Edna & Harvey: The Breakout - Silly Silly Grimness

Let's start with a quick rundown, here we have Daedelic Entertainment, a games-developer and publisher from Germany who specialise mostly in point and click adventure titles. They have even been called the 'Lucasarts of Germany' which, lets face it, is an incredibly big call for any studio given Lucasarts point and click legacy. With that in mind, we are up against one of their first proper point and click titles, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout, a story about a young girl, trapped in an asylum with only a stuffed rabbit for company... Oh and a murder mystery. Let's jump in shall we?

First off we have the main meat of any point and click adventure, the story and its a little... off, so to speak. The main reason the story at times doesn't stick as well as it probably should is down to two main points, the first being rather awkward translations, occasionally jokes don't exactly work as they should thanks to either the punchline or setup being wrecked through translation. The bigger reason however that things don't really stick well is down to a very uneven tone throughout with silly comedic moments, suddenly interrupted by incredibly dark ones, the ending too throwing itself deep into 'dark' territory, but the shocks not exactly working thanks to silly moments peppered throughout.

The other main part of any adventure title comes from the puzzles themselves and this too is a mixed bag. Usually puzzles work well and the solutions are usually based within logic, where the issues arise however is that too many of the puzzles also rely on a lot of backtracking, forcing you to trawl across the whole asylum just to get to a room on the same floor as where you were, thanks to a combination of locked doors, gates and guards. Apart from that issue though, most the puzzles work well and come off smartly, once again with one or two exceptions.

The visuals too are very uneven, just like the rest of the game. While the big clunky cartoon art-style works in part, it also detracts from the more darker plot points. The animation too is very clunky and uneven, with a serious lack of frames making the characters movements seem awkward. That said, the art style also happens to have its moments, each character is quite clear, items are never really hidden thanks to bad design and locations do manage to look the part quite well without becoming boring.

The game is also nice to more casual players, an auto-save feature means that should a crash happen, you never will have lost any real progress and a item-scan feature, done by hitting the space bar to reveal all the items/things you can interact with, is a lifesaver. The game also avoids a lot of the 'item-issues' of most adventure titles by showcasing a different comment if you try and use one item with another, sometimes running into silly commentary and odd 'Pretend' play moments between Edna & Harvey.

In all, you have a game that's an incredibly mixed bag where things don't exactly work out as they should at all times. Its a fun title however, but its one that doesn't exactly fit in with the 'German Lucasarts' title.