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Back to the Dawn on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Back to the Dawn is a story-rich RPG set in a high-security prison ruled by factions and buried secrets. Investigate two conspiracies from the inside, gather evidence, and outsmart a system designed to silence you. Make friends (or foes) with fellow inmates and with their help, break out of prison.
Back to the Dawn is a rpg, story rich and pixel graphics game
developed by Metal Head Games
and published by Spiral Up Games.
Released on July 17th 2025 is available only on Windows
in 8 languages: Simplified Chinese, English, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, Korean, Russian, Spanish - Latin America and Vietnamese.
It has received 4,935 reviews of which 4,579 were positive and 356 were negative resulting in a rating of 9.0 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 23.60€ on Steam with a 20% discount, but you can find it for 9.78€ on Gamivo.
The Steam community has classified Back to the Dawn into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: Intel i5
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GTX 750ti
- Storage: 3 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system.
Steam Price & Best Deals
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Hidden Gem That Seems Deeper Than It Actually Is At first, I bought this game and played it for just 2 hours to see if it was worth it. And I was amazed! It truly looked like a perfect game, with endless content, total freedom, deep mechanics, and characters you actually want to know better. I immediately thought that this was not just "another indie game." It was WAY better than that. Then, after another 23 hours, my emotions became a bit colder, although the game is still great. So, where should I start? The first thing I thought about was the depth of the mechanics when it comes to pooping. You need to be in control of your digestive system, or else you can poo in your pants while surrounded by your fellow inmates. Nah, just kidding. My actual first thought was... WOW, LOOK, THIS IS PRISON ZOOTOPIA!!! The way the characters are presented, how they look, what features they have, and of course THE SNEAKY FOX AS THE MAIN CHARACTER all reminded me of the diversity of Zootopia. And it is so much fun, trust me! You have a pangolin who is paranoid because others think his tail has positive health benefits. You have a giraffe who is always bothered by people asking if he plays basketball. You have a dangerous-looking tiger who has mysteries he would never reveal to anyone. You have a sloth who always sleeps, three pig brothers, a kangaroo who is a boxer, and many, and I mean MANY, more characters! How many characters are there in total? I don't even know, but definitely more than 50! Everyone has a schedule, a backstory, quests, and items, and there is just a HUGE amount of things to explore as you try to become friends with everyone. And even with this many side characters... You have two main characters! Totally different stories, totally different quests and tasks, and with the number of ways you can accomplish those tasks, it feels like a perfect sandbox! But no, it is more of a... Time Management Simulator You know what? You have a pile of stuff to do, and you have only 21 days to complete it all. You need to prioritize a lot of things. Every hour counts, every interaction matters, and you need to be careful, because time flies and you are still in prison. Combine the things I mentioned with a bit, actually a lot, of randomness, add a bunch of dice that decide your luck from time to time, and you definitely won't be complaining about replayability. My first attempt was not successful at all. I didn't get killed, so maybe that's already great, but I missed the deadline. I thought I had all the time in my paws, but fate decided that I was not prepared. The first playthrough is basically a blind animal trying to navigate a complex system of punishments, stats, and tasks, so it will definitely be far from optimal. But wait, what did I write in the header? Seems deeper than it actually is? I... Well, yes. Why It Is Not Perfect 1. There are a lot of moments where you have NOTHING to do. Yes, with all this rush and the constant need to spend your time productively, you often find yourself in situations where you think, "Right now, I have nothing to do." You can have a quest at the post office, but it is closed. You can have a task to read a book, but it is not available right now. You can have a task to befriend a character, but you have already tried your best for today. You can have a quest to kick some guy, but he is currently surrounded by others. And you just... wait? This time-management aspect, which is at the core of the game, feels slightly unbalanced, and you sometimes have to go through repetitive, dull actions just to skip time. It is not critical, but it ruins the vibe a bit. 2. The reward for friendship is not satisfying. The whole loop of becoming friends is too repetitive. There are a lot of characters, but the gameplay is mostly the same. You talk, you give them something, you wait for one more day, then repeat. What do you get at the end? Maybe a cool cutscene? Maybe a great dialogue with your new friend? NO. You get a ton of text, and that's it. It is just presented as 5-10 pages of text with the character's backstory. And this is the exact moment when my excitement about 50 unique characters turns into boredom. It is just hundreds of pages to read. There is nothing else. Okay, there are some perks that unlock and change the way you play, but story-wise, something is missing. There is no real payoff that gives you pleasure. 3. The repetitiveness in the world of countless possibilities. The game is meant to be played more than once. The ways you can play are different, and you have all the freedom (haha, pun intended, you are in jail no freedom for you), to explore things. But at the same time, after going through the 21-day loop once, you suddenly realize how repetitive it is. And for some reason, it fails to deliver the same cozy feeling of repeating the same things for hundreds of hours in Stardew Valley. It just becomes less interesting because a lot of things are tied to your story. There is freedom, but as soon as you discover the optimal way to do things, it starts to feel like a chore. But It Is Still a Great Game! My dissatisfaction with some of these things should not ruin the main point I tried to share here: this is a hidden gem with fewer than 1,500 reviews, at least in English, and that is unfair. This game didn't get the attention it deserves. Please buy it and play it. Have your own honeymoon stage of 20+ hours and try to do it your way. You won't regret a single minute of your time.
I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that the game was made by Chinese developers. Usually, at least in my perception, Chinese games often feel "copy-paste" - technically fine, but lacking soul. Back To The Dawn completely breaks that stereotype. This game looks, sounds, and feels outstanding. A true masterpiece. The story is delivered gradually and very thoughtfully - through dialogues, situations, and player choices. It allows you to deeply understand the characters’ motivations and genuinely empathize with them. The dramatization is strong and well-balanced: tension and emotions are felt throughout the entire game. The gameplay perfectly supports the narrative. The prison feels alive and genuinely dangerous - you have to think, adapt, and consider the consequences of your decisions. The world reacts to the player, which greatly enhances immersion. There are many characters, and what’s especially pleasing is how well they are developed. Each one has a distinct personality, a past, personal secrets, and a role within the prison hierarchy, making the world feel rich and believable. The atmospheric music perfectly complements what’s happening on screen, enhancing key moments and making them even more memorable - whether tense, emotional, or even lighthearted. The game delivers a powerful, atmospheric, and emotional experience that stays with you long after finishing it. I recommend it to everyone - I’m confident this game will appeal to almost anyone.
The core concept of the game is pretty simple: explore a prison and execute an escape within 21 days. While there is a time limit on your victory, the game is pretty lenient: time only passes when you actually perform an action, so you aren't punished if you have to backtrack or need some time to decide what you want to do. There's a lot of decision-making in each day: do you want to keep your head down and earn some money with prison jobs, build up relationships with other inmates, make a toothbrush shiv and stab that loser Diego? The 46 fellow inmate NPCs add a lot of life to this game. They all have their own stories going on, which you can learn about by eavesdropping on their conversations or bonding with them. There's a good variety between them; some of the inmates are violent whackjobs, some had compelling reasons for the crimes they committed, and others are just kinda dumb. Each one also gives you a different bonus when you max out your relationship with them, which can add a bit of variety to each playthrough since you can't make friends with everyone. My favorite feature, though, is that there are two different playable characters you can select which massively changes how the plot unfolds. As a panther, Bob has night vision, superior athletics, and combat training that Thomas the fox completely lacks at the start of the game. However, his mission has quite a few complications that limit his escape options and he's already joined a prison gang which prevents him from getting rewards from the other 2. Thomas the fox, meanwhile, starts relatively unsuited for prison life, but is able to do jobs for any of the 3 prison gangs and has some support from his ex-girlfriend Maggie who can mail over items and money to help you out. The best part is, the character you don't play as still shows up in the prison as an inmate, and you can see parts of their story unfold in the background. The only real criticism I have is that once you've done a playthrough as both characters, the replayability is a bit awkward. A lot of the escape paths require you to do similar things, and the NPC schedules and events are the same from playthrough to playthrough. There is a lot of variability to the game, but a lot of it happens toward the end, so experiencing other endings if often best experienced by loading a few days earlier and just escaping through a different route you found. There's a NG+ mode, but it makes you so overpowered by retaining all of your skills that it mostly becomes busywork. Overall, this was a great experience. I enjoyed the planning, character building, and exploration. There was enough challenge that finally finding an escape route felt triumphant, but it wasn't so strict that playing the game felt stressful.
Easily GOTY 2025. I have completed both campaigns (Thomas & Bob) on the hardest difficulties (Skidroad & Grey). Great writing, fair RPG & dice rolling mechanic, massive player freedom with decisions throughout the entire game beginning to end, uhhh.... a lot more. Oh, the art looks amazing. The game isn't 100% perfect, but it's damn close and beat my expectations by a lot; especially considering how poor game releases have been recently. My main criticisms are easily solvable. QOL: 1. Bob having poor fast travel mechanics in the sewer (why isn't every visited location available after moving the toilet?) . This isn't a problem with Thomas. 2. The DoT to body in the Sewer when resting is avoidable simply by going to your cell, except this is unnecessarily time consuming. Just make the PrC not take damage when doing an action in the Sewer they could otherwise do elsewhere accessible. Missed opportunities for story/character development: 1. Gang interaction was lacking. It'd have been cool to explore the dynamic of the gangs, how they formed prior to coming to the prison, and possibly get more non-mechanical interactions for ranking up in the gang. 2. Romantic interests being pretty much purely mechanical with little writing or development is slightly upsetting, but they're side characters you can only interact with once a day. 3. During the Cafeteria brawl with Bob, I saved Vincent and he had absolutely no follow-up for that the next day, or even a mechanical effect like a Rapport increase. All of these things are fixable in under 100 hours of developing, and don't take away from the core experience.
I wanna preface this by saying I've never been drawn to games of this nature before. I don't really like puzzle games where you have to do one thing to reveal another thing you need to do and stuff like that. But this game is amazing; I haven't been this invested in a game's story in a long time. Some people will look past this game because it stars animals. To be clear, this is NOT a furry-centric game. It's a story that does involve sentient animals that are more human than animal, but at its core, this game is a gripping story about justice and the lengths people will go in order to get it. Every character in this game is incredibly well written and all have extremely interesting, if not heart wrenching stories about how they ended up in prison. So many ways to escape, so many stories to learn. I've played about 92 hours of this game and I'm STILL not done with all of Thomas' escape routes but I find myself compelled to get them for myself anyhow even after going and getting both of Bob's endings. The only downside to this game--which isn't even a "real" downside--is that you gotta love reading. If you don't like games where you read all the time then you won't like this game. Oh, and save yourself a headache. I know it's very tempting to go into these sorts of games and play on a difficulty other than the easiest but play this game on the easiest mode. The re-reroll and memory recall will stop you from tearing you hair out if you happen screw up an important roll. I know that will turn this game into more of an extremely elaborate visual novel instead of a proper game with consequences but trust me, it's still worth it. So what're you waiting for? Buy this game and support the devs, they deserve it!
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Frequently Asked Questions
Back to the Dawn is currently priced at 23.60€ on Steam.
Yes, Back to the Dawn is currently available at a 20% discount. You can purchase it for 23.60€ on Steam.
Yes, Back to the Dawn received 4,579 positive votes out of a total of 4,935 achieving a rating of 8.95.
😎
Back to the Dawn was developed by Metal Head Games and published by Spiral Up Games.
Yes, Back to the Dawn is playable and fully supported on Windows.
No, Back to the Dawn is not playable on MacOS.
No, Back to the Dawn is not playable on Linux.
Back to the Dawn is a single-player game.
Yes, there are 3 DLCs available for Back to the Dawn. Explore additional content available for Back to the Dawn on Steam.
No, Back to the Dawn does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
No, Back to the Dawn does not support Steam Remote Play.
Yes, Back to the Dawn is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Back to the Dawn.
Data sources
The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.
Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 16 July 2026 21:29 UTC |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 25 July 2026 03:54 UTC |
| Steam price | 28 July 2026 18:23 UTC |
| Steam reviews | 26 July 2026 20:04 UTC |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Back to the Dawn, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Back to the Dawn
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Back to the Dawn concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Back to the Dawn compatibility
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Game modes
Features
Online players
95
Developer
Metal Head Games
Publisher
Spiral Up Games
Release
17 Jul 2025
Platforms
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