Broken Roads - turn-based Australian post-apocalyptic RPG with "unique morality system"

[Marat]

Kinda late in development to be boasting about pig models and UI reworks.

 

[Abu Antar]

Join a member of the development team at Drop Bear Bytes for a deep dive into Broken Roads, including features you can expect like four origin stories, a peek at the game's moral compass, updates to combat, and much more from this upcoming isometric RPG coming in 2023. Set in a post-apocalypse future with real-world locations and landmarks serving as the backdrop for the complex stories of Australia’s survivors wrapped in an intricate hand-drawn aesthetic.

 

[Infinitron]

That was on the MIX Showcase on March 17th:



Not sure why they didn't upload it to an official YouTube channel.

 

[cyborgboy95]

Broken Roads April 2023 Update
Wow, where did that month go?! April has come around, and it’s time for the next Broken Roads monthly update. This time we’ve got level design progress over the years, the first of our OST drops, a look at some narrative design, updates from our programmers, and more.

THE BROKEN ROADS OST ON YOUTUBE

“Taylor's Charm” is part of the Broken Roads soundtrack, written, recorded and produced by Drop Bear Bytes' Audio Lead and Composer, Tim Sunderland.

“It has stayed familiar but changed into something different,” says Tim. “That's both an intended experience for the player but has also mirrored my own experience whilst developing it.”

It’s amazing how much the OST has evolved over time, now going on for four years of work, and the journey through the world of Broken Roads is accompanied by a soundtrack we are incredibly proud of. This video is the first in a series we will be putting out each month, and we know you’ll enjoy listening to his work!

ANNIEMAY PARKER’S WRITING

This is a spoiler-free snapshot of some of Junior Narrative Designer Anniemay Parker’s work in articy:draft, the narrative design tool used on Broken Roads. Early in the game, players will discover Merredin, a town renowned for its bustling market and growing population. The player will need to prove their worth to Angela Smith, the governor of Merredin, to gain access to the town itself.

“This snapshot shows a bunch of ways the player can get inside Merredin through their origin story selection, items they find along their journey, and certain skills they have upgraded during their playtime,” says Anniemay. “I'm most proud of the level of complexity in this scene as players can speak about certain skills they may have put XP into. Allowing them to receive different responses from Angela Smith.”

ONGOING PROGRESS ON ARDATH

Ardath is a scene we have poured a lot of time, love, and polish into, and our Level Designer Luke Dorman provided some comparison shots from 2020, 2021, and 2023 showing how the area has progressed:

Ardath combat arena in 2020

Ardath combat arena in 2021

Ardath combat arena in 2023

The following two screenshots are a bonus comparison of another part of Ardath - the first pic is from 2021 and the second is how it looks now.

LOCALISATION TOOLS

Our Senior Programmer, Amos Wolfe, has been deep in the weeds of creating tools to help with the localisation process. Broken Roads is being translated into multiple languages and while tools like articy have good export capabilities for sending the text over to localisers, getting every bit of text in the game properly translated involves a lot of work as there’s dialogue, menus, in-game text, points of interest texts, item descriptions and so on.

Amos has sped things up with a tool, shown in the video above. In his own words: "I made a tool to help spot UI text that needs localization. It allows selecting the text in scene, but then also has an auto localize button which connects up the localization for that UI text."

PROGRESS ON QUEST INTEGRATION

Our Unity Developer/Recommender of Good Games/Integrator/Game Dev Guy, Dean Baron, has been powering through the implementation of the quests in Broken Roads. It’s one thing to design the quests and hook up all the logic and conversations in articy, and another to actually get the quests to play as intended in Unity. Dean and Anniemay have been doing a fantastic job of this recently.

"Recently I have been focusing on integration (as you may have seen on our socials) and making sure the game is playable from origin to endgame,” he says. “It has truly been a ride as someone who has been a fan of the game since 2019 to now apart of the team since last year seeing the amazing world and reading the incredible writing and knowing that RPG lovers and gamer are going to have something special on their hands."

The screenshot above may look pretty, but it’s an example of right characters, right location, wrong conversation, so Dean and Annieymay will go over the logic in articy, the scene setup in Unity, and compare against a test plan (basically, the steps to complete the quest which helps both integration and QA) to see which sneaky variables or conditional checks have gone awry.

And that’s it for now! Thanks for reading, and hope you all enjoy a restful Easter weekend if that’s a holiday you observe. More from us later this month.

- The team at Drop Bear Bytes

 

[Infinitron]

"Stonefish" is part of the Broken Roads soundtrack, written, recorded and produced by Drop Bear Bytes' Audio Lead and Composer, Tim Sunderland.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

these visuals are so hilariously bad

 

[luj1]

If Mad Max were an Aussie hipster tranny

 

[Alienman]

Don't think it looks that bad. The 3D characters do stand out though in the 2D background. Looks flat.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

ambient occlusion, motherfucker, can you into it?

 

[Verylittlefishes]

your fucking game is the left pic
it should be the right pic

can I explain it in even more simple way?

 

[Verylittlefishes]

tag this Craig Ritchie guy, plz, I cannot understand Codex' interface now

 

[Paul_cz]

Characters look like they slide on ice instead of walking, something to improve.

 

[HeyCheckOutHowHardICanPee]

I still don't get how they managed to goof up the shadows like that.

 

[gurugeorge]

I actually like what I've seen of the art design so far, though the graphics quality could maybe be better.

I'm still cautiously optimistic about this.

 

[GrafvonMoltke]

I'm just happy to have a game that might not be shit tbh

 

[Infinitron]

This game is NOT a Disco Elysium-like, it has a combat system. However, pacifist playthrough confirmed:



https://www.brokenroadsgame.com/dev-blog/broken-roads-may-2023-update

BROKEN ROADS MAY 2023 UPDATE​

Hello all, and welcome to our May 2023 update. What a month it has been!

ANNOUNCING PACIFIST PLAYTHROUGHS​

Today we're announcing that Broken Roads will offer pacifist playthroughs for certain character builds, meaning the game can be completed without combat or killing anyone - if you make the appropriate choices along the way, that is. We’ve also got some new scenes and never-before-shown locations in the announce trailer:

To complete the game as a pacifist, you’re going to have to really think about your decisions, the reactions of your companions to your choices, the interests of the people and factions you’re encountering and - of course - the kinds of quest resolutions you decide to pursue. For instance, you probably shouldn’t go accepting a mercenary hit job or running around pissing everyone off and expect there won’t be violent repercussions.

“STONEFISH” FROM THE OST IS NOW ON YOUTUBE​

Next up, our Audio Lead and Composer, Tim Sunderland, has posted the second of his Broken Roads OST tracks to YouTube. We’ll be adding another one every month for you to enjoy:

LANGUAGES AVAILABLE AT LAUNCH​

For our non-English-speaking players, we can now confirm the languages that Broken Roads will be localised into at launch. We’ll assess additional languages once the game is out, depending on demand in different regions, but here is the current list:

• Brazilian Portuguese
• French
• German
• Polish
• Russian
• Simplified Chinese
• Spanish (LatAm)

Finally, we’ve also got some big things to share in June. Trust us, it’s going to be an exciting month for Broken Roads!
Thanks for reading.
- The Drop Bear Bytes Team

 

[Verylittlefishes]

I can't look at their legs, jesus

 

[luj1]

your fucking game is the left pic
it should be the right pic

can I explain it in even more simple way?

least of the games problems

 

[luj1]

This game is NOT a Disco Elysium-like, it has a combat system.

It's not diarrhea, it's vomit!

 

[Tyranicon]

Look at t-rex arms over here.

 

[Modron]

Yeah most of them do appear to have short arms. Yeah I know people have differences in arm, leg, and torso length but on average arms should hang halfway down your thigh when resting.

 

[d1nolore]

You guys are brutal

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

View attachment 36160

Look at t-rex arms over here.

 

[Skorpion]

View attachment 36160

Look at t-rex arms over here.

Is he holding the stock by 3 fingers... why is that rifle so small?
Have ozzies already forgotten what guns look like

 

[Ladonna]

View attachment 36160

Look at t-rex arms over here.