After the dungeon has been cleared, the boss has been felled, and the zerg has been wiped out, the very next thing we all eagerly anticipate is gathering that sweet, sweet loot. It’s the whole reason some of us even play MMOs. We just absolutely love the thrill of seeing what awesome items and gear we just earned. It’s a certain type of excitement that just begs for one more run.
But that’s just where it begins, right? Any well-seasoned MMO adventurer knows that after the looting lies the true endgame content: bag sorting and cleanup. I need to keep a certain number of consumables just in case I want that extra boost, after all. Not that I’ll ever use those potions. Gotta save ’em for the future, just in case.
Plus, I’ve got to keep all my crafting items together, obviously. But now that I’ve got that group put together, I can see it’s going to spill a couple items into my consumables area, so I’ll need to give it another pass. Not to mention this second set of gear I’m holding in case I want to swap builds out. And if I’m going to swap out builds, I’ve got to keep a few extra food boosts that match that build style. Oh, and some toys, like music instruments, since there could be some downtime and the party wants to chill for a bit. I surely can’t drop any of these to make room, but I do have to drop something…
Equally on the other side of the equation, if I haven’t played a game for a while and I return, I’m almost always stuck just resorting and organizing my bags for the first hour or so of play. It just happens every time, even when I tell myself I won’t do it.
All of this leads me to the title we’re going to talk about here in Fight or Kite today, a little game called Backpack Battles. It takes all the time you spent reorganizing your inventory and turns it into a game all its own. Sort items and gear properly, get bonuses, and prove that you’re bagging skills outmatch your opponents’.
A traditional autobattler for the MMO gamer
Backpack Battles is actually a cute, simple little autobattler. Starborne Frontiers was my last real shot playing a game in this genre, but it didn’t land well with me for a lot of reasons. So, it’s funny since I didn’t know really what to expect. But playing an autobattler really takes me back to being a kid and setting both player 1 and 2 to CPU mode. I’d usually do it in sports games, but there were some fighters that let you do it too. I never would’ve imagined it’d be an entire genre.
At first blush, Backpack Battles’ visuals kind of reminded me of Dr. Mario on the NES or maybe even a round of Tetris, but it’s actually much simpler than either of those games. Where those games actively had you moving and sorting tiles in realtime, this is an autobattler, so you really just set up your bag before hand and hope that it’s efficient and better than your opponent’s layout.
Also because this is an autobattler, you aren’t fighting anyone live. Instead, the game supposedly matches your level up with another player who’s at a similar level, and your two characters let the fight play out. So there’s really no PvP pressure at all. At least, I didn’t think of it that way, though when I am playing others’ characters, I always want to win.
Gameplay is simple, but it needs a tutorial
Backpack Battles is actually a rather simple game. However, there’s no guide at all. Not even a quick explanation of what you should be doing. At first I couldn’t understand why I needed to do anything at all. I clicked the new unranked game button, immediately got whooped, and was really turned off. I had to watch a short YouTube video to understand what to do. After only a few minutes, it all made sense, and I was able to run it on my own.
So let me give a rundown for anyone else who wants to try out the game after reading this. The goal of the game is to defeat your opponent by reducing his HP to 0 – typical RPG stuff. However, you don’t do this by clicking on the opponent or doing anything actively. Instead, you have a sword in your bag, and that deals the damage. Carry too many weapons, though, and your stamina will be higher, so you’ll rarely deal damage. It’s a balance.
If you hover your mouse over a weapon, you’ll see how often it’ll hit and its damage too. At this stage, those values don’t really mean anything, but this is how basic the info I needed was, so maybe it’ll help you too.
Win or lose, you’ll earn some gold, which can be spent at the shop. It’s the only place you go between combat rounds, so don’t expect anything more than this one-stop shop. When you hover over the items in your bag or the shop, you’ll see a number of stars appear to the sides or around the item in different patterns. You want to place items next to each other to fill in these stars to gain bonuses. Once you start to stack up these bonuses, you’ll get all different types of abilities and buffs.
For example, in the image above, Fly Agaric will trigger 10% faster for every different type of food I have in the spots with those stars. And if the different foods in those spots also combo with the Fly Agaric somehow, then that’s a double bonus. Items tend to trigger stars on each other, but it may be possible they don’t. Also, if I keep the mushroom here in my coffin bag, it’ll gain an additional effect.
After you complete a round of combat and it’s following round of shopping you’ll begin another round of combat. The game plays like a gauntlet, where you need to win 10 matches and you’ve got a few attempts to complete it in. After you run out of tries or you win it all the game kicks back to the lobby and you can try again. So you don’t really level up in a traditional sense, but within a single run you do. Kind of like a roguelite.
And honestly, that’s it. Sure, the number of items and types of abilities you can trigger is actually pretty impressive, and obviously the graphics and animations are cute but definitely the hallmarks of a rather indie game. But the thought the devs have put into the design is noteworthy. Some of the combos that I really thought were cool involved the recipe system. One example is setting a broom next to a mana orb for a battle; then, after the battle, those items combined and turned into a magic staff.
There’s a whole slew of different items and recipes to unlock too, and each class even has its own set of recipes. Trying out the various classes and learning the sort of combinations their items have is what makes Backpack Battles a lot of fun. I was just playing the demo, so I just had the Reaper and Ranger classes to choose from, but they each found a way to focus my build in a very different way.
The Reaper had a clear focus on debuffs like poison, blind, and vampirism; the Ranger emphasized luck and critical hits. There aren’t a whole lot of cosmetics in the game, but there are some outfits you can get. The Reaper has a pretty cute Halloween-themed one that I really like.
And that’s really all there is to Backpack Battles. It probably won’t be your next must-login game, but it’s cute, it’s fun, and developer PlayWithFurcifer is regularly updating it. There’s also a demo available with two classes ready to play. It’s even available as a web browser game, so no download is even needed. The full version isn’t going to break the bank either at $13 on Steam, and that’ll score you two more classes to play as well. So check it out and let me know if you ever come across me in game!
Every other week, Massively OP’s Sam Kash delivers Fight or Kite, our trip through the state of PvP across the MMORPG industry. Whether he’s sitting in a queue or rolling with the zerg, Sam’s all about the adrenaline rush of a good battle. Because when you boil it down, the whole reason we PvP (other than to pwn noobs) is to have fun fighting a new and unpredictable enemy!
