Back From Hell by Photoplay Games is here to take your hard cash through demonic means. Not to be confused with Slain: Back from Hell, this particular return from the underworld is a “CRPG Puzzle/Adventure game set in two worlds.” One of these worlds is 15th century Spanish town, and the other, believe it or not, is Hell.
Promising to be story driven, Back From Hell features dialogue choices and branching narrative paths. There will also be puzzles in both first and third person you’ll need to solve. But this isn’t necessarily an adventure game, as you’ll encounter combat as well. The developers promise some variety though, as you’ll be able to talk your way out of hostile encounters if you so wish.
Farming is Hell
You play a farmer whose life has been ruined by a drought, and the growing presence of the inquisition. After God doesn’t help, the jerk, you decide to ask the Devil to do you a solid. Unfortunately you get inquisition-ed and end up in Hell. There, you decide to ask Lucifer to return to the mortal realm to avenge the death of your family, but the big guy has other plans for you.
Now let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Back From Hell is an FMV game of sorts. ((Ed: Photoplay games sent us a tweet stating “…afraid there is no FMV in Back From Hell, only digitized sprites. And Kickstarter gifs are just fun kickstarter gifs. Nothing more.” So no FMV. Bummer!)) The backgrounds and environments are promised to be “photorealistic,” but do have a certain cartoony art style to them. There’s no getting around the real actors in the game though, completely with what is already clearly amazing acting.
Live action acting can certainly be a turn off for a lot of people. I think it’s safe to say that there’s never been an FMV game with even remotely decent acting. The clips on the Kickstarter page of people awkwardly waving their arms around probably isn’t going to alleviate anyone’s worries either.
But if you’re in the mood for a medieval Spanish themed, story driven action adventure game, Back From Hell may be for you. If you’re just looking for weird FMV games, perhaps Kickstarted in the Butt would be a better choice. At least everybody gets to make the totally clever and original “nobody expects the Spanish inquisition” joke.
There are no fmv cut scenes in the game. The characters are digitally captured but then animated just like any other 2d RPG. This is not an fmv game at all. The clapping figures were just recorded to lift the spirits of the kickstarter page, they were meant as a bit of a joke. If somebody had bothered to contact me to at least ask me a couple of questions we could have avoided any unjustly kicking of my game.
Cool your jets there, sparky. I personally think having FMV in it would be fun 🙂
It’s definately different, but it’s got such a nostalgic aura about it… haven’t seen sommat like this in a long time… just had a quick browse of the back from hell kickstarter page.. I don’t think it is a fmv game I think it’s more rpg’ish… diffrent but I like it… the happy clapper did rather tickle me I must say..