You don’t dive into Tails: The Backbone Preludes and expect a detective mystery like you’ve gotten from its predecessor Backbone. Instead, Tails offers you more of a slice-of-life vignette that tells you about a chunk of each of your four protagonists’ lives. Each is a story that explores feelings of loss, fear, and secrets.
Though you can experience all the love and care that went into the game's character development and world building, there are still a few things that could be improved. Simple fixes and suggestions that could make this game an unforgettable experience in the grimdark world of Vancouver, British Columbia.
7 Make Puzzles More Intuitive
Puzzle design is an important part of any game, in which the main mechanic is searching for clues. If they’re too easy, you don’t feel you’ve accomplished anything. But if the developers decide to make puzzles too difficult or worse, missable, then the game becomes that much more frustrating.
Regrettably, the puzzles in Tails: The Backbone Preludes lean more on the easy side of things. They feel like filler instead of something that should be challenging your critical thinking skills. Instead, you end up doing mundane things like unpacking boxes or pushing a button or two. The simplicity of the puzzles contradicts the noir-like story they’re going for.
6 A Chapter Select, Please
One of the largest draws for the game is the re-playability factor. The developers themselves highly encourage you to play all the different routes and choices to find secrets hidden in the darkness of Vancouver. You play as three original characters from Backbone, as well as Eli, a new character you get to know.
Yet, even though the game wants you to experience each path laid out for you, the lack of a chapter selection makes the notion of a replay less desirable. Instead of being able to replay from a particular place to see how a different choice plays out, you must play the whole thing all over again.
5 Two Hours Doesn’t Feel Long Enough
The world of Tails: The Backbone Preludes is detailed and feels alive and lived in. You can even see the tiny, pixilated details of residents’ apartments through the windows. A lot of love was put into the look and feel of the dystopian Vancouver landscape, which makes you want to explore it further.
The game from start to finish is two hours if you are playing straight through. Just long enough to lure you in and get you comfortable before ending almost as soon as it began. The lack of side missions feels like a missed opportunity to immerse you into the beautiful world.
4 Adding Some Voice Acting
The meat of the gameplay in Tails is chatting to NPCs and trying to piece together the gaps between the information they provide and the secrets they don’t. Each piece of dialogue can contain an important piece of intel that could be the key to making progress. Navigating the dialogue to get the maximum results is more of a puzzle than the actual puzzles presented.
This makes the lack of voice acting stand out even more as you have to spend a lot of time reading and going through what everyone says with a fine-tooth comb. After a while, it can feel as though you’re just going through the motions to hurry up and get to the next conversation. Some voice acting could breathe life into the characters and keep your attention.
3 Flesh Out The Ending For Each Character
While you get some background and insight on characters you’ve met from the first game, it just feels like you’re only just getting down to the deeper layers before the game comes abruptly to an end. The alternating storylines, while engaging, only give you small glimpses into deeply nuanced characters.
Because you get to play key moments within their lives with minimal side quests, it appears the prequel only exists to explain the artifact and character motivations in The Backbone instead of getting to know the characters. To not get to know them on a more intimate level feels like a missed opportunity.
2 Give A Peek At What’s Outside
If you’ve played the first game, you know Vancouver is essentially the last bastion of life on the planet, but nothing else. You don’t know whether it’s because of the artifact, or if it was that way the entire time. Honestly, that’s all you ever find out about it, leaving it to sit in the back of your mind for the rest of the game, wondering why.
Even when you are playing as Eli, who is outside the walls investigating the artifact, you’re left in the dark about how or why the outside lands became the way they did. Science City seems to know what the deal is though, and maybe that’s for the best.
1 Have The Storylines Converge Or Interact More
Tails: The Backbone Preludes is a short, but emotional ride for the protagonists and takes place over different periods. Clarissa's Story unfolds over years, while Eli's research resolves over a matter of days. The pacing makes sense for the individual stories but leaves the larger, overarching narrative feeling a little disjointed.
The characters don't even have to have any significance to each other's stories or anything, but considering how tightly packed the city is, they'd bound to run into each other at one point or another, right? Well, maybe not Eli, considering where he is in the story.