Edna & Harvey: The Breakout

Edna and her stuffed pet Harvey find themselves in an insane asylum without any memory explaining why.

Mac

Overview

Edna & Harvey: The Breakout is a 2D third person point and click adventure game developed by German studio Daedalic Entertainment. It features a highly stylized cartoon look and has won multiple awards.

Plot Synopsis

Edna wakes up without any memories in a padded room. She's convinced that she's sane and in the centre of a big conspiracy, and decides to escape from her cell with the help of her stuffed rabbit, Harvey. She overhears a conversation between Doctor Marcel, the head of the asylum, and a guard, talking about how they are trying to erase her memory, but no matter how close they get to succeeding, she always remembers. Breaking into his office, she discovers a newspaper article claiming that her father murdered an eight year old boy and subsequently died. Convinced this is a horrible lie and even more proof of a conspiracy, she vows to escape from the asylum and find proof of her father's innocence.

Edna eventually manages to hatch a convoluted plan to make a copy of the master key to the building. Along the way, she discovers in a locked room a shrine to Doctor Marcel's son, Alfred, her old playmate and the boy her father supposedly killed. She also delves into her memories of her childhood and Alfred to remember old skills and more information about her past.

Managing to procure a vehicle and several inmates to help her, Edna heads off home to clear her father's name. However, the car crashes and she finds her father's grave in a church graveyard. Before the priest can explain exactly what happened back then, he gets distracted, leading to a chain of events that lead to Edna trying to leave the church.

At her old house, Edna creates a sturdier house key and unlocks her bedroom, before tempomorphing into the past with Harvey in search of her diary to find out exactly what happened to Alfred. Unfortunately, it turns out she tempomorphed back to the day of the crime, so she resolves to follow her father around so that he can't possibly kill Alfred, but this is complicated by the fact she's been grounded for putting a lizard down the back of Alfred's shirt. Things don't quite work out as planned, although Edna finally finds out exactly what happened on that fatal day and, back in the present, expresses her shock.

Edna is left with a choice of following the advice of Harvey or the advice of Doctor Marcel, leading to two very different endings.

Gameplay

The game is a very old style point and click adventure game, returning to the on-screen verb interface. Edna has the options to "look at", "pick up", "talk to" and "use" any items (yes, that does mean dialogue lines were actually written for talking to almost every inanimate object in the game). Right clicking also applies the default action to any individual item.

As in many more recent adventure games, the space bar acts as a hotspot indicator, showing up every available item to interact with on each individual screen if the player chooses to use it.

Harvey is a useable object in Edna's inventory. The player can use him to provide insight and sometimes puzzle clues by using him with items. He also performs an important function: if Edna sees something that strongly reminds her of her past, he can "tempomorph" her back into the past so that she can learn a skill or some information.

In the tempomorphing sequences, Harvey is always playable (and sometimes Edna is as well). He can't directly interact with objects, but he can reach places that Edna can't to get her information, and can talk to her about people and items to try and aid her memory. These sequences are quite short and only last until you reach your relatively simple objective.

The game has two different endings, which both lead to different epilogues. The epilogues actually slot together (except for Edna's different fate in both of them); what happened to most other characters is only mentioned in one epilogue, so seeing both endings gives the player a broader picture of what happened to other characters.

English Release

An English release of the game was to be originally released by Merscom. However, a new publishing deal was signed with Viva Media for North America and Lace Mamba Global for the UK release.