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When I first saw the trailers and screenshots for Back to the Dawn I knew I wanted to play this game. The first thing that attracted my attention to this specific game were the dices. Man, am I in love with games that ruin my mental health each time you roll a bad set of dice. So an RPG where you build up your prisoner into a beast as you try to escape jail and save the town, or even the country, is a really fun premise.
Back to the Dawn offers exactly what you’d think it offers at a first glace: a fun game where you have to figure out a preferred way to escape prison while also solving your characters main plot. One of the characters is trying to stop a corrupt mayor from taking over his city, while the second one is trying to solve an intricate conspiracy that is threating the future of the country.
Both characters are fun in their own way, and the second one makes sure that, if you’ve finished the game and want a new way to experience Back to the Dawn, you have it available right from the start.
The game mainly relies on time. Everything you do will take a set amount of time, and you know right from the start how long something will take. Walking around, exploring, looking at various things, will usually take no time at all. However, interacting with anything or talking to anyone will take some of the time you have out of the day. Since you only have around 21 days to find a way out of the prison and also solve your character’s plot, time is a very valuable currency.
Since you have a limited time to complete your mission, of course, there’s no way to do everything in the game. Which is a big part of why Back to the Dawn is an extremely replayable game. There are over 7 ways to get out of prison, and each one of these routes have different ways you can approach them and, eventually, reach a way out of the prison.
The Learning Curve Will Break You (And That’s The Point)
Let’s be real here – this game will absolutely crush your spirit on the first playthrough. The overwhelming feeling when you’re wandering around like a lost sheep, burning precious hours just trying to figure out where everything is and how you can get that one item you need can be excruciating.
This isn’t The Escapists where you can casually plan your breakout while doing laundry. The game throws you into a corrupt, dangerous system with no hand-holding whatsoever, and you’ll spend your first few runs feeling like you’re constantly behind as everyone and anyone wants something from you. Still, things aren’t so bad once you realize that there’s a New Game+ and that all you learn in one playthrough carries into the next, but it can still feel like a bit too much when you get started.
Now, let’s jump a bit into the RPG elements of the game. You have 4 main stats: Strength, Agility, Intelligence, and Charm. Both characters have a different spread of the stats and you can choose at the start of the game a backstory that will increase one of the stats, giving you very specific gameplay buffs and debuffs (which, truthfully, you cannot understand unless you play through a few in-game days first).
You will face a lot of checks based on this stats, which will usually result in a dice roll, which a set difficulty and an increased chance to pass the roll based on your stats, skills, and equipment.
Throughout the game, based on your actions, there will be ways to increase these stats, though not by a lot. The main mechanic which can increase stats is “skills.” You unlock skills by doing various activities and then you can activate them based on how you use your experience. Experience is gained for each specific stat based on how often you use that stat.
Skills are micro-perks that you socket and toggle, each costing 0-3 points from a finite pool. They come from five funnels:
- Past backgrounds (zero-cost stat bumps but nasty quirks).
- Books and movies in the library/TV room.
- Inmate bonds—47 separate relationship trees whose max-rank versions often double effects.
- Mini-games.
- Procedural “Other” triggers (drink hot water while hungry ten times).
The trick? Skills can be toggled off to refund points mid-day, letting you swap from a stealth load-out to a boxing build before the 8 pm underground fight club.
Combat: When Dice Can Go Bad
The combat system is where the game’s love affair with RNG really shows. Every fight is a dice roll, and most battles will come down to “did I manage to unlock all the combat specialties yet?”
Most fights are stacked against you, especially early on. You’ll face situations where you’re getting extorted by a crocodile thug on day one, and you have to decide whether to hand over your money or gamble in a fight you’ll probably lose. If you gamble and lose, you’re down resources you desperately need elsewhere, plus you’ll be nursing injuries that eat into your precious time.
Still, again, as it goes with RPGs, stuff like this happens when you don’t know the future. Once you know what’s ahead, you can plan for everything. Combat can become a breeze once you unlock a couple of special abilities that will turn everything to your side. Back to the Dawn is all about preparation, and if you’re like me, you likely lack the patience and will jump to the gun to try and do everything when you know your character isn’t ready for the challenge.
The Anthropomorphic Cast That Actually Works
The next interesting part of the game are the actual prisoners. All 47 of them are unique, with different, bizarre personalities and different wants and needs. They will have random quests for you, you can befriend them by giving them liked gifts, and you can even make them your enemies by bullying them for money or beating them up. Their day-night schedules are fully simulated, so a quest-giver can literally be in solitary when you need him, burning yet more clock.
There are also three gangs that rule the prison, and the main character can even join one of these and help them out in the ever-increasing struggle for power. Maxing reputation lets you challenge each boss for stat-ranked gear, access gang-exclusive contraband and hire muscle to distract guards during risky operations. But reputation bleeds daily if you befriend rival gangs, forcing tough alignment choices that ripple into late-game dialogs.
The anthropomorphic setting of Back to the Dawn is actually also a part of the charm, as the animal type of each prisoner has an effect on their problems and personality, ignoring just the extremely funny conversations that come with the occasional reference relating to cliches about that animal. What’s impressive is how the developers avoid making this feel gimmicky. Each species brings their own quirks that feel natural rather than forced.
The game leverages these animal characteristics in ways that enhance the narrative rather than distract from it. It’s Zootopia meets Prison Break, borrowing the surface-level charm of animal characters, but with the gritty reminder that this story is set in much more mature environment.
The Grinding Reality of Prison Economics
One aspect that really hit home is the prison’s economy. Everything costs money – using the gym, making phone calls, taking a hot shower, buying basic necessities. You’ll find yourself doing backbreaking laundry work for pittance, or worse, getting pulled into gang activities because you need quick cash. The game creates this authentic sense of how prison strips away your dignity and forces you into situations you’d never consider on the outside.
And as you try to get one of the better paying jobs in the prison, you’ll have to get dozens of favors, complete a lot of quests, and, as per usual, lose some money first. There’s even a bank system, where you can get loans or get a savings “account” to increase your hard-worked money through passive solutions.
Technical Polish and Presentation
The game’s pixel art style is genuinely impressive. The excellent visuals and lovingly crafted and detailed 2D sprite artwork are certainly nice to look at. The prison feels lived-in and authentic, with different areas having distinct personalities. The writing quality is also solid, with most of the side quests and stories being very interesting to follow through.
That said, there are some technical hiccups. The UI can be clunky with inventory management becoming fiddly late-game. If there were some mechanics to quickly get rid of items and organize them in the cellblock shelves, that would have saved me a lot of time. Still, I’m happy at least that you don’t have to hold each time you want to use for crafting in your inventory while crafting in your room, which is a huge bonus and I was pleasantly surprised when I first discovered this.
Who Should Play This Game?
If you’re looking for a casual, relaxing experience on normal dificulty, you should maybe skip this one. But if you enjoy games that challenge you, force you to think strategically, and don’t mind failing a few times before succeeding, Back to the Dawn offers something truly special.
The game delivers on its promise of being a deep, complex prison simulation with meaningful choices and consequences. At $20, it offers incredible value with multiple characters and 100+ hours of replayable content. Just be prepared for the learning curve, embrace the failure, and remember – your first escape attempt will likely end in many unanswered questions, but that’s all part of the experience this unique prison RPG delivers.
Back to the Dawn
Bottom Line
Back to the Dawn is a deceptively deep prison-break RPG whose pixel-art charm masks a web of crunchy systems and narrative branches.
