Humanity is dead, the animals are conscious and raccoon P.I. Howard Lotor masquerades as a new breed of justice.

The likes of L.A. Noire’s Cole Phelps, L.A. Confidential’s Bud White and Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch may have provided much to fantasize of a criminal 1940s-era metropolitan. And while Lotor might share a similar affinity for cigarettes over jazz, he stands apart from his detective brethren in olfaction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vObf9PTEJPc&feature=youtu.be

Backbone isn’t Los Angeles. In fact this retro-futuristic Vancouver, BC comes with an overabundance of anthropomorphism; so much so that here, The Great Apes are deemed the planet’s founding fathers, the streets are literally lit with verdure while massive walls separate out the savages.

Utopia? More Potemkin village really, as the trailer concedes, with Lotor having a hard time fitting in to the normalcy of society around him.

To make matters worse a dangerous new piece of tech. threatens to consume Vancouver’s conventional underworld, and if this is same as the artifact that helps him get out of tight spots with a bear claw – I’m not so sure.

https://twitter.com/backbonegame/status/980191625153564679

Regardless Backbone is the exploration of themes encompassing the societal, moral, ethical and political ills that such a setting is bound to breed, and it intends to do so with notes of seedy electronic jazz, hi-resolution pixel art for real-world inspired locations and stealth-action.

Exploration, evidence-collecting, interrogations and puzzling over cases is how most of your time will be spent. And so quite naturaly Lotor is granted the ability to hide in dustbins, trail suspects purely off their scent and run like the wind just incase he throws up a stink.

After over a year of pre-production EggNut has taken the above concept-sketch to Kickstarter, offering a Windows/Mac release Q2 2019, a backer-only demo this summer and potential console ports if everyone’s feeling generous.

http://soundcloud.com/eggnutohmygod/backbone-ost-rainy-streets

The Vancouver Weekly Herald, postcards, framed posters and artbook meanwhile are a dream.