BROKEN ROADS
There’s always one game at PAX Australia that is incredibly early in development, yet I can’t resist playing it now. I was given a build of Broken Roads and it felt immediately familiar; Australia’s reds, oranges and greens, wandering camels, graffiti, a caravan with makeshift trailer and solar panels on top. When you take your motley group into the pub, there’s little available to buy. As the chalkboard says “hope for the future” is definitely “sold out”. The demo wasn’t much more than art and evocative levels. The plans for it, however, are exciting.
Designer, Craig Ritchie, certainly saw me coming. Inspired by Baldur’s Gate, this will be a party-based, post-apocalyptic RPG, set in Australia, made with Indigenous consultation. He says, “What better setting for moral dilemmas and thought experiments than a bleak, desperate future?”
A character’s worldview will be represented by a malleable, golden arc on a moral compass, revealing traits and dialogue options. Consistent decision making will result in a narrower (but more powerful) range of choices, within a single, ideological outlook.
Composer, Tim Sunderland says, “I’ve been building instruments out of old scrap musical equipment, bamboo and other woods, basically whatever a post-apocalyptic musician would have to work with.” Wow. And, I haven’t yet seen much of what Ritchie describes as, “tactical, turn-based combat, with elevation and 3D cover,” but every aspect of design seems highly detailed. Will this be one of the games I see early, then never again? I always get nervous about the more ambitious projects. I sincerely hope I’m reviewing this for you, eventually.
Consistent decision making will result in a narrower (but more powerful) range of choices, within a single, ideological outlook..