Dear friends, THE DAY HAS COME - BACKBONE IS OUT ON PC!!! [previewyoutube=eHzDnJWZh1A;full][/previewyoutube] THANK YOU EVERYONE for waiting so long and supporting us since the very start!!!!! If you encounter any bugs, please use this form to report them - https://rawfury.atlassian.net/servicedesk/customer/portal/1 THANK YOU!!! Love, Eggnut

[ 2021-06-08 14:49:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

We are finally here, detectives. [previewyoutube=Ga2XHd0cV00;full][/previewyoutube] Backbone will be out on June 8 on Steam, Xbox Game Pass for PC, Windows 10 Store, Epic, GOG. The game is coming out in English, with no voice over. It is a very text-heavy game, so we are putting a lot of time and effort into localization so the experience is perfectly adapted to all languages. Localization to Russian, French, Spanish, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Simplified Chinese and Japanese is coming end of summer. Nintendo Switch, Playstation and Xbox releases are coming later this year! ALSO! IGN recently posted footage of Backbone gameplay, these are first four minutes of action after the event of the Prologue. Enjoy! [previewyoutube=EN8lIcZ9_Gk;full][/previewyoutube] Please let us know in the comments if you have any questions. We hope to see you back in Vancouver very soon, detectives. Thank you all so much.

[ 2021-05-26 16:29:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi hi it's been a while! 2020 is a hot mess and we're not sure how anyone gets anything done but we're doing it - we're making the video game. Here are some project news:

Backbone is coming to Xbox & PC Gamepass!

That means you will be able to get it through this incredible subscription service on the day of release. Can't express how exciting this is for us - it's a HUGE opportunity to get our first game in front of so many eyeballs. We're super thankful to ID@xbox and Raw Fury for organizing this deal of a lifetime for us! For this special occasion, we revisited the Prologue trailer with improved footage, UI, and a brand-new song written by Nikita Danshin and performed by our vocalist and composer Arooj Aftab. Check it out! [previewyoutube=38rbJ9l8G_M;full][/previewyoutube]

Milestone smashed: CONTENT COMPLETE.

Backbone is almost done. All music (40+ tracks) is composed and is currently going through mixing. All environments, except for a couple most pivotal and complicated ones, are concepted and have pixel art outline, what's left is to polish pixel art and do a tech-art magic pass on them. The script is done and 100+ dialogues are now going through polish. The game is playable through start to finish, and it's a good game. Porting and localization will start really soon. We plan to have a release candidate Q1 next year, but it might be delayed because of a pandemic. To be completely honest, we are not the most productive team right now, and that's ok, because the world is on fire. Our top priority right now is to keep everyone healthy, sane, and happy. The game will wait if it needs to, and it will be eventually released regardless, but we made a decision to not make any compromises when it comes to our team's health. We've been working on Backbone for 4 years, and it's been a very long, exhausting and exciting journey. Thank you so much for giving us space, time and support to explore this magical experience and make it the best we can. We can only hope that the waiting will be worth it. Some art we could show without spoiling too much (it's getting increasingly difficult!):



Some small things: We made a twitter thread about our experience looking for and signing with a publisher - https://twitter.com/backbonegame/status/1293203072391548933 Our co-founders Alex and Nikita then visited Virtual Economy Podcast and talked in length about publishing your game and the current power imbalance in the video game industry - http://virtualeconomy.libsyn.com/episode-43-how-to-pitch-with-eggnuts-nikita-danshin-and-aleksandra-korabelnikova?tdest_id=1936202 Also on twitter, we told about every member of our team - https://twitter.com/backbonegame/status/1279171921859481607 Thank you so much for your support. We'll see you in the next update by the end of the year, when game will almost be ready for release. As always, let us know if you have any questions meanwhile. Have a wonderful time and stay cool, detectives.

[ 2020-10-19 11:49:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dear friends, Welcome to the weirdest summer of 2020. We hope you're staying safe, happy and eating lots of snacks. We're hard at work on Backbone, and the production is going really well. Here's a list of stuff that's happened since the last update (it's a big one):

1. Localization & Prologue update.

We started the process of translating the Prologue to Russian. We're picking up a good pace and establishing a working pipeline that we're gonna apply for other languages. The update for the Prologue with new UI, Russian localization and other cool stuff will come out sometime this Autumn. We're currently planning to translate both the Prologue and the full game to Russian, Brazilian-Portuguese and Chinese, the other languages will be announced later or after release.

2. Current progress on the full game.

We've just completed the greybox prototype of the full game. Our next big milestone is "Script Complete", when the full text for the game is done, and then we can start full localization to multiple languages. Content complete" milestone will be reached right before we can start porting Backbone to other platforms. After porting and QA are complete, comes the console certification and other essential things required for the release. If everything goes according to plan (and it has been going well so far), Backbone will come out in Q1 2021. With so many moving parts its tough to set an exact release date, but you will be the first to know when were sure!

3. So what is Backbone?

With all building blocks in place, and very clear understanding of the ending and overall structure, we can tell you more about what kind of game Backbone will be. Backbone is a game about making personal connections and the butterfly effect of touching people's lives. It's about the unintended, unforeseen consequences of your actions, how we all have potential to do good or cause harm. It's a game about experiencing a world through different lenses and about how being a detective is, at its heart, about being empathetic. It's about putting together a picture of the truth, weighing it against your own moral code, and learning to cope with the tension between them.
Hopefully, that sounds as exciting for you as it does for us. If you want to learn more about our vision for this game and our team, we invite you to read these wonderful interview articles about Backbone in Unwinnable Monthly: Part 1 and Part 2.

4. New people.

Super stoked to announce that we're now a team of 15 people! We were recently joined by Sonya, our new environment and character pixel artist. She will be making each scene in Backbone extra-rich in tiny beautiful details. Follow her art work on Twitter. We're also super lucky to be joined by a goddess of sound and voice Arooj Aftab. She's a super talented musician and composer based in New York, and together we'll be working on eerie and jazzy soundscapes of Backbone. Listen to her album Siren Islands on Spotify. Speaking of music, Arooj found us through this Backbone OST Inspiration playlist that our composer Nikita made on Spotify. Highly recommend for your rainy evening enjoyment. We're currently telling more about each team member working on Backbone through this Twitter thread - be sure to follow our account for project news and raccoon memes.

5. Cinematics.

There's a new feature we've been working on - cinematics! These are animated sequences of storytelling, adding a ton of vibe and atmosphere to the pixelated world of Backbone. Some of them are going to have non-interactive narration, and some are just gonna be used as a buffer between various story beats. Here's the WIP opening cinematic, which appears when you leave Howard's Apartment in the Prologue and head over to Granville for your first investigation. Sound on! [previewyoutube=LbruOkqfqDY;full][/previewyoutube]

6. Behind-the-scenes content.

So this happened - Valve interviewed us WHAT [previewyoutube=6WTk74dvWbg;full][/previewyoutube] And then we played the Prologue on stream and looked through development archives covering pre-Kickstarter and pre-Prologue periods! It was so so fun, and even though this video is 4 hours long, if you want to learn more about us as people or the game, give it a watch. [previewyoutube=N8P2DKSpxds;full][/previewyoutube] That's it for today, detectives. As always, thank you for your neverending support. Please take care of yourselves, and we'll see you in the next update! Join our Discord server - https://discord.gg/backbone Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/backbonegame

[ 2020-07-15 12:52:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dear friends, Today we have a very special announcement. Backbone is gonna be published by Raw Fury! We are super excited about this. Raw Fury are the best partners in crime we could dream of, and we hope that this small FAQ will reassure you that Backbone is in good hands. Please let us know if you have any questions, were happy to answer! What the heck, a wild publisher appears? Raw Fury first got in touch with us early 2018, long before Kickstarter, and reconnected again as fans of the Prologue in 2019. While we were sure that we could deliver Backbone in a great state, the funding and support from Raw Fury has helped us to hire and pay decent salaries to additional team members (which means more content) as well as given us extra time to really make Backbone the game of our dreams. Most importantly, Raw Fury gave us an unparalleled security and confidence in our vision. On a more personal note, out studios have very aligned goals. Our most cherished asset is our people. When we met Raw Furys CEO Jonas in Stockholm, we immediately clicked and knew right away that we can trust them to take care of our team and our game. Weve been working together for 6 months now, and we can feel that theyre in for the long run and thats an extremely rare and reassuring feeling. This blog post provides a good insight into what kind of people Raw Fury are https://rawfury.com/the-measure-of-success/. Whats gonna happen with the game? Its gonna be of a much higher quality, and were gonna be a much less stressed team. Our publisher is not in any way interfering with our creative process - we can do whatever we want. I can even post any spicy memes on Twitter - its totally up to us how to make and present our game to the world. They just take off the load of our shoulders concerning the rest. Raw Fury are already helping with a lot of things that lie outside of the production of the game: marketing, PR, localization, porting, certification, publishing to stores and consoles, bizdev. This ensures that we can stay focused on spending all our time with Backbone. Its also important that they consult with us before doing anything, and vice versa - we are true partners in our collaboration. So when is the game coming out? In 2021. We dont have a hard date for it just yet, but as soon as we know you will know. You, our backers and community will have the date the instant we know for sure! Weve been hard at work since 2017 and throughout 2018 and 2019. We cant wait to get to the finish line, and let everyone come visit our Vancouver. Thank you all so much for your trust and support. Weve come a long way together, and cant wait to see what lies ahead. Well be back with a usual production update soon. Follow us on Twitter and talk to us directly on Discord. Talk soon, detectives <3

[ 2020-02-14 08:24:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Dear friends, We have released Backbone: Prologue back in April as a standalone 1-hour introduction to the world of Backbone. It allowed us to gather an immense amount of valuable feedback and became one of the highest rated games on Steam of all time with 98% Overwhelmingly Positive score. We are incredibly proud of our work as a diverse 12-person team from 5 different countries, and we're doing everything we can to make Backbone a polished, beautiful and meaningful experience for all of you when it comes out in 2020. If you'd like to support us - please consider nominating Backbone: Prologue for Outstanding Visual Style at Steam Awards. It would mean the world to us! Thank you all so much for your support. With love, from Eggnut team, Alex, Nikita, Maria, Sasha, Kristina, Kirill, Toma, Artem, Diana, Julia, Radu and Danny.

[ 2019-11-27 15:33:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey there! Weve been busy at work, implementing features and tweaks that youve asked for (and more). Its been a wild ride so far, and were so happy you folks are already showing so much passion for Backbone! We have some more updates planned, but for now its time for us to sit down and get going on making Backbone the best it can be. The kind of game we will be proud to put our names on, and the kind of game you will be talking about ten years down the line. To those of you who made it possible for us to come this far, our backers and early supporters: From the bottom of our hearts Thank You. Heres a list of what weve improved: - Settings menu for visuals and sound. - Mac and Linux support. - Controller support. - Optimization. - New fluid NPC animations. - Alley truck puzzle polished. - Dialogues edited for clarity and snappiness. - New original song in The Bite. - Tiny and big bug fixes.
To stay on top of all things Backbone, be sure to follow us here: Twitter - https://twitter.com/backbonegame Discord - https://discord.gg/backbone Newsletter - https://eggnut.net/

[ 2019-10-25 16:24:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

So many incredible things have happened since the release of Backbone: Prologue in April. Finally, we're able to share all of them with you! Backbone is coming to PAX West. Aug 30 - Sep 2, Seattle, WA, USA.
Backbone has been selected to participate in our first ever expo - PAX West! Find us in the Indie Mega Booth section, #764. We're bringing a polished version of the demo for you to play, and our friendly faces from Canada, Russia and NL. Feel free to get in touch with any questions - hello@eggnut.net. Backbone is selected for Strasbourg Film Festival. Sept 13-22, Strasbourg, France.
Backbone has been selected among 12 games to be presented during the festival and to participate in the award ceremony. Backbone is inspired by our passionate love for cinema, so we're very proud to be included! AND we'll see you at Adventure X! Nov 2-3, London, UK.
Possibly the best place to celebrate adventure gaming - Adventure X conference in London, British Library. The tickets will go on sale on the British Library website on Sept 4th, 11AM UK time. Don't miss out, they'll be gone in the matter of minutes! Backbone: Prologue has been doing incredibly well.
It is now rated 98% Overwhelmingly Positive with over 1000 reviews. It's #230 in the best rated Steam games of all time. It's been downloaded 100 000 times. The main game page has been wishlisted 50 000 times. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Backbone's development is in full swing. There are more exciting things happening that we still have to keep secret, but we'll see you again very soon! To stay on top of all things Backbone, be sure to follow us here: Twitter - https://twitter.com/backbonegame Newsletter - https://eggnut.net/ Discord (it's FULL of cat memes and we've got a minecraft server) - https://discord.gg/backbone

[ 2019-08-10 00:33:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.0.3 Bugfixes: - "Continue" loaded main menu once again, if save was made in Howard's Office. - Player could enter [spoiler]locker room without picking turn key when going upstairs[/spoiler]. Narrative: - Some characters did not remember they were chatted with after save/load. - Interaction spots were resetting on Granville after save/load. Visual: - Pressing TAB in inventory was not closing the menu, if one very particular button was pressed.

[ 2019-05-06 08:48:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.0.2 Bugfixes: - Player unable to exit crouch in a few places. -[spoiler]Anatoly[/spoiler] didn't save dialogue after save/load. - Player could enter [spoiler]Locker after Basement,[/spoiler] without [spoiler]taking the turn key. Couldn't go back to Basement.[/spoiler] - [spoiler]Second Butcher[/spoiler] coming and catching Howard, while player is hidden. - Able to get into [spoiler]garbage bucket in Butcher room[/spoiler], after save/load, without [spoiler]Butcher entering[/spoiler]. - Game was launching Steam VR. Narrative: - Fixes in dialogues. - Minor narrative changes. - Some interaction objects were not saving after leaving/re-entering Granville. Visuals: - Lighted the entrance to [spoiler]Butcher room[/spoiler], so it's more noticeable. - Changed lights for taxis. - Added visuals for [spoiler]truck in Alley.[/spoiler]

[ 2019-05-01 08:38:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.0.1 Bugfixes: - Black screen after Johnny dialogue. It appeared in some instances of playing with lower processing power. - Kitchen gameplay sequence is now more stable. - No more typos! - Camera stability fixes. 32bit Windows version is now available.

[ 2019-04-29 15:23:07 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix 1.0.0.12 Bugfixes: - Fixed an edge case in which people were not able to [spoiler]cut the wires [/spoiler]for the second time, after being caught or after restart.

[ 2019-04-27 19:07:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

VERY URGENT RHCP FIX Issue with executable that couldn't be found resolved! DON'T DEVELOP AT NIGHT!

[ 2019-04-27 11:31:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.0.0.11 Bugfixes: - If pressed "e" while running nearby NPC, there was a chance for Howard to not finish stopping, starting dialogue, but failing due to being far from NPC and locking player. - Cougar bank worker NPC wasn't showing Howard on the second time dialogue is played, and locked the player after it. - Some enemy NPC stability fixes. Gameplay: - Disallowed player to touch switchable interactive objects (mixer) until it's changed to the original state. Narrative: - Moved some bark and tutorial objects around, so that they start at different locations and don't overlap each other. - Added line breaks and some typo fixes.

[ 2019-04-27 07:59:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix 1.0.0.10 - Fixed the issue that led to some players getting stuck on Granville. [spoiler] Node in Larry's dialogue that gives you a very necessary clue now appears every time, instead of sometimes mysteriously disappearing. [/spoiler] - [spoiler] Bite top floor private room [/spoiler] intractable objects don't reset after quit/load. - Some climbing softlock fixes.

[ 2019-04-27 01:08:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix 1.0.0.9 Bugfixes: - Howard was freezing with breakdancing animation after the dialogue if dialogue was entered on "Turning" animation.

[ 2019-04-26 21:10:48 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.0.0.8 Bugfixes: - Some barks were not reset after Howard is caught. - If you crouch on the top of a [spoiler]McKenzie building[/spoiler]. Also couldnt crouch'n'jump down from this building. - Howard animation flickering on landing. - Extensive crouching in between level transitioning made Howard behave like a crazy goofus. - When falling and attempting to move or Interact with objects, Howard could freeze.

[ 2019-04-26 19:45:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hotfix 1.0.0.7 Bugfixes: - Howard was freezing when crouching, interacting with object and mashing buttons. - Howard was freezing when falling and mashing buttons. - Additional fixes for button mashing.

[ 2019-04-26 05:09:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Patch 1.0.0.6 Bugfixes: - Howard freezing after interaction with items. - Respawn in[spoiler] butcher room [/spoiler]was not enabling right interaction objects. - If player started dialogue and turned away, camera would fade. - Camera in [spoiler]locker room [/spoiler]was not enabled at the right place after game save/load. - Minor stability fixes

[ 2019-04-26 01:53:46 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's been a great journey, everyone. With your input we've been able to catch some nasty things and make few gameplay adjustments. Thank you all for your feedback, it means a lot to us! Patch 1.0.0.3 Bugfixes: - Some characters did not remember they were interacted with after restart or reentering the level. - Some characters periodically lost dialogue options. - Some character states were not saved during level changes. - Door disappearing in the Kitchen. - Freeze when player is caught during the dialogue in the Kitchen section. Sound: - Sound effects not disappearing after leaving level. Gameplay: - Howard's interaction speed during crouch is increased.

[ 2019-04-25 07:27:32 CET ] [ Original post ]