Edna & Harvey: The Breakout

Edna struggles to recall her past as she stands in a padded cell of an insane asylum. She is paranoid that there is something sinister going on, so she wants to escape. Her rabbit stuffed toy, Harvey keeps her company. He can talk and chip in humorous remarks; but his talking ability is just a projection of Edna's mind.

On her journey, Edna meets some really wacky characters which is obvious given that she is in an insane asylum. The dialog is generally well-written and well-voiced, and both Edna and Harvey are very likeable characters.

The point-and-click game-play is built on the old game play style where you click a verb on the menu, then choose an object to interact with. The four verbs are Look At, Pick Up, Talk To, and Use.

There's a surprising amount of dialog that can be triggered by attempting to use items on objects, rather than just relying on a few generic comment like "no", or "I cannot use that". You'll find yourself doing things you know are not the solution just to hear what she has to say.

Shortly after starting the game, you are introduced to an interesting aspect of the game where you visit Edna's old memories which Harvey names 'tempomorphing'. In these sections, the story develops a bit more as you learn about Edna's family and relationship to the doctor and his son. You also get to appreciate Harvey's character more as he becomes controllable and guides Edna in these scenes. Sadly, this feature is only used a few points in the game, rather than being a main feature that it seemed to suggest it would be.

For most of the game, you are given a vague overview of what you need to achieve, but are then left to wander the series of rooms throughout the asylum without much direction. The puzzles themselves can be a bit strange, and you don't get much hints. Quite early on I started consulting a walk-though to prod me in the right direction, and despite this; sometimes I had no idea why I was required to do certain actions. For example, Peter is depressed and sitting at the bar. Edna suggest cheering him up which he says is a good idea. Talking to him doesn't work, but he isn't giving any suggestions of anything else you could do. After giving him dipping sauce, he rushes to the toilet, and you can progress. Yet, he never indicated he was hungry, or that he reacted badly to any form of food.

The size of the asylum means progress is slow. Some puzzles rely on a lot of back-tracking, and performance issues mean that each room takes a few seconds to load, which adds to the frustration.

The interface can also cause problems. Sometimes, the game will seem to ignore you click, meaning you have to select the verb/item again before retrying. Sometimes this can happen when trying to exit rooms, so you think it is loading, but in fact, Edna is just standing at the edge of the screen.

Despite the cartoon graphics, this game is not suited for kids. The story is quite silly, but does get quite dark towards the end of the game. The graphics look decent enough, but a fair few actions that you do don't have any animations, or the animation suffers from a lack of frames. Even when you set the game to full-screen, it is cropped to around 800x600; so you may as well just play windowed.

There are other problems with the game, such as freezes and crashes. The 'menu puzzle' can't be completed when you pick up the potato note first, and the game crashes when alt-tabbing from full-screen.

As much as I wanted to enjoy Edna & Harvey, the game is just disappointing. It lacks technical polish, misses the opportunity to elaborate on the tempomorphing idea, and suffers vague puzzles and direction. It's not the worst point-and-click adventure out there, but it definitely falls short of what it could have been.