Planned Release Date: To be announced

About This Game

The Back Country is a simulation puzzle game about religious osmosis between species. It is currently in development by the studio Dark Meadow.

Play as a strange old forest spirit, hiding behind warped trees, shy to the creatures you see in front of yourself, the perspective almost matching that of a cross section of an ant hill. With four arms, you hold your crucible and crystal ball. Your crucible dictates which creature you're focused on while the crystal ball shows you puzzle and research progress. Your main power, though, is your ability to zoom in on each creature. When zoomed in, you can read their whispering thoughts and dictate their actions.

Each creature comes with its own predisposed or randomly generated starting skills. These skills are what the clans need to self-sustain, survive, make puzzle progress, and unlock things via research. There is one special skill, though, called neurosense that's different from the rest: the higher the creature's neurosense, the higher the creature accepts the player's presence and input. To build neurosense, the creature must believe in the player. To build player belief, the creature must be directed to do actions it likes to do without its suspicion towards the player rising in fear of your malintent.

As the game progresses, and more creatures are born and die, and puzzles get solved and research gets done, you learn more and more about the reality and unreality of The Back Country.

Research is done differently between the various clans of creatures in The Back Country. And accordingly, a clan's ludic focus is centered around such values as well. The wolves focus on societal research, the pigs on intellectual research, and the crocodiles on spiritual research. Part of the player's intended experience includes the player learning how to merge these pre-existing tenants with their own neurosense ideology.

Along these main threads of gameplay, there are subtle but powerful things beneath the surface of The Back Country's world. A complex genetics system beneath seemingly average breeding affects creature color and proportionality. Along with these physical signs of genetics, creatures also inherit starting skill boosts from things their parents are particularly good with. But with any good genetics system, a significant part of the creature's phenotype and ability is based on randomness.

Other things in the back country include: clan hierarchy, zodiac compatibility between lovers, and cross-species love.

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

Creatures can procreate with each other via suggested sex (not shown) in a building the player cannot go into.
When creatures give birth, the player's camera is locked onto them and the player has to watch.