Graphics is exactly what you can expect for a rm2k3 game made in 2008, using various resources like Mack tiles, Rtps and other tilesets that sometimes doesn't fit perfectly with each other, anyway that's just a minor problem since aside for the bland appearance of some maps I found no real errors or problems. The dark setting is in fact well done despite the scarce resources available for modern locations, not to mention that the Backstage is an "unreal" place so it cannot be considered realistic, anyway if you check the pictures I have posted here... I do not think that they're too bad, on the contrary pretty decents, and also the characters and the style of the menu looks good enough to me.

Music is also ok, there is nothing too bad except maybe for some typos I encountered, but again these are just some imprecisions and nothing really game breaking. I must admit that at the time I liked a lot this game despite the small flaws, because story and atmosphere are pretty much great, gamepplay is ok, but let's end this here.


It's really weird you can find useful things in the most strange places!


Final Verdict
Backstage isn't a bad game at all (despite some flaws and imprecisions but few games are without them), on the contrary I found it really inspired and an interesting adventure to play. Well I admit that I did not try to find every single ending, nor I played it more than once except if after a while (when I forgot some details). I also admit that I liked a lot the Revenge ending, and even if it's probably not a game for everyone, if a player is fond of dark and horror rpgmaker games he/she should play this one at least once (puzzles aren't that difficult, and it's impossible to get stuck). Not the best game by Max McGee, but still a good one.