Review: Backpack Hero Packs in a Lot

One of the surprises at the November 2023 Nintendo Indie Showcase was the reveal Backpack Hero was on the Switch immediately. It might not have been as eye-catching as, say, Shantae Advance or Outer Wilds, but the wealth of things to do and depth makes this inventory management dungeon crawler worth the trip.

Purse and her family live in a corrupt kingdom where the king ransacks kingdoms and punishes anyone who heads into the dungeon taking “his” things. Her mother went into that labyrinth’s depths when she was young and never returned. Now after discovering a magic backpack with great holding capabilities on a run, Purse is determined to keep dungeon diving to learn its secrets, find out what happened to her mother, and use what she finds to help rebuild her town.

In many ways, Backpack Hero feels like a traditional turn-based, roguelike, dungeon-diving RPG. We watch from the side as Purse or one of the other characters we unlock explores areas, encounters events that may involve other people, finds treasure, and deals with enemies. As someone levels up, they may get a boon like the bag expanding by four spaces. (Though in the case of someone like Pochette, leveling up can also mean getting more pets to act as allies.) 

Your abilities and build depend not only upon the weapons, equipment, and items you’ve grabbed, but their placement. For example, an item may have a “float” tendency, which means it could offer a helpful buff to an adjacent weapon’s attack power, but it needs to be in the top row. A certain piece of equipment might offer more defense, allowing your character to block X number of damage each turn, but only based on how many rows are above or below it. Certain pieces of equipment need to be next to others to trigger benefits. Bows need to have arrows next to them, for example, and arrows may deal more damage if empty space is next to them. You may also get chances to grab equipment or items during a battle, and not just from chests, merchants, or after beating enemies, if you choose to reorganize in the middle of a fight.

This means every turn in the dungeon, you’re managing your character’s health, keeping track of energy to see how many times they can act or attack, watching their shield levels to see if they’ll negate damage that turn, and trying to determine how and which enemies to hit. It’s quite complex! Proper management means you survive, get through runs, and perhaps even get extra bonuses if you chose a specific mission from a townsperson in the campaign that restricted what you do that trip into the dungeon. (There is also a quick play feature, aside from the campaign.) Then when you resurface in town, you can handle the items you brought back and use them to complete quests or get resources, deal with new and old quests, and work on rebuilding the town. 

I just wish the interfaces for Backpack Hero weren’t so clunky, though I acknowledge this could just be an issue on the Switch. For example, when in-town and rebuilding, it isn’t clearly defined when certain buildings can or can’t be placed somewhere, leading to a bit of trial and error. Navigating the building menu could be a bit more intuitive. There also isn’t really a helpful explanation of resources. Granted, it isn’t too difficult to learn by doing. 

This also extends to dungeon crawling feeling a little inconvenient sometimes, again because I feel like this port of Backpack Hero didn’t really nature of the Switch and a console into account. Every action involves holding a button, and there’s no option to adjust this for accessibility or convenience purposes. Bringing up a cursor for backpack organization makes sense and is great. But something about the actual exploration of the map and execution of actions both in and out of dungeons ended up feeling a bit unwieldy to me, which kept me extended play sessions.

Which is a shame, because everything else about Backpack Hero feels like it encourages sitting down and playing for hours. I suspect it’s much more encouraging for that if you’re at a PC with a mouse going through it all. Backpack Hero is still definitely a roguelike Switch players should consider if they enjoy the genre. Just know that it might not feel as well optimized as similar games. But there is a lot to do here, and a lot to like as well.

Backpack Hero is available for the Nintendo Switch and PC. It will also eventually come to the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.