Edna and Harvey: The Breakout – Review
What would you do if you’re stuck in a madhouse? If there is nothing else in the room than a table, chair and the padded walls? Ask Edna and Harvey, they have quite the experience with this kind of situations although their answer may shock you… As this title is the first game released by Daedalic Entertainment and the last game to complete their portfolio on Steam, this makes it more special to review.
Story
The key players from this game are Edna, the weirdish girl, and Harvey, the even more weirdish talking rabbit doll. When you start the game, you’ll notice that they’re both in a quite awkward situation. It seems they are locked up in a padded room in some kind of nuthouse. Edna doesn’t recall getting there, heck she doesn’t even remember anything from her past! Talking to Harvey gives you quite some information, namely that your doll isn’t nothing more or less than a projection of your subconscious but keen to get you out of there. There isn’t much to do in your room, although you can bug the guard outside. He isn’t the most friendly guy around but after some chitchat, he turns on the air conditioner and this might have been the biggest mistake of his life…
After some brainstorming and running around, you figure out that the director of the asylum is nothing more than Dr. Marcel, your old neighbour. The death of his son might have something to do with your intake.
Graphics
Daedalic Entertainment released this game on Steam but they didn’t change the graphics. The game has a particular graphic style and it fits the ‘special’ gameplay. The characters and the environments are colourful but childlike, although this is probably how they meant it. This gives the game a more playful effect. The background and specific, important items aren’t indicated, which has its good and bad aspects. These will be discussed later on.
The developers added subtitles and this is a nice feature. The subtitles can be turned off if you want to listen to the voices instead.
Sound
The game has some basic sounds but these are quite basic. The music isn’t that great and very repetitive. The sound is quite loud as well and the only option you have is to turn the music on or off.
There aren’t many sound effects and they aren’t very synchronized with the visual effects. Edna, Harvey and their ‘friends’ all have voices and this is actually a good aspect. The voices really fit the characters and they even pack quite some emotion. You can turn this off as well if you don’t want to hear Edna’s babbling for example.
Gameplay
Edna and Harvey: The Breakout is an old-school point and click game where you have to escape the asylum. When you first start the game, you’re quite perplexed. You start in a padded room and … well, good luck! You don’t get any explanation whatsoever. You can walk around by clicking on a spot and when you hover over something important, the name of the item pops up in the left bottom corner. As stated before, these aren’t indicated. This makes the game more difficult, but it can’t be too easy as well, right? Well, read on then…
Clicking this special spot will get you nowhere. Edna and Harvey use several action buttons at the bottom of the screen to interact with items in the environment or Edna’s bag. The different actions are ‘Look at’, ‘Pick up’, ‘Talk to’ and ‘Use’. These four activities are the key to solve the puzzles and it will lead you to your freedom! The use of these four actions are … quite a pain. You have to select an activity and then click the item(s) u want to look at /pick up/talk to/ use. This system might work if the clickable spot was bigger or more sensitive, you will use the same action quite some times on the same spot.
As this is an old point and click game, Edna and Harvey don’t have any hints available. This is funny at the start, but your good humour will change to a more … grumpy mood. I can just hear you think “And why is that?”. Well, the puzzles in this game are sometimes really easy, but most of the times farfetched. When you progress the story, you will gain a lot of items in your inventory and looking at/ talking to (yes it is possible to talk to items)/ using them on several locations takes a while and really gets your mood down. The hardcore I-will-finish-this-game-without-hints gamer will have fun, but the rest will have a hard time.
A fun aspect is the Tempomorph. Harvey can take you back in time to learn you some cool tricks you have forgotten. During these events, you can switch controls between Harvey and Edna, which gives you a different style of gameplay. Our little rabbit has to find several clues and give those to the younger Edna.
Conclusion
Edna and Harvey: The breakout is an old-school point and click game that takes you back to the good old grumpy days with no hints. The graphics have their own particular style and the sound is quite repetitive. The voice overs fit each character and give a nice twist. The gameplay is nice when you’re in a good mood, but be aware of raging when some of the controls don’t seem to work as you want or as the solution of a puzzle is that weird.
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