Overall, the gameplay design for Edna & Harvey: The Breakout - Anniversary Edition is clunky on a console controller and might give too much freedom for a point and click-based game. That said, the story is good enough to push beyond those issues, the puzzles are incredibly clever as they relate to the story, though enormously difficult to overcome at times. At the end of the day, the experience might well be worth the frustration the design causes.
Most people don’t know that LucasArts (formerly LucasFilm Games, currently nothing, sadly) created the point and click genre. They developed the idea that giving players choices would provide a far greater gaming experience rather than asking gamers to guess the game’s moves. By creating this gaming method, gamers would be able to appreciate the storyline more, laying focus more on character development, while avoiding frustration with the game, which was prevalent in text-based adventures. It was and is an ingenious gaming design that has survived generations of gaming PCs, Macs, and consoles. Today, we’re breaking down Edna & Harvey: The Breakout – Anniversary Edition, a point and click adventure that lives by the same original rules.
Let’s get it going.
As I have discovered whilst reviewing Edna & Harvey: The Breakout – Anniversary Edition, the original Edna & Harvey: The Breakout came out on the PC in 2008. It was met with decent review scores and prided itself on the LucasArts mantra with animation, function, and engine. It had the best of all worlds when it came to honoring the point and click genre. Now, the updated console edition of the game retains all of which made the PC version successful, as well as a few quirks that might have made it frustrating. Its gameplay design gives you choices to make decisions, pits you against difficult puzzles, and sometimes simply leaves you guessing, or cursing.
Before we dig into the underbelly of the game, let’s talk about the narrative experience. The story of the game revolves around a supposed psychiatric patient named Edna, who is unsure how she got into her padded cell, and her imaginary bunny friend named Harvey, who keeps Edna company, while also helping her through puzzles and predicaments. If I tell you more than that, then I’m going to start giving away the game, and it shouldn’t be revealed, rather discovered. I can tell you that the story is dark, as it is comedic. The story is probably the driving point to the experience, as it should be in true LucasArts style (they always focused more on story than anything else). Gamers will feel awful for Edna and Harvey, as the game certainly takes you on a journey of recovery and putting together pieces of a shattered past that are more sinister than the game initially lets onto. Again, it’s dark.
It’s quite a helluva story for a game that looks cute and well-animated.
As for the gameplay design, it is both good and bad. The good part of the gameplay is that it mixes some difficult puzzles with some wacky solutions, which will put gamers to the test when it comes to figuring out how to get from point A to B. For example, the game starts out with Edna trying to piece together a solution to get out of her padded cell. The solution to the very first puzzle isn’t obvious, which can leave gamers hanging, even creating a healthy amount of frustration. Finding out where and how to start is a guessing game, but once gamers guess the right way, then the game will be off and running for at least 20-30 more minutes before hitting another roadblock. This might seem like poor design, but it isn’t, rather it’s challenging design. Most point and click games these days tend to come up short on design and pretty much are stop and go movies, where they give gamers so many clues that they might as well sit back and enjoy the show. Edna & Harvey: The Breakout – Anniversary Edition doesn’t do this. It wants to put the player’s brain to the test and see if they can make it through the game to get the full story, which again is worth it.
The risk with too much freedom and not enough clues in the point and click genre is that players will stop playing because they’re getting frustrated. This game will frustrate gamers. It will put brains through the wringer with a shortage of visual cues and help. But that doesn’t make it bad because it challenges gamers. It just makes it irritating. There are plenty of titles that do that without puzzles. I’m looking at you, FromSoftware, you magnificent bastards.
Anyway, Edna & Harvey: The Breakout – Anniversary Edition is tough with its puzzles, which should be greeted by gamers with open arms. The worst part for me about this game is the user interface and the controls.
The controls for Edna & Harvey: The Breakout – Anniversary Edition aren’t fun. The left stick will move your characters, while the right clicks on little markers on-screen where you can choose to interact with things. The right stick isn’t perfect at all. Sometimes you overshoot interactions with things, sometimes it’s spot on. It is rarely perfect, which stinks when you have to choose something in a timely manner. The sticks needed a bit tighter functionality when it came to switching between markers in a room. How markers are displayed on-screen is begging for tighter patterns and movement. That might be the worst part knowing that navigation could have been better and simply wasn’t.
Speaking of markers, they can act as distractions from solutions as well, which are visually infuriating at times. While I understand they are there by design to throw gamers off, it still doesn’t make the pill any easier to swallow. For example, the padded room at the beginning has an overwhelmingly large amount of markers for the player to cycle through. Each marker has a series of options to allow gamers to view it, touch it, or comment on it. Doing that for each pad on the wall was crazy time-wasting. Once the solution in the room is discovered, the game fluctuates from lots of markers to some markers, then back to lots of markers. When you’re trying to find the solution to a puzzle that gives you no hints, you can’t help to feel like you’re wasting time with the markers. Again, it feels visually overwhelming.
As for the interfacing and onscreen controls, working with items from a PlayStation 4 controller and/or switching over to Harvey, who can be played during certain levels, feels clunky. The ability to switch items in/out of the menu selection tool, which is what gamers will use to interact with objects, is done through the L1/R2 rotation menu. Gamers can collect items and then choose them as a part of the action menu (meaning the actions gamers use to complete tasks). Switching between items and switching between characters can slow down the gameplay, especially when the controls are a console control scheme (which is just clunky). Forgetting where things are or how to rotate to things can be a chore when trying to get something done quickly. The devs are essentially in the same boat as LucasArts’ Secret of Monkey Island remastering job, where there are just too many menus in one set of controls. It can get frustrating.
Anyway, these are my biggest complaints about the game, which don’t overshadow the well-thought-through narrative. While they certainly don’t help it, they don’t destroy that beautiful narrative work, which means the world to gamers when it comes to delivering a memorable experience.
Overall, the gameplay design for Edna & Harvey: The Breakout – Anniversary Edition is clunky on a console controller and might give too much freedom for a point and click-based game. That said, the story is good enough to push beyond those issues, the puzzles are incredibly clever as they relate to the story, though enormously difficult to overcome at times. At the end of the day, the experience might well be worth the frustration the design causes.
