Back to the Dawn
You were framed and incarcerated. Learn to survive in prison. Explore every inch and exploit any weakness. Manipulate and scheme. Make friends (or foes) with fellow inmates and with their help, break out of prison.
Back to the Dawn is a rpg, story rich and pixel graphics game
developed by Metal Head Games
and published by Spiral Up Games.
Released on November 02nd 2023 is available only on Windows
in 4 languages: English, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Traditional Chinese.
It has received 4,652 reviews of which 4,320 were positive and 332 were negative resulting in a rating of 9.0 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 19.50€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Back to the Dawn into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Back to the Dawn through various videos and screenshots.
Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows 7/8/10
- Processor: Intel i5
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GTX 750ti
- Storage: 3 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system.
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
I adore this game, it's crazy how much it's flying under the radar. Basically it's a life sim/choices matter kind of deal. Live in prison, go through the daily routine, work on raising your stats and skills and do one of a crazy number of different paths to escape. Honestly, I can't emphasise enough how much effort they put into these different routes. There was a SECRET, hidden escape path I found that included like six entirely new characters you'd never even see otherwise with full animations. Be aware -if the idea of the escape time limit puts you off, you can just NG+ and keep almost all of your progress, you only lose your cash and items on a reset. I actually use this game to relax and just slowly max everything, when normally time limits would really stress me out
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Hands down, one of the best games I've experienced in the last decade. Incredible believable character arcs, breathtaking pixel graphics and a storyline that'll keep you at the edge of your seat. Great gameplay all-around. One of my top games of all time, I'm so excited to play as the new character in 2025!
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Concise Game Reviews: "Back to the Dawn" (Scroll down for the longer version) Game Value: ✅ Recommended for players who enjoy deep role-playing experiences, prison escape narratives, and strategic survival mechanics. Offers a blend of exploration, manipulation, and character interaction in a detailed prison setting. Game Tags: ✔Survival ✔Role-Playing ✔Exploration ✔Strategy ✔Prison Escape ✔Character Interaction ✔Crafting ✔Mystery ✔Dark Comedy Genre Classification: A survival role-playing game set in a maximum-security prison, focusing on escape planning, resource management, and complex social interactions with a dark narrative backdrop. Game Length: Approximately 40-60 hours, with open-ended gameplay and numerous pathways to escape and interact with the prison environment. Challenge Level: High; features intricate resource management, strategic planning, and complex character interactions, with difficulty influenced by player choices and actions. Graphics: Detailed and immersive prison environment with a focus on realism and dark humor, bringing the prison life and its various elements to life. Technical Stability: Generally stable with minimal technical issues reported, providing a reliable gameplay experience. Replay Value: High; offers multiple escape strategies, character interactions, and narrative outcomes, ensuring diverse and replayable experiences. For further insights, feel free to join my [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/MaverickGameVault]Steam group or follow my updates on my [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/MaverickGameVault/curation]curator page . Detailed review: Key Features: 🌟 Intricate Escape Planning: Dive into a detailed prison environment where your primary goal is to escape, using strategic planning and resource management to navigate challenges. 🔥 Dynamic Social Interactions: Build relationships or rivalries with a colorful cast of inmates, influencing the game's outcome through alliances and conflicts. 🎯 Resource Management and Crafting: Manage your character's needs, gather resources, and craft tools to aid in your escape while balancing various in-game metrics. 🎨 Rich Dark Comedy Aesthetics: Enjoy a visually immersive and humor-filled representation of prison life, with attention to detail that enhances the narrative experience. ⚙️ Varied Gameplay Scenarios: Explore multiple paths to freedom and engage in diverse scenarios, from stealthy manipulation to full-scale disruption. 🌟 Overview: "Back to the Dawn" is a role-playing game set in a maximum-security prison where players must navigate survival, escape planning, and social dynamics. The game emphasizes deep interaction with fellow inmates, resource management, and strategic escape mechanisms within a richly detailed and immersive environment. 🎮 Gameplay: The gameplay in this game is exceptionally rich and immersive, offering a diverse range of activities and interactions: 🌍 Exploration: Navigate the extensive prison environment, which includes various areas like the gym, reading club, video room, and more, uncovering secrets and potential escape routes. 🔧 Crafting/Upgrade System: Craft tools and upgrade your abilities to enhance your chances of survival and escape. 🤝 Social Interaction: Build relationships with almost every prisoner and guard. You can forge alliances, create rivalries, or even make enemies. Your interactions influence the prison dynamics and your escape plan. 📞 Communication: Make phone calls to friends, your lawyer, or loved ones. You can also receive mail and request objects or money from your contacts. 🎲 Mini-Games and Jobs: Engage in various mini-games such as working in the laundry (ironing clothes) or performing physical labor on the roof to earn money. Alternatively, you can engage in more dubious activities like gambling, theft, extortion, and illegal trade. 📈 Stats Management: Manage various stats such as strength, charisma, and stealth to impact your abilities and interactions. ⚔️ Faction Dynamics: Join different prison factions. Successfully completing missions for a faction earns you rewards and allies but can make you enemies with rival factions. Remaining neutral may lead to regular extortion attempts from others. 🏋️ Physical Training: Participate in sports and workouts to build strength and enhance your self-defense capabilities. 🛁 Facilities: The prison features essential facilities including showers, cells, a gym, a reading club, and a video room for entertainment. The game is remarkably realistic, providing a fully immersive experience. Instead of playing as humans, you'll embody animals, adding a unique twist to the storyline and interactions. The depth and variety of gameplay ensure a compelling and enjoyable experience reminiscent of the mobile game "PrisonRPG" and inspired by the popular series "Prison Break." 📖 Story and Depth: The game follows a journalist wrongfully imprisoned as part of a conspiracy, set in a maximum-security prison. You play as animals, adding a unique twist to the survival and manipulation themes. The diverse cast of animal characters, each with distinct backgrounds, enriches the narrative. Your interactions and choices shape the story, which evolves with your actions. Future updates will include new characters, like an undercover police officer, expanding the storyline further. 🏆 Verdict: This game offers a deeply immersive role-playing experience set in a meticulously designed prison. Its blend of strategic planning, rich character interactions, and engaging storytelling makes it a standout. Players manage resources, navigate intricate social dynamics, and develop inventive escape plans within a darkly comedic setting. What sets it apart is the emphasis on player choice and interaction, contributing to a dynamic and evolving experience. Although the complexity of managing resources and social relations might be daunting for some, the rewards for overcoming these challenges are significant. From my perspective, this game leaves a lasting impression. It’s incredibly comprehensive, ensuring players are constantly engaged. With future updates promising new characters and scenarios, its appeal will only grow. I highly recommend it to fans of "Prison Break" and similar series, where dealing with prison gangs and investigating intricate plots are key. Having bought the game on release and eagerly awaited its arrival, I find it a must-play for anyone interested in deep, narrative-driven gameplay. ✅ Good: 👍 Deep Role-Playing: Complex interactions and escape planning. 👍 Immersive Setting: Detailed prison setting with a darkly humorous tone and a unique twist—players are animals. 👍 Strategic Gameplay: Engaging resource management and decision-making, including diverse mini-games and jobs. 👍 Replay Value: Multiple escape routes and faction dynamics. 👍 Future Updates: New characters, like an undercover officer, will add depth and variety. 🛠️ Ways of Improvement: 👎 Mini-Game Difficulty: Some mini-games, like weightlifting, are too challenging.
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The game is very fun, for an early access it is decently well polished. Though there's just a few notes I have on the game play. While I really like the inmates and their stories but unfortunately besides getting their perks, there's not much incentive to befriend other inmates. It would be fun if there were more interactions to be had with inmates, like doing quests for them for inccreasing their bonds, working with them to make certain interactions faster or asking them for favors might be cool though I'd imagine with the current systems and timing it'd be a bit hard to implement in a meaningful way. Also a bit of a side note though is that some characters only like items that you can only really get from them, like Joseph's protein powder. The abilities and skills system I'd pretty good, the only one I kind of have a problem with is the charmer skill, since I'm pretty sure it only works on a total of 4 characters. So it's a little too niche. Besides that needing to escape isn't made too clear until it's almost too late, in fact it's easy to assume there's alternatives based on some of the dialogue, so it can really mess up new players. It's a bit easy to assume that if you complete the main quest you can reasonably escape, my only suggestion would just be providing more reasons for a player to at least explore the available escape routes. There's also a lot of punishing features when it comes to stats, a lot of ways to lower stats for a significant amount of time and not a lot of ways to raise them for a decent amount of time. Which can really suck, especially in the end-game when you're pressed for time. Things I think you've guys have done well though are namely the character stories, I really love the depth it has and I really hope there's gonna be further inmate interactions. The style is also quite unique and the animations were also really good. Well done to the art team for that. For an unreleased game as well, it looks remarkably good, it runs really well too, which may sound silly seeing as the game is a bit simpler compared to others but there's a surprising amount of early access games that experience a lot of bugs and hiccups. Which I haven't seen much of besides once where characters playing baseball had their animations frozen and couldn't be interacted with, not too big a deal though nor is it common. I also really liked the main story, I thought it was really well put together and well told. There are a few people I've noticed asking for an unlimited time limit mode which I can understand, I would like to see something similar but I don't think it'd work in the main story, given the plot and the way the game was constructed, removing the time limit would make the game significantly easier to the point it would remove a lot of challenge. If that was implemented I think a slight story alteration might be needed, as well as quests and objectives unique to a hypothetical unlimited mode. I really enjoyed the game so far and I look forward to seeing it's development.
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I had a review, but I'm redoing it as I now have 71ish hours. This game is excellent because: -it is story rich, there are 50+ in-depth, fleshed out characters -There are a lot of options of how you want to play. Want to be a villain and beat people up and steal everything? OK. Want to be a hero and complete tons of quests? OK. Want to befriend the 3 freaks that are trying to summon demons? OK. There are also multiple escape routes. Each playthrough can be totally unique. Speaking of playthroughs, to get the good ending, you will absolutely have to play twice unless you want to be save-scumming like there's no tomorrow. My advice is have fun in the first playthrough. Just focus on securing an escape route. Don't sweat about if you miss a skill check or get caught stealing. The second run can be focused on trying to get the good ending. If you are on the fence about this game still, I recommend watching CallMeKevin's video playing this game. That is what got me interested. Oh, and the developers even have more than one character you can play. That's, like, even MORE totally unique (I'm assuming) content. I haven't even tried that part out yet.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 28 November 2024 00:57 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 17 January 2025 22:34 |
| Steam price | 22 January 2025 20:24 |
| Steam reviews | 21 January 2025 15:59 |
Online players
141
Developer
Metal Head Games
Publisher
Spiral Up Games
Release
02 Nov 2023
Platforms