Tails Noir News

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:


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][/previewyoutube]


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.

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):



[h2]1. Localization & Prologue update.[/h2]
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.



[h2]2. Current progress on the full game.[/h2]
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 it’s tough to set an exact release date, but you will be the first to know when we’re sure!



[h2]3. So what is Backbone?[/h2]
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.

[h2]4. New people.[/h2]
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.

[h2]5. Cinematics.[/h2]

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][/previewyoutube]

[h2]6. Behind-the-scenes content.[/h2]

So this happened - Valve interviewed us WHAT
[previewyoutube][/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][/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

Raw Fury hat seine Publishing-Partnerschaft mit dem jungen kanadischen Entwicklerstudio Eggnut bekannt gegeben, welche derzeit am Pixelart-Detektiv-Adventure Backbone arbeiten. Das über Kickstarter mitfinanzierte Spiel soll Anfang kommenden Jahres für PC und Konsolen erscheinen und lässt euch als Waschbär-Detektiv Howard ein [...]

» Komplette News auf pressakey.com lesen

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, we’re 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 Fury’s 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. We’ve been working together for 6 months now, and we can feel that they’re in for the long run – and that’s 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/.

What’s gonna happen with the game?
It’s gonna be of a much higher quality, and we’re 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 - it’s 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. It’s 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 don’t 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! We’ve been hard at work since 2017 and throughout 2018 and 2019. We can’t wait to get to the finish line, and let everyone come visit our Vancouver.

Thank you all so much for your trust and support. We’ve come a long way together, and can’t wait to see what lies ahead. We’ll be back with a usual production update soon.

Follow us on Twitter and talk to us directly on Discord.

Talk soon, detectives

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.