Backpack Battles Early Access Review

ign.com:

I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a certain satisfaction that comes from the Tetris-like puzzle of inventory management in some games – hell, a whole game based around that idea, Save Room, became its own hit. Meanwhile the autobattler genre that has exploded in recent years hits similar notes, providing the joy of seeing your planning and preparation pay off in PvP. The bite-sized indie joint Backpack Battles combines these two ideas, pitting your organizational skills and wits in creating RPG-like character builds against others in fast-paced one-on-one matches. After a dozen hours with its Early Access release, I've seen the seeds of something great in that concept, with the potential to grow into something unique and impressive. But as it stands now, Backpack Battles is light on content and variety – it's very much an Early Access game, with an emphasis on early.

The outset of Backpack Battles is quite straightforward: You select one of the four currently available classes – Berserker, Pyromancer, Reaper, or Ranger – then jump into ranked or unranked matches (the main difference being that ranked contributes to your classes', well, rank). The goal of each run is to win 10 battles before exhausting your five lives, and you can either take your trophies and leave (the currency you earn from playing) when you do so, or go into a survival phase for an extra set of rounds for the chance to earn even more trophies and boost your class rank further. So far, this is the only mode offered, and while it is a digestible setup to let you focus on the more interesting mechanics of building your character throughout a run, it also means how you play is fairly limited.

Where Backpack Battles shines is in the inventory organization mechanics that make up the bulk of what you’ll be doing. Light RPG elements blend with the self-induced puzzle of trying to fit all your best gear into limited spaces of your grid-based bags. Before every round, you have the opportunity to purchase