Video Game / Backpack Battles

Following

Backpack Battles is an autobattler game for the PC by PlayWithFurcifer. A demo was initially released in May 2023, and it entered paid early access in March 2024, with its full release coming in June 2025.

Gameplay alternates between a shop and automated asynchronous Player Versus Player matches. After picking a starting class, players equip them with a variety of items purchased from the shop, taking stamina, inventory space, and item synergies into consideration. Once you've prepared your backpack, you're sent to fight a build used by a random other player at this stage of the game. The goal is to win a total of 10 rounds before running out of lives; if you succeed, you can either end your run, or enter survival mode for a chance at greater rewards.

The classes are:

• The Ranger, a damage-dealer who specializes in luck and nature items.
• The Reaper, who specializes in debuffs, potions, and cards.
• The Berserker, who can briefly enter a Super Mode once per fight.
• The Pyromancer, specializing in generating Heat to reduce their items' cooldowns.
• The Mage, who can cast and combine spells.
• The Adventurer, a combatant that can specialize in Neutral items or have access to all other classes' items.

The initial choice of class is further customizable with alternate starting backpacks, special skills that are given at certain points in the match, and subclasses that add powerful unique benefits encouraging certain build types.

This game contains examples of:

• Achievement System: The 1.0 release added Steam achievements, along with an in-game system that grants 10 trophies for each achievement unlocked. Many of them are tied to completing recipes for the first time, providing an incentive to complete the recipebook.
• Action Girl: All of the player characters are female warriors.
• Adventurer Archaeologist: The Archaeologist subclass for the Adventurer is inspired by Indiana Jones, as shown by her class item being the Fedora. One benefit of the subclass is greater access to, and benefits from, rare Treasure items. One outfit for the class is based on Indy as well, giving her a fedora, whip, and torch.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Player sprites normally face right. During a battle, your opponent stands on the opposite side of the screen, flipped to face left with her weapon effectively in the other hand.
• Ambiguously Brown: The Pyromancer has notably darker skin than the other characters, but it's unclear if this is her natural skin tone or a tan caused by her constant exposure to fire.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: You receive trophies at the end of each run based on how many rounds you survived, and the only thing they can be spent on are new clothes in the Wardrobe.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Naturally, the Impractically Large Greatsword fits this to a T. It has the highest base damage of all non-crafted neutral weapons, but it's a Godly item, has a 5 second cooldown, consumes 5 stamina per swing, and takes up a whopping 7 inventory slots. Having 5 Empower cuts the cooldown and stamina cost by half, but by that point many other weapons outscale the Greatsword in DPS. Averted with its upgrades, however, which fix many of the Greatsword's flaws while maintaining its status as a heavy hitter.
• Barbaric Battle Axe: The Berserker has exclusive access to the Axe, which gains damage every time it's used in battle. Two of them can be combined into the Double Axe, increasing its damage gain and especially during Battle Rage.
• The Beastmaster: There are a variety of pets you can incorporate into your build, with some subclasses specializing in them.
  • The Ranger has a Beastmaster subclass, unlocked via the Big Bowl of Treats. This buffs her pets and allows exclusive animal companions to appear in the shop.
  • The Reaper's Venomancer subclass has a pet Snake who gives her bonus health by having multiple pets nearby.
  • The Berserker has the Pack Leader subclass, which has access to Wolf companions and gains extra critical chance from pets.
  • The Pyromancer's Scalewarden subclass has a Dragon Nest which hatches Dragon Eggs faster than other classes, regains health when those dragons attack, and has access to a greater variety of dragon species.
  • The Mage's Spectromancer subclass has no limit to the number of Spirit Companions she can have, while other classes are limited to one.
• The Berserker: One of the classes. Her specialty is her Battle Rage, which can only be triggered once per battle but gives her a few seconds of power-ups depending on which starting bag she has.
• Bowdlerise: Downplayed. When the game was first launched as a demo, both the Ranger and Reaper were chibis wearing Stripperific outfits. After receiving several complaints about the surprising Fanservice in an otherwise chaste game, PlayWithFurcifer redesigned the characters with more standard proportions and outfits with more coverage. However, the chibis are still in-game via a options toggle, allowing you to both see chibis and switch between the default and chibi forms for each character, complete with separate unlockable outfits.
• BFS: The Impractically Large Greatsword, along with its various upgrades, looks like Cloud's Buster Sword and is one of the biggest items in the game, taking up 7 slots. Two upgrades cause the sword to grow even bigger.
• Cast from Stamina: Most weapons require a certain amount of stamina to trigger; if you don't have enough, the attack fails and the weapon has to cooldown again. This makes it very impractical to stack multiple weapons in your inventory, although there are ways of mitigating stamina loss, such as bananas or Heroic Potions.
• The Chessmaster: The Mage has access to the Chess Board, allowing her to buy chess pieces that move around in the inventory and capture other pieces for bonuses. In line with the trope, you have to manipulate the pieces and their environment so the right pieces are captured precisely when you want them to be.
• Chest Monster: The shop has a living treasure chest named Chestnut. Thankfully, it's friendly and only eats whatever you give it in exchange for gold.
• Critical Hit Class:
  • The Ranger's Ranger Bag grants weapons inside it extra critical chance based on how many Luck stacks you have. The Hunter subclass can further improve critical damage.
  • The Reaper's Hexblade subclass can grant weapons increased critical chance and damage based on how many debuffs the enemy has.
  • The Berserker's Pack Leader subclass can increase the critical chance of certain weapons by having lots of pets, and the Fighter subclass, whose Brass Knuckles increase the critical chance of nearby weapons with every attack.
  • The Pyromancer's Cryomancer subclass gives one weapon extra critical chance and damage based on how many Cold stacks the enemy has.
  • The Mage's Battle Mage subclass can give weapons increased critical chance whenever buffs are removed from the opponent.
• Crossover: While many items are references to other media, some items and costumes are direct collaborations with other games. For example, Jimbo the Joker is a card you can purchase in the shop if you own a Deck of Cards as Reaper, while the Ranger has an outfit that transforms her into Yuki from Wildfrost.
• Cool Sword: Too many to count. The vampiric Hungry Blade allows you to siphon health from opponents on hits with any melee weapon, and that's not even going into its many upgrades. Even the Wooden Sword, while not impressive at first, can eventually be upgraded into the mighty Crossblades, possessing insane DPS while providing crazy buffs to other items.
• Cooldown Manipulation: The Jynx Torquilla and its upgrades can reduce the cooldown of all items in its grid, although there is a limit.
• Cute Witch: The Mage is a spellcaster who looks like a cute girl like every other character in the game. Her default look has a pointy witch hat and staff decorated with stars. Her class items are also cute, including a Cupcake and Rainbow Potion.
• Death Dealer: The Deck of Cards is a Reaper-exclusive item. Once purchased, cards are offered in the shop. The deck triggers the effect of the card it's pointing towards, and that card will then trigger the effect of the card it's pointing towards, and so on, with their effects being influenced by the position in the chain.
• Difficult, but Awesome: The Mage's MO. Compared to the other classes, her class items have more complex synergies with each other, and many of them require you to pump out Mana like there's no tomorrow. But once you figure it out, there's no shortage of cool strategies to make your way to the final round.
• Duct Tape for Everything: Or twine, in this case. The Adventurer has unique access to Twine, which can be used in Item Crafting to tie two items together, to surprisingly great effect.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: The Reaper is a textbook example. By default, she's dolled up in a frilly, two-toned purple dress with her hair in matching twin-tail ringlets, with a sultry look on her face; if those weren't enough, she carries a scythe and a coffin-shaped suitcase.
• Elemental Speed: Fire is associated with speed in this game, as fire-themed items tend to grant the Heat buff which makes all of your items trigger faster. Most Pyromancer builds will involve building up large amounts of Heat in order to gain a speed advantage.
• Familiar: The Mage can get a Spirit Companion, a ghostly animal that grants powerful benefits. You can only have one Spirit Companion unless you subclass as a Spectromancer.
• Fatigue Mechanic: Using most weapons other than daggers costs stamina, which replenishes over time, or can be boosted with items. If you try to use a weapon without enough stamina, the attack fails with a plaintive "honk".
• Fluffy the Terrible: One possible Treasure item you can encounter is a cracked skull that can be socketed into your weapons for buff stealing, armor for debuff and critical hit resistance, or just placed in the backpack for a powerful heal and attack boost. Its name? Tim.
• Forest Ranger: The Ranger has the aesthetic of a forest-dwelling archer, wearing mostly green in her default outfit while one alternate cosmetic for her bow appears to be made of a freshly-picked branch with leaves still growing on it. Some of her subclasses have synergy with Nature items.
• Frying Pan of Doom: One of the early-game weapons available for all classes is the Pan, which deals more damage for each adjacent food. It can be upgraded to the Eggscalibur to activate all adjacent food for Mana, or the Pandamonium for Poison infliction.
• Hit Points: One of just two stats which doesn't depend on the player's bag situation. Players start each run with 35 hitpoints, gaining 10 after each round. Some items can increase their maximum health temporarily during a battle.
• An Ice Person: Ironically, it is the Pyromancer who can best utilize Ice-based items thanks to the Cryomancer Prestige Class. While the Pyromancer normally focuses on increasing her own speed with Heat, the Cryomancer can further widen the speed gap by also inflicting Cold debuffs to slow down the opponent.
• Informed Equipment: A downplayed example. All your equipment that isn't in storage shows up in the bag; your character, however, will still be wielding her cosmetic weapon, and not carrying twelve bananas and a piggy bank.
• Inventory Management Puzzle: The meat of the gameplay is trying to fit as many helpful items into your backpack as possible and buying extra bags to increase your carrying capacity. Many items require other adjacent items to maximize their potential, and some of the more powerful items will either fit very weirdly or require very specific arrangements. Being able to rearrange the board every turn is one of the most important skills for winning every game.
• Item Crafting: Putting certain items next to each other may cause them to combine into a new item. For example, a Wooden Sword will combine with two Whetstones to form a Hero Sword. Some recipes only transform one item while leaving the other item intact; for example, putting an unlit Torch next to any Fire-type item will ignite the Torch, but the Fire item will remain unaltered.
• Life Drain: Vampirism is a buff which causes melee attacks to heal you for 1 HP per stack.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The Reaper is the Dark Feminine to the Ranger's Light Feminine. The Reaper dresses as an eerie purple goth, carrying poisonous mushrooms and scythes around in her handy coffin, while the smily, cat-eared Ranger fights with carrots and four-leaf clovers. The Mage also makes a decent Light Feminine, with her healing magic, brightly-coloured hair, and penchent for rainbows and cupcakes.
• Little Bit Beastly: Some of the Ranger's looks have pointy animal ears. These appearances also cover the sides of her head with a hood or hair to avoid the problem of whether or not she still has normal human ears.
• Luck-Based Mission: The Unidentified Amulet transforms into one of seven amulets, each with their own different synergies. There's no way of telling what it'll be until you spend gold on it, so it's mostly a matter of deciding if you can afford to spend the money and hoping it provides some benefit to your build.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Shields carried in the player's backpack have a chance of neutralising some damage, with a secondary effect based on the type of shield. You can carry multiple shields at once for more protection.
• Magic Potion: Several potions are sold in the shop. Their gimmick is they have a powerful effect that can only be triggered once per battle, but stacking them on top of each other causes the bottom potion to also use the top potion, regardless of if it's full or not. All of them can be upgraded for stronger effects, though some require the Reaper's Cauldron (and thus, a specific subclass).
• Magic Staff:
  • The Mage is shown holding a staff.
  • A Magic Staff can be crafted by combining a Broom and a Mana Orb. It consumes Mana when attacking to deal increased damage. There are upgrades, including one for each class, and all share the concept of having their effects consume Mana.
• Magikarp Power: A few items have a long chain of Item Crafting required to get them, but they're extremely powerful if you can make them.
  • The Crossblades are the combination of the Hero's Longsword and Falcon Blade. These items each require a Hero Sword to craft, as well as two Whetstones or Gloves of Haste, and those Hero Swords are themselves crafted from a Wooden Sword (the weakest weapon in the game) and a Whetstone. If you do manage to assemble the Crossblades, you get a powerful weapon that can give a large damage or speed buff to other weapons, and gains extra damage and speed with every swing.
  • Each class has a different Rainbow Goobert, which requires you to combine the four other upgraded Gooberts they can get. In the unlikely chance that you find four Gooberts, the items they need to be upgraded, enough inventory space to fit all of them, and the time to assemble them without dying, you get the best support items in the game, giving you a huge amount of healing and buffs.
• Mana: Mana is a Status Buff that doesn't directly give any benefits, but is consumed by magical items.
• No Plot? No Problem!: No one knows why you're fighting other players or the backstories of the playable characters, but it doesn't detract anything from the gameplay experience.
• Piggy Bank: One of the first items that can appear in the shop for all classes. They give one additional coin at the start of each turn, but placing them next to a hammer causes them to break and gives you a pile of coins to sell. The Piggy Pinata skill causes Piggybanks to give items instead of coins when they break, as well as giving them a chance to instantly break when entering the shop.
• Playing with Fire:
  • The Pyromancer revolves around this. She mainly specializes in Fire-based items, especially the Heat Status Buff which buffs the speed of items triggering.
  • The Berserker can also do this if you choose the Blacksmith subclass, generating a Flame every time you craft an item that can be used to craft burning weapons or armor.
• Poisoned Weapons: A few poisoned weapons are available, including the Poison Spear, Poison Dagger, and Belladonna's Whisper (a poison bow). Most are crafted by combining a basic weapon with a Pestilence Flask and inflict Poison on hit. Socketing Emeralds into your weapons also gives them the ability to inflict Poison.
• Prestige Class: On round 8, you can pick a subclass which grants powerful but specialized bonuses, encouraging you to focus on a certain style of build.
• Racing Ghost: Not exactly a race, but the multiplayer element works by having you face off against the recorded loadout that another player had on the same round.
• Rare Random Drop: While many items can be considered this, Treasure items are intended to be this. They can only appear when you first enter the shop, so rerolling won't work. Additionally, you can only have one Treasure in your inventory at a time, unless you also have the Platinum Customer Card, the Uniquely Unique skill, and/or the Adventurer's Fedora.
• Sinister Scythe: There are two scythes in the game, both with a sinister theme.
  • The Death Scythe is exclusive to the Reaper class, can buff items' Poison infliction, and gains extra critical chance against enemies with a lot of poison stacks on them.
  • The Blood Harvester is a blood-red scythe that can buff items' Vampirism gain and increases its attack speed based on how much Vampirism you have.
• Shop Fodder: The Bunch of Coins is obtained by smashing a Piggy Bank with a Hammer. While the Piggy Bank grants one gold every turn, the Bunch of Coins sacrifices this in exchange for being worth a higher sum when sold. Aside from its high sell price, it has no effect.
• Socketed Equipment: Weapons and armor can have sockets in which you can insert stones to gain special effects. These stones may also just be put in your inventory to get a different effect. The most reliable way to get stones for socketing is from a Box of Riches, which gives you a gem every round if you have it in your backpack; gems of the same type can be combined into an upgraded version. The Berserker's Shaman subclass specializes in socketing, having access to unique Runes that add powerful effects.
• Squishy Wizard: The Pyromancer, despite her appearance, can be an Inversion, as her Fire Pit starting backpack grants extra maximum health for every fire item it contains, meaning she can potentially get more health than any other class.
• Stripperiffic: Determined to meet both definitions of "hot", the Pyromancer wears a gilded one-piece strapless vest that shows off her thighs, shoulders and bust, with matching thigh-boots and short leather gloves for flavour.
• Tank-Top Tomboy: The Berserker, the most physically tough-looking character and the only one with trousers, wears a simple crop top that shows off her arms and a spot of midriff.
• Tough Spikes and Studs: A spiky bracelet in the Berserker's default outfit emphasises her toughness. While playing as the Berserker, you can buy and carry more spiky bracelets to lengthen Battle Rage.
• Universal Poison: Poison is a Status Effect which ticks every 2 seconds to deal 1 damage per stack.
• Vampires Hate Garlic: Garlic not only gives you Armor, it also removes Vampirism buffs from the opponent.
• Virtual Paper Doll: You earn Trophies as you play, which can be spent on buying new cosmetic items for the characters. Each outfit has a head, weapon, body, bag, and shoes, and each class can mix and match different items from its outfit sets.
• Voice Grunting: Each character has unique grunts for when they start, win, or lose a duel, showcasing a bit of personality. The Reaper and Mage sound calm and collected, while the Ranger and Adventurer sound more eager. The Pyromancer audibly shouts "Fire!" at the start of some matches. Furthermore, characters can grunt from a shared pool of grunts when they attack with a weapon.