With near-perfect execution, Back to the Dawn is a must-play for any adventure fan.
91
Verdict
95%
Steam
85
IGDB
Verdict score based on confidence-adjusted Steam reviews?
Very Positive on Steam (95% positive from 9.8K reviews)
Critically acclaimed (85/100 critic average)
Compelling narrative and story
Still in Early Access — content may be incomplete
Back to the Dawn is a 2025 indie role-playing video game developed by Metal Head Games and published by Spiral Up Games. The early access version of the game was released for Windows and Xbox Series X/S in late 2023. Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 obtained the game with no early access version in early 2026. At this time, the game exclusively featured the story of Thomas the Fox, but with the full release of the game on 18 July 2025 a second playable character was added: Bob the Panther, an undercover intelligence agent.
Runs well on modern hardware.
Last updated 1d ago
To summarize my experience playing this game, it's like getting blue balled. I enjoyed the music, art, and characters very much. The overall package is done very well, but the game biggest downfall is the deadline of the 21 days. It holds the game back a lot and prevent especially new players from exploring the game and letting the storyline unravel itself. The game punish you if you did not complete certain tasks on certain days, even when playing on the New Eden Mode. I hope the dev reads my review and get rid of the 21 days all together for the New Eden Mode. The description of the New Eden Mode is not true at all because I thought it would be a very lax mode for me to explore the storyline. I played Thomas for the first time and didn't bother finishing it. I got side track doing all the different gang quest that by the 21st day, I did not get half way into the main storyline to trigger anymore cut scenes. Since I couldn't progress further in Thomas storyline, I decided to start a new game as Bob with the knowledge I had already playing Thomas. Holly cow, Bob's storyline and his buff was awesome. However, I still went beyond the 21st day as Bob with all the background knowledge but still manage to finish his storyline. My 2nd time around playing Thomas, I escaped prison before I even brought justice because what's the point? I lost motivation once the lock down in prison happened. Again, the 21st day time crunch does not give the player the freedom to go at their pace unravelling the story all together. If this game was driven by a storyline, then get rid of the 21st day crunch. Leave the 21st day crunch to the hard mode. The ground hog day just puts the game on the same day loop over and over, which doesn't give any progression in the background what so ever. If you truly want players to be invested in the game, let the storyline unravel itself as the player makes the progress at their own pace instead of forcing them with this time management mechanics. I loved Bob's storyline and I wanted to love Thomas' storyline too, but Thomas' game was so unbalanced even when I played both on the New Eden Mode, I didn't bother.
Really fun addictive gameplay loop, with good writing and a ton of different endings for each of the multiple characters: highly replayable. Unfortunately, the game ♥♥♥♥♥ you over without warning by locking you out of most progress for a few days right near the end. In my case, this caused what would have been a successful run to unexpectedly fail, as I realised I would no longer have enough days to achieve any good endings, which left me feeling like my (considerable) time spent was wasted. Just why? 7/10.
Absolutely amazing! Masterpiece! One of the most approachable crime RPGs out there. The story is quite engaging and very easy to grasp. The dialogue is rather upfront and straight to the point while keeping a healthy dose of subtext, little time is wasted on the endless introspection bloat that's common on the genre. The game is meticulously crafted. Everything is scripted down to each in game hour for the 21 days. Where each of the 47 characters is and the conversations they're having and what they're doing, with some being significatively affected by player choices. You cannot see everything on a single playthrough, which adds a lot of replayability to the game. In fact, trying to do too much at once in a single playthrough is a recipe for disaster as you'll simply run out of time. There's a steep learning curve though, as new systems are still being introduced several hours into the game, some of which are quite punishing if they catch you off guard. Because of this, it's very likely that your first playthroughs will catastrophically fail (unless you reload quite a bit). This is very far from a "ragequit" game though, as there's usually quite a few options that can salvage even the worst situations once you have a good grasp of the game systems. And you will fail a lot, as most actions in the game are determined by dice rolls which can either Critically Fail or Succeed regardless of your stats, and your stats are very low early game so you are in fact most likely to fail rolls than succeed them at the start. But once you have mastered the game you can shrug off even the worst fail streaks. Definitely worth a check!
Reviews sourced from Steam. All reviews belong to their respective authors.
Data sourced from RAWG, Steam, IGDB, CheapShark, Wikipedia, HLTB, and GX Corner. Sources: rawg, steam, cheapshark, igdb, wikipedia.
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