With Backfirewall_, the Swiss team at Naraven Games transports us to a wacky and quirky puzzle game in the twists and turns of a smartphone battling a new system update.
But, as we will see, to shine the title would also need a big patch…
Your system is outdated
We embody in Backfirewall_ an “update assistant” recently installed in the smartphone of an unknown user. Its mission is simple: replace the aging OS9 with the beautiful, brand new and very powerful OS10 (any resemblance to an existing operating system is completely voluntary).
So here we are, performing our task like a good, docile little App… until the OS9 in question interrupts us. It’s that the guy is chafouin at the idea of giving up his place as boss to someone else, especially since for him this replacement means pure and simple death.
Cleverly, the latter manages to convince us that once our mission is accomplished, we will suffer the same fate as him and, in fact, to help him prevent this. But the process is already underway and, to save our life as much as his, we will have to find our way through the meanders of the phone in order to cause enough bugs for the update to be cancelled.
It is on these bases (which we have all experienced) that the game develops its plot. Accompanied by the voice of OS9 which guides us, we will have to go through all the possible components: RAM, CPU, GPU, Network, etc. in order to cause as many critical errors as possible.
Each of these areas is composed of a rather vague list of objectives: to enter the App Bank in an infinite loop, to cut the RAM or to overload a processor. And it is in the form of more or less devious puzzles that we can achieve our ends.
If the latter are generally pleasant, some are literally incomprehensible and require a good dose of luck… even cheating. As an admission of failure, Backfirewall_ systematically provides us with a… duck. Yes, a duck. The latter can, at our sole discretion, provide us with more or less substantiated information on the resolution of said puzzles. And sometimes even give us the answer.
The main problem is that this solution is not subject to any consideration. It is therefore possible, for the less determined among us, to simply complete the title without ever taking the time to think. And that would be a serious error in judgment.
Because if the puzzles are certainly complex, they are nonetheless interesting. And trying to make our neurons work to understand their logic is both pleasant and fun. In addition, managing to complete an area systematically brings a feeling of accomplishment which is reminiscent of the one we could feel on the Professor Layton series. A great success, then.
Between each of these levels, you have to go through corridors generally filled with security guards from the antivirus without being spotted. The title then becomes a kind of stealth game with very limited capabilities and proposals.
This part is a total failure. Punitive as possible, the slightest detection immediately sends us back to the start of the game by a loading screen. Fortunately, OS9 immediately opens a quick access point for us… to return to the entrance to the level in question, via a new loading screen.
Certainly more logical scriptwriting, this decision considerably increases the progression and completely breaks the immersion, just making us rage a little more, losing our temper… and in fact making the infiltration all the more risky. Especially since the movements of the enemies are scripted and without the slightest ounce of artificial intelligence.
Yes, it is possible to pass them relatively easily, to run right next to them without them even noticing our presence, or even simply to remain motionless at one pixel from their detection zone.
Pervasive bugs
Making a game around the crash of an operating system is good. Adding bugs as collectibles is better. But undoubtedly the humor would work better if Backfirewall_ itself weren’t stuffed to the core.
The first welcomed us during the tutorial. A simple pause, a detour through the options to increase the rotation speed of the camera and… The French subtitles simply disappeared.
Back in the options, we hack everything we can in vain: no more subtitles on the screen. Fine, so we reset the settings… and the game automatically takes place in German. Yes yes. In German.
The only solution to our problem was to restart a game from the beginning after deleting our save. After battling for nearly half an hour, this was our one and only door to salvation. And we were only less than ten minutes into the game…
And the camera, let’s talk about it! The latter is abyssally slow and more frustrating than anything else. We still pushed the adventure like this to the end, for fear of having to start all over again from the beginning.
The controls, in their entirety, are also totally missed. The plot taking place in a smartphone, we often have the feeling that the puzzles were designed for touch. The experience on PC or Switch would therefore undoubtedly be much better, but with a controller it is not uncommon to have to try several times before finally managing to move an element.
The consequence is easy to understand: we sometimes come to say that an enigma is illogical, to take it from every angle (even the most absurd)… to finally give up and go see our dear duck and better realize that We had the solution all along, but the controls just didn’t respond properly.
Frustrating as possible, all the handling part, coupled with the many bugs, clearly forms the big black spot of a title that is still very nice.
Finally, how to ignore the worst idea of the title? For the sake of script consistency, the game’s home menu offers us only two options: continue or new update.
Woe if, like us, you have the crazy idea of launching the title without being fully awake. “Hey, a new update?” we said to ourselves, before realizing that it was the “new game” option… and that launching this one immediately and without any other form of warning overwhelmed the one and only automatic save of the title…
SoBritish
Backfirewall_ is not just a buggy puzzle game. If the title is so pleasant and makes us come back regularly with delight (even once our backup has been erased, yes), it is above all for its unbridled humor.
Huge strong point of a title not lacking in flaws, the replies of all the progratonists, even secondary ones, have benefited from very special care. Unlike other games that would have taken the easy way out by applying “start-up” language to its plot, Backfirewall_ dares something more subtle, cynical, full of sarcasm as well as biting irony.
How not to melt when Facebook reports suspicious behavior to the authorities? When the mail application ends up committing suicide by not being used? Or to be able to spy on the user by decrypting her private conversations?
Yes, the writing of Backfirewall_ is a real success, and its very British humor has snatched from us simple smiles as much as frank and sincere laughter. It is a pearl of derision and finesse, whose rather critical messages against the abusive use of smartphones are of a subtlety that often borders on perfection… so much so that it is possible to make the entire adventure without ever grasping the cleverly concealed references and without feeling the slightest embarrassment, or on the contrary discovering it under a totally different prism.
Note: After writing this test, we were informed of the availability of a Day One Patch correcting more than a hundred bugs, including all of those we experienced during our adventure.
Tested on Xbox One X
