Tails: The Backbone Preludes Reviews
Tails: The Backbone Preludes is a really beautiful noir story that might go over the heads of some of the average player base. The dark themes and conversation mechanics are reminiscent of Disco Elysium but on a much smaller scale. It’s nice to live in this world for a playthrough, taking in the darkness of this dystopian city, but it might not be one players feel like returning to after the credits roll the first time.
While Tails: The Backbone Preludes feels like a step back in gameplay, it makes up for it with compelling characters, interesting stories, and lovely presentation.
Solid and definitely has an audience. There could be some hard-to-ignore faults, but the experience is fun.
Tails: The Backbones Preludes is the prequel that fans likely weren't expecting and didn't know that they wanted, and due to a lack of variety mixed with brevity, they may also walk away still expecting and wanting more.
Tails: The Backbone Preludes improves on the Backbone formula with an engaging, replayable experience.
Tails: The Backbone Preludes is a great prequel that stands on its own perfectly well, and it will probably make someone more interested to see what the first game had in store for players. It’s a beautifully crafted game that deals with heavy themes and issues, and it does them well by alternating between various perspectives with wildly different worldviews
Tails: The Backbone Preludes is a beautiful game with an intriguing plot and some absolutely fantastic puzzle mechanics, but it does itself the disservice of playing second fiddle to its predecessor. It’s too brief and leaves too much unsaid to feel like a game in its own right. It’s as though it aimed too low and decided to settle for being a teaser or demo that’s made to tempt players to jump into the full story of Backbone, rather than take on a role of a fully-fledged game in its own right.
Like its predecessor, Tails: The Backbone Preludes tells an unconventional and surreal story with confidence, resulting in narratives that are sincere, vulnerable, complicated, and heart-breaking. The only downside to this branching narrative style of storytelling is that it's easy to accidentally take the short route and leave the experience feeling like something is missing. Ultimately, Tails: The Backbone Preludes tells four phenomenal stories that either deepens the characters that players know and love, or introduces them to new players entering this stunning world for the first time.
Interconnected stories between games are always going to be fun to me. Anyone who enjoyed Backbone will most assuredly love the world being explored in Tails. I hope they continue this trend because Eggnut has created a very interesting world to explore.
Tails wonderfully brings more context and depth to the world of Backbone, while telling some interesting stories in its own right.
Tails: The Backbone Preludes is the developers’ move of getting rid of the sour taste left behind by Backbone. The move largely pays off thanks to an emotionally moving narrative that emphasizes player-agency, relatable characters and extremely good-looking visuals. The gameplay may be a bit too bare bones, but the story more than makes up for it. Now that the past is fixed, can we have the full-blown sequel with all the unrealized gameplay mechanics the series very much deserves?
Backbone was already a compelling game, but after gaining some insight into some of its main characters, it has been elevated to a new level because of the existence of Tails: The Backbone Preludes. Now if we could get a proper sequel to finally wrap up some of the loose ends in Backbone, fans will be elated. I am ready to have my heart ripped out yet again.
This is what I wanted out of EggNut all along. On its own, it's a series of extremely effective short stories about the ways people's lives can change: how one conversation or decision can alter your life's course. How even when you know or can feel what's waiting for you on the other side of any single moment, sometimes there's nothing you can do to stop it. As part of the package that is Backbone, Tails makes everything better. The first game retroactively increases in quality thanks to this experience, and when taken as a bundle, the Backbone experience becomes a must-play. I can't say for sure, but I felt that if I had just let this run into the original, the whole collection may be one of my favorite things I've played in a while. At its price point, there's no doubt you should give both Tails and Backbone a try, because EggNut found its way to something real special in the end.