The label

In 1979 a rock you hit became two faster rocks. In 1986 a robot that could not take a step climbed a hill by looking at it. In 1984 a galaxy grew from a seed, the same for every pilot who arrived. Backsight keeps those rules whole and asks each game the one question its decade could not afford: what if every ship obeyed a different physics, what if you were not alone on the hill, what if the galaxy were one place for everyone. Every title on this site names the game it rereads and the question it puts to it.

What a reread is

A remake redraws the game and a tribute borrows its look. A reread leaves the rules alone, because they are the reason the game is worth playing again, and changes one thing, the thing the machines of the time could not carry. Frantumi keeps the rocks that split and gives each hull its own mass, propellant and gun; Crestwatch keeps the energy that is only ever moved and puts three other players on the same hills, so every tree one of them absorbs is a tree you cannot have; Perielio keeps the ship and the seeded galaxy and runs each star system on one server, so a fight or a trade comes out the same on every machine.

Where the name comes from

A surveyor who has moved the instrument turns it back to a point already measured and reads it again: that reading, the backsight, is what fixes the new position. On a rifle the backsight is the notch at the rear, the one you look through before the front post. Both say the same thing about these games: you look back to know where you are.

Who is behind it

A small team writes the games and the site, and the "we" on these pages is that team. The same people answer the mail at hello@backsight.games.

How to write

Mail is the whole contact: there is no form, because a form with nobody behind it is a promise nobody keeps. For the press, the page of each title carries its facts, its images and the date those facts are true. Security problems go to the address in security.txt.