An escape RPG where you play your choice of two protagonists that must complete their mission and escape within 21 days. There’s even a roll of dice to check if you succeed or fail. This game has a cast of awesome characters, all of whom are various animals. As Thomas, you play a journalist who must escape a prison. As Bob, you play as an undercover cop performing one last job. You can choose what perks you start with (class), and pick how difficult you want your experience to be. There is a new game plus where even if you fail, you can start over with the bonds and skills you’ve gained before still intact. Your main goal is to complete your mission and escape. There are plenty of different endings depending on the choices you make, making this game extremely replayable, while still keeping you entertained each time.

Here’s what I liked:

Animal Kingdom — One thing that makes this prison escape adventure particularly charming is that every character is a different animal (or a different species, such as multiple dog breeds). Who knows, maybe you’re favorite animal is featured in the game! There are gangs in prison, and they include Sharp Tooth, Black Claw, and Big Foot. As you might imagine, these gangs have mostly members who fit these descriptions. The Big Foot gang, for example, has a hippo, elephant, and even a walrus. You can imagine what the other gangs have as members. Besides prisoners, there is a huge cast of characters that adds to a really spectacular atmosphere. In the menu, you are able to read a bio of the characters and it grows as you bond with them. Each character has a backstory, and it’s really fun to read through what these characters have been through before being in prison.

Ruthless Friends — You can’t just be a loner in prison if you want to survive. Most of the characters in the game have a bond you can build up. Chatting with them and giving them gifts that they like will increase this bond. Giving them something they hate or doing things in certain gangs can lessen the friendship level. Want to attack someone? They will hate you, and you’ll have to rebuild the relationship day by day. Getting a character to max level gives you a bonding mission. Doing these will net you their specific skill. After gaining this, you can get to 100 after the bond for an upgraded version of their skill. This allows you to target certain characters if you notice they have a skill you want.

Day by Day — Each day starts with you waking up. Maybe you’ll brush your teeth for some extra charisma. But maybe you don’t have any more toothpaste. You’ll be greeted by an announcement that gets you ready for the day. Once that’s done, you’ll be figuring out an escape, progressing the main mission, and bonding with fellow inmates. There’s so much to do every day that many times, you’ll have to wait until the next day to finish what you started. You must keep yourself from being hungry and maintain your sanity. If your body reaches 0, then it’s game over. It’s definitely a case where you want to complete “just one more day”. It’s difficult to pull yourself away from what you’re doing, but if you don’t have a lot of time, you can always save and do things a day or two at a time. If you do have a lot of time, you might sink in most of your free time into this game.

Multiple Escapes — You can choose how you want to escape. Or if you’re like me, plan out multiple routes and enjoy more achievements by loading previous saves. There are a lot of ways to escape, and some aren’t very obvious. Thomas has an easier experience with escaping than Bob does, so I would suggest starting with Thomas and completing all of his escape routes before trying the other character. Some escape routes are based on crafting, while others are a bit more complicated. There are even fights you have to do for some to work out, meaning you’ll want to get used to how the fighting works (and eat a lot of pizza).

Mo Money No Problems — Cash can be hard to come by at first, but you will soon be rolling in the dough as you do jobs for the prison. Each job has a different mini game, and if you’re tired of doing them after three of the same job are done, you can allow your character to do it automatically. This added some extra fun to your prison life. Your money goes a long way, allowing you to buy items as gifts or to complete specific missions. You can even steal if you want to! There is a spot to sell items once a day, and you can gain more with the use of certain skills. This gives you a whole lot of options for what to do with your money. If you have a lot in excess, you can order pizzas once you find the phone number. This gives you a plus one to health permanently. I really enjoyed the ecosystem within the prison!

Experience in Prison — In order to activate skills, you have to use experience. There are four categories of experience to gain. You get these through everyday activities. You can work out, eat specific foods, read, etc. There are many ways to gain the experience you need, and there’s even a main stat based on these same categories. If you don’t shower, you’ll have less charisma, for example. A lot of times, you have to roll dice for the success of your actions. If you succeed, you can gain experience as well. Then there are skills that can also help with experience gain. No matter what you do, everything seems to be impactful and important in your overall character build.

It’s About Time — Games based on surviving or having time limits usually aren’t for me. I enjoy spending my time as I want, not liking there being any sort of timer. However, time is frozen here until you complete specific actions. This allows you to carefully plan out your days with less stress. You do have a stamina bar, but you can eat things to give you more stamina if your day demands it. You do have a time limit for escaping, a total of 21 days. But even if you fail, you can do a new game plus and keep the same skills and bonds you’ve already made previously. This means while there is a time limit, there also kind of isn’t. You can do so much, being able to do everything you want in the game. It just depends on how well you do for the next playthrough. I played this game for over a hundred hours and got all achievements. I didn’t feel rushed at all, in fact, there were multiple times I straight out skipped the days to get time to pass faster.

Here’s what I didn’t like:

A Fighting Chance — There are battles you can engage in. Whether you’re being bullied by an alligator or choosing your next victim, there is sure to be a fight you will have to survive. There are even some boxing matches you can participate in. I found that the fights were way too difficult at first. I was being completely destroyed. However, once I got more skills and health, I couldn’t lose a fight. The cool-downs of the fighting skills took way longer than they should. Either you died before using something a second time, or you won before. There really was no middle ground. This made cool-downs useless because they were never activated a second time. This could just have been the difference between me playing for the first time and then doing multiple new game plus files that led to overpowered skills. Not that I didn’t like the fights, they were fun, but I feel they need a revamp.

Wrap-up

I could not get enough of this game while I was playing it. I played for hours every day trying to get everything done. When I accomplished everything I could, I searched for more information on the third protagonist that hasn’t been released yet. It’s the first game in a long time that I couldn’t put down, and when it was time to, I had a hard time doing so. I couldn’t even cover half of what I wanted to in the review. There’s crafting, lockpicking, sneaking, extorting, TV night, poker, and the list goes on. There are so many great moments to experience, and many people will want to do every escape method and bond with every single character. The new game plus works perfectly, and with so much to do, you may spend as much time as I did while being incarcerated.

Score: Must Buy

Back to the Dawn was published by Spiral Up Games and developed by Metal Head Games on Xbox One. It was released on July 17 2025, for $23.99. A copy was provided for review