Upcoming 2024 video game
2024 video game
Broken Roads is an upcoming 2024 video game by independent developer Drop Bear Bytes to be published by Versus Evil for Windows, Xbox Series X/S, and the Nintendo Switch. Described as a post-apocalyptic computer role-playing game,[2] Broken Roads is set in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia. The game has been compared to non-traditional dialogue-based role-playing games, such as Disco Elysium, in featuring a mechanic described the 'Moral Compass', that responds to moral choices made by the player.
Gameplay
Broken Roads is a role-playing game in which players will accompany a party of up to five characters and participate in a "blend of turn-based tactical combat (and) traditional and original" role-playing mechanics.[2] The game will feature a 'Moral Compass' system in which player actions, including choices made in dialogue and quests, are represented on a map between four quadrants, 'utilitarian', 'humanist', 'machiavellian' and 'nihilist' positions. The player's position on the Moral Compass will provide the player with traits affecting gameplay mechanics.[3] The player's companions and key characters feature their own compass, which will affect their reaction to the player's statements and choices.[4]
Development
Broken Roads is being developed by Drop Bear Bytes, an independent Australian developer based in Torquay founded by director Craig Ritchie in 2019.[5] Development began in January 2019,[5] with a reveal trailer released to the public in October of that year.[6] Broken Roads received support from several Australian state government arts programs, including funding from the Victorian Government's Assigned Production Investment Games program in 2020 and 2021,[7] and from the Queensland Government's Digital Games Incentive in August 2022.[8] A demo of the game was released on Steam in June 2023.[4] In December 2023, Versus Evil, the project's publisher, became defunct.[9][10][11]
The Australian setting and identity became a major component of the design of Broken Roads over time. Originally conceived to take place within a generic setting, Ritchie found Australia's "conflicted culture", including its legacies of colonialism and genocide, provided an effective balance between "humor, fun and levity" with "serious, adult themes (and) tough questions".[12] During development, the scope of the game was narrowed from across the Australian continent to a setting in the Wheatbelt region of Western Australia.[12] The developers visited the region several times during pre-production to capture reference images to depict several of the area's landmarks and landscapes in-game.[13]
The development team engaged the input of Indigenous elders to capture the "respectful and authentic" representation of Indigenous Australians in the setting of the game.[13] In 2019, Drop Bear Bytes hired Yorta Yorta and Ngarrindjeri writer Cienan Muir as a 'narrative consultant' for the game. Cienan stated that his role was to provide a "critical eye" in and provide a chance to "get creative and let (his) own stories have some influence" in the game's narrative.[14] In 2022, Karla Hart was brought on board to write a significant portion of the game.[15] Australian stage and screen actor Uncle Jack Charles was originally cast as a narrator in the game, featuring in a release trailer,[16] but passed away in September 2022 before his participation in the game could be finalised.[13]
The game was strongly influenced by earlier non-traditional role-playing games with an emphasis on dialogue. Narrative lead Leanne Taylor-Giles stated that, like in Fallout, the game was designed to provide players with "all kinds of different ways to approach each problem", including pacifistic approaches with dialogue.[17] Drop Bear Bytes enlisted several industry veterans, including creative lead Colin McComb, who had worked on Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment, cited by Ritchie as "big influences" on Broken Roads,[18] and Leanne Taylor-Giles, who had worked with McComb on Torment: Tides of Numenera.[19] In 2022, Dean Baron, a well known Tasmanian game developer joined the team making this the third Australian state currently to have a hand in development.[20] Pre-release reception of Broken Roads identified similar comparisons, with IGN writing that the game "has the potential to be the next game in the Planescape: Torment lineage of deeply introspective, talky RPGs",[21] and PC Gamer describing the game as having the "potential to become the next Disco Elysium", citing its "philosophical" approach.[19]
