What is Text Me Back?
Text Me Back is a story-rich 3D adventure game where your choices matter (they truly do). You will control April (the main character) from a third-person view. The game will be released on Steam in five episodes. You will also be able to play a demo that will consist of about half of Episode 1’s content. Episode 1 will be free while Episode 2-5 will be available as paid DLC.
The gameplay focuses on interactions with characters who will develop according to your conversations with them. Your choices in these interactions will lead to different outcomes when you meet the characters again. Some you will befriend or even fall in love with, while others might be more hostile toward you. It all depends on how you approach them and how you influence them. Some characters will also be unwilling to talk to you if you have become friends with someone they don’t like, so be careful with who you befriend!
Furthermore, you will also be able to examine items and characters. This will make April comment on the item/person. Her comments will depend on the hidden “Karma” metric, which can best be described as her attitude toward the world – whether she is mostly polite or aggressive.
Every character will have a full dialogue tree, and there will be multiple romance options. Both male and female.
There will also be mini-games and puzzles that you will need to complete/solve in order to progress in the story. You will, for example, be asked to help April complete a biology test and perhaps also help her through a small cheerleading mini-game (if I can get that to work!).
The Story
So, I don’t want to give too much away as I want to preserve the Episode 1 cliffhanger for the actual release of the game as I think it will be best if people go into that with zero spoilers.
Basically, Text Me Back is a story of loss and acceptance of loss. Those are the two main themes I want to convey. There are other significant themes, but I am debating whether to reveal them, as they are perhaps a bit less vague and could result in people guessing what will happen.
The main character is April Hamilton, an 18-year-old high school student in her senior year. Her mom died ten years ago of cancer, so her dad has been raising her on his own. She’s a cheerleader, soccer player, and pretty popular, but she still lacks the confidence to pursue her true life dream. To become a manga artist. She has been accepted to Finance at the University of Maine, as that is what’s expected of her. Well, to find a way to earn a living, because the struggling artist certainly doesn’t eat well, and she isn’t even sure if she is good enough, anyway. Everyone on the internet seems much better than her, at any rate.
The story begins on April 11, 2022. Besides it being the 10th anniversary of the death of April’s mother, there are also other quite peculiar things going on in the town of Evergreen. Vultures are all over their driveway. In fact, they are everywhere in town. Her friends Daisy and Amber can attest to that when she gets to school. And who other than the notorious Mia Rhodes chose this to be her first day of school? Daisy sure knows a thing or two about this girl that will make your skin crawl.
It’s already Spring, so prom is on everyone’s mind, and April and her friends make a bet: “Find a prom date before the end of the day, or you will have to pay for everyone’s smoothies for the rest of the summer”.
While they look for dates, April keeps receiving strange, vague texts from a mysterious person. At first, she laughs them off, but soon she will come to realize that they are essential to her survival.
However, unbeknownst to them, their friend Amy Joslin had been killed that very night in a brutal, ritualistic fashion. Soon they will get the message. One that will change their world forever. In more ways than one.
Events will be set in motion that will find April stuck in 2002. She has to find a way to get back before it is all too late…
