The nice thing about dreaming is that you can just keep falling without worrying about hitting the ground. Unfortunately this is not a dream.
BackDoor is an episodic Adventure Game about a monochromatic boy who crash lands in a bedroom that is not his own. That bedroom happens to be in a house that is located on the moon, meaning he needs to find a way other than the front door to escape. And there's no one else inside the house, except for a mysterious entity that can communicate through telephones.
From the talking phone, the boy learns about the back doors in reality which lead to a sort of world between other worlds, but the phone's assistance doesn't come for free.
Three episodes have been released, called Door 1, Door 2, and Door 3.
This game provides examples of:
- Artificial Gravity: The house in Door 1 has a device that resembles a thermostat that can change how strong the gravity is in the house.
- Big, Thin, Short Trio: The Corkscrew Gang members: Cork, Screw, and Rivet.
- Bird People: Door 3 is set in a society of these. They evolved from regular birds and became the dominant species of their world. They specialise in flying public transport.
- Block Puzzle: There's a simple sliding block puzzle in Door 1.
- Chekhov's Boomerang: Door 3 introduces you to the Skeleton Key, which connects locked doors with keyholes to other nearby locked doors. This becomes a focal puzzle mechanic and when trying to get to the engine room in the endgame, Clove remembers how the key works and locks herself in a room so you can use her locked door with the nearby one to bypass an NPC Roadblock.
- Chekhov's Gun: At one point you have to remove a crowbar that's jamming gears to progress. Later you have to use the same crowbar to jam different gears while rescuing Aert.
- Could Say It, But...: The phone could say that it might have been his fault the train went off the rails because he tried to show off, and that it was a really good thing that the player saved the day. But he's not going to.
- Cutting the Knot: You can get an item out of a vending machine by interacting with the machine a whole bunch, or you can just smash it open with the crowbar.
- Dug Too Deep: Parodied in Door 2, where The Gearworks gets shut down when their new factory wing expansion project ends up uncovering a huge cache of water. Since this was found by a society of robots, this is the equivalent to humans discovering a toxic gas leak.
- Easter Egg: An easter egg can be found in all episodes. Using the easter egg at the right location unlocks the Developer Room.
- Door 1: After entering the first room of the Backdoors from the basement, head up an invisible path to an island with the game's developer in bed. Talk to him, and he'll give you an Easter Egg. Go back to the house and use the Egg on the fridge, which has a note saying "GET EGGS".
- Door 2: Give a bucket of water to the disguised human in the bar. He'll explain who he is and give you an Easter Egg. Take the Egg to the park and use it on the chicken statue.
- Door 3: After the train docks at the station, go back onto it and wake up the sleeping passenger, who gives you an Easter Egg. Go back to the first station and attempt to give the egg to the hungry bird, who instead leaves in disgust.
- Fantastic Racism: Most robots in the underground city don't like humans much, but they've also been separated for so long that the robots forgot what humans look like.
- Floorboard Failure: There's a cabinet in Door 1 that can be moved onto weaker flooring, which results in it crashing through the floor later in the game.
- Heroic Mime: The player character is one, who doesn't speak at all.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: Clover the robot manages to look just enough like a human to secretly hide among them just out of curiosity and fun.
- I Can See You: If you ignore the ringing phone at the end of Door 1, it informs you that it can see you walking off.
- Improvised Parachute: At the start of Door 2, the player has to use the towel as a parachute. It's also used to fly upwards from air vents in Door 3.
- Inconveniently-Placed Conveyor Belt: There are a bunch of conveyor belts in the abandoned factory. There's one room that has a whole maze of conveyor belts, and another room where the conveyor belt acts as a Broken Bridge.
- Joke and Receive: If the player draws a fake ad for Sunflower Snacks before receiving some as part of a Chain of Deals, he'll express surprise that it was a real brand.
- No-Sell: Happens when The Treatment is used on the player character.
- Offscreen Inertia: The narration comments that the oven will probably be on forever after you retrieve the box cutter from it without turning it off.
- Ominous Mundanity: Robots that stand up to the Corkscrew Gang are given The Treatment.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: There's a shopkeeper in the second episode that refuse to sell the player character anything until he makes a disguise out of an actual paper bag. Clove also uses the same one to get multiple attempts at a lottery in Door 3.
- Player Nudge: After receiving the newspaper in Door 3, showing it to Clove has her remark on why the word "RAINSTORM" is specifically circled, as if it was a codeword or something. This is the password needed to connect the local backdoors to the train's destination.
- Police Are Useless: In Door 2, the police are too busy beating the world record for most streets closed to help you with a kidnapping case.
- Robot Republic: The robots have created their own city in order to get away from the humans.
- Runaway Train: While showing off how he can manipulate the ROOT computer of the avian world, the phone accidentally gets it wet, causing a rift to open up and send the train to the backdoors, which is especially dangerous considering it's running around the backstage of reality and could cause serious damage. The player has to activate a tracking device in the engine room so the phone can pinpoint it and send it to its destination.
- Running Gag: In the first game you can draw something different on every picture in the house. In the second game if you try to combine the pencil and Aert's picture, the narration notes that you have to resist the urge to draw all over it. The third door has different ads that can be drawn on.
- Shout-Out:
- The first episode opens with the player falling in a way reminiscent of the first Myst game.
- Door 2 mentions that the police are aiming for a world record of most blocked roads, similar to a comment in EarthBound (1994) regarding the Onett police force.
- Sink or Swim Mentor: The phone tells the player that it's here to help the first time they meet, and then refuses to tell him how to escape the room he's in. It does teach the player about backdoors, but generally it avoids telling him how to do anything.
- The Stinger: Door 3 ends with two people in a different world watching a meteor shower, only to realise that not only are there lots of them, but they're getting bigger...
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Clove follows the player to a world of anthropomorphic birds, and concludes that it's the surface, but wonders why all the humans are wearing bird costumes. The phone invents a festival to explain it so that he doesn't have to tell her about different worlds.
- The Unintelligible: Cork only talks in beeps.
- Video Game Caring Potential:You can optionally return the keycard to the conductor at the end of Door 3, after the player doesn't need it anymore. You can also use the towel to dry off the unlucky wet passenger.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Robots are killed by water.
- You Shouldn't Know This Already: You're not allowed to push the shelving units to escape the room you get locked in during Door 2 before speaking to the phone, or use the bucket to collect water.
