Edna breaks out

Edna breaks out
Studio	Daedalic Entertainment
Publisher	Daedalic Entertainment
Senior Developer	Jan Müller-Michaelis
Erstveröffent- lichung	June 6, 2008
platform	iOS , Mac OS , Windows
Game engine	Java , Anniversary Edition: Unity
genre	Adventure
Game mode	Single player
control	Mouse , keyboard
medium	DVD , download
language	German, English, French, Russian
copy protection	none
Age rating	USK PEGI
information	USK 12 for the collector's edition

Edna breaks out (in English-speaking countries Edna & Harvey: The Breakout ) is a 2008 by Daedalic developed point-and-click - graphic adventure that focuses on the operation and content of her classic adventure games. The game received positive reviews due to its original puzzles and quirky plot. In 2011 the successor " Harvey's New Eyes " was released.

Content and plot

Edna breaks out begins with the main character Edna waking up in a soft cell . She has completely lost her memories and knows neither how she got into the cell nor why she is even in a psychiatric hospital . But she firmly believes that she is not crazy. Her only friend is her blue stuffed bunny, Harvey, who she can talk to. He also helps her to escape first from her cell and later from the institution, because he gives her flashbacks when she sees certain objects , with which she remembers her childhood and especially the skills she acquired back then.

After Edna escapes from her cell and overwhelms her guards, she is relatively free to move around the clinic. On the 2nd floor she finds a room that normally only the director of the institution Dr. Marcel has access. An altar for Alfred, the doctor's prodigal son, has been set up there. Apparently he died at a very young age. Edna remembers taking lessons with this boy when she was young. They were direct neighbors and always enemies. She realizes that there is a connection between her father, Dr. Marcel, Alfred and you are there and set out to unravel this secret. To do this, she has to leave the institution and go to her father's old house.

There it turns out that Edna is responsible for Alfred's death. On the day of his death, Alfred was standing on a landing and threatening Harvey. He ordered Edna to push Alfred down the stairs, which Edna did; Alfred died from a fall. After his death, her father took the blame and was punished with death. Dr. Marcel promised Edna's father to take care of Edna from now on. He tried to make a "character correction" on her in order to erase what he saw as "negative qualities". However, Edna was able to regain her memories again and again because Harvey formed the connection to her past.

Dr. Marcel offers Edna to make a working character correction this time, but she has to destroy Harvey for this. Harvey, in turn, suggests Edna that Dr. Pushing Marcel down the stairs just like Alfred in order to achieve freedom. The choice between these alternatives is left to the player. If the player chooses Dr. Marcel's suggestion, he makes another character correction to Edna. After that her new name is Alfredine, and her favorite pastime is sorting and washing up files. If Edna listens to Harvey, she doesn't have to return to the institution. Some time later the remains of a blue stuffed rabbit were washed up on the coast and the search for Edna was given up.

main characters

Edna Konrad is the heroine of the game. She is a young girl with purple hair and an obvious mental disorder . This is expressed in the fact that she thinks her stuffed bunny is alive and speaks to him. She is cynical and uses brute force when need be. At the beginning of the game, she lost her memory and is now trying to regain it. In the German edition it is spoken by Alianne Diehl .

Harvey is Edna's blue stuffed bunny that she owned when she was a child. He himself repeatedly emphasizes that it is only a reflection of her subconscious. As the game progresses, it becomes clear that he primarily embodies Edna's destructive qualities. He is pyromaniac and often advises her to harm people. The fatal attacks against Alfred and Dr. Marcel go to his account. It is Edna's connection to her past and therefore helps her remember previous events. He is voiced by Alexander Grimm .

Dr. Horatio Marcel , the head of the psychiatric clinic, used to be a well-known scientist. He lived in the same place as Edna and her father. Since the death of his son Alfred, he has tried to correct Edna's character . Several times he has erased her entire memory in order to be able to change her personality. However, this always fails and Edna manages to remember each time with the help of Harvey. In the German version he is spoken by Thomas Fitschen .

Alfred Marcel was the son of Dr. Marcel. He and Edna had lessons from a private tutor. Since he was a nerd, Edna terrorized him at every opportunity. Alfred told the parents and the teacher about this immediately, which made Edna's hatred of him ever greater. Alfred died as a child. In order to come to terms with her past, Edna has to find out how it came about. In the course of the game it becomes more and more clear that she even misses Alfred and that the two had a kind of love-hate relationship. Alfred is spoken by Mike Nikitin in the German version .

Alumann , the former caretaker of the institution, lost his mind from an electric shock and became an inmate. He knows all things electrical and believes that he can receive electrical waves. That is why he wears a cloak made of aluminum foil as a shield . Its food is waves streaming from the television. He leaves the institution with Edna and then tries to become an energetic being through a lightning strike. In the German version it is spoken by Sönke Städtler .

The light blonde Hoti and the dark skinned Moti believe to be Siamese twins . In fact, they're just tucked into the same sweater. After Edna cuts it up, they join her and help her escape. In the German version, Hoti is spoken by Timo Riegelsberger and Moti by Jens Andresen .

Just like Edna, the Key Master is locked in a security cell at the beginning of the game because he is considered dangerous. He himself quite agrees with this assessment. If Edna doesn't know what to do next, he will help her with good advice. He also takes part in the escape from the institution and turns out to be life-threatening (in the truest sense of the word) in the course of the game. It is spoken in the German version by Martin Sabel .

Droggelbecher is a character who answers with every action, except for an item combination, only with “Droggelbecher”. He is voiced by Mike Nikitin.

Game principle and technology

The game has a non-linear storyline, the controls are mouse-controlled, as is typical for the genre. The player controls a character (Edna) from scene to scene, whereby the individual scenes consist of hand-drawn, scanned and colored graphics in 2D. Verbs are displayed at the bottom of the screen which, in combination with the objects in the scenes, trigger actions of the character. Edna can look at certain objects, take them, use them and talk to them. Since the action takes place in a lunatic asylum, the objects usually also answer and sometimes even give helpful hints on how to get ahead. In the scenes from Edna's childhood, the player can also use Harvey as a character.

One of the special features of the game is the abundance of combination options that it offers thanks to the approximately 14-hour voice output and also the setting. In Edna there is a separate commentary on almost every action. This is to increase the player's motivation to try things out and avoid frustration with puzzles.

Since the game is based entirely on Java , it is also possible to play it on other platforms, such as Linux. However, this customization is unofficial and is not supported by the developer. However, ASH now offers an official Mac version.

Production and publications

Edna breaks out is the realization of the ideas from the diploma thesis The computer game as a non-linear narrative form by Jan Müller-Michaelis , a co-founder of the Daedalic company. The development of the game was therefore started at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences in 2007. A special feature of the synchronization is that many (at that time) "new" speakers from the Hamburg theater and drama scene could be recruited who had not previously lent their voices to a game instead of using proven speakers from the industry.

The developers decided against Edna breaking out with a copy protection, because it was assumed that the costs “(...) a technical copy protection, which is in the end easily bypassed by pirates in most cases (...)” would outweigh the benefits. It was also released without age restriction, although this was not in the interests of the inventors, who would have preferred an age rating of twelve or more because of the brutal scenes in the third act. Daedalic auctioned the license rights to distribute the game on the island nation of Vanuatu in June 2008 . The bidder undertook to produce the game in the local language Bislama within five years . If this does not happen, the license rights revert to Daedalic.

In its June 11, 2008 edition, the Austrian newspaper today assumed that the game would partly relate to the Josef Fritzl case . Daedalic vehemently denied this allegation. Against this would be that only a small part of the game had any parallels at all and that the course of the story was already fixed a year before the fall.

In August 2011, the successor to Edna Erbruch appeared with Harvey's new eyes . This time the game is about the convent pupil Lilli. She constantly receives tasks from Oberin Ignatz and takes care of them, however unfair they are. Most of them don't like her, and their only friend is Edna. Harvey and Doctor Marcel can also be found again. Harvey got into the hands of Doctor Marcel, who has been in a wheelchair since the events of the previous game.

Since a lot of problems and bugs remained with the 1.1 patch , the player community began to develop another unofficial patch with the Open Edna Bugfix Project . The corrections were later incorporated directly into the official patch 1.2, which was released in May 2012.

In August 2012, an implementation for the iPad appeared in the App Store . In December 2019, Deadalic Entertainment released a remaster with the title addition Anniversary Edition, which contains new controls and completely redrawn rooms and characters in 16: 9 instead of 4: 3. Furthermore, the remaster no longer uses Java, but the Unity engine .

Voice actor

character	speaker
Edna	Alianne Diehl
Harvey	Alexander Grimm
Dr. Marcel	Thomas Fitschen
Mattis	Timo Riegelsberger
Alumann	Sönke Städtler
neurotic	Helmut Baumann
Hoti	Timo Riegelsberger
Moti	Jens Andresen
Therapist	Jessica Zang
Gatekeeper	Helmut Baumann
Almilio Sanchez di Mubbelfrupp	Lars Wasserthal
Mister coat	Jens Andresen
Drug gel cups	Mike Nikitin
Bee man	Marko Formanek
Juppi Jupsen	Claas Paletta
Dr. Marcel's chauffeur	Mike Nikitin
Hulgor	Detlef Tams
King Adrian	Alexander Scala
Key master	Martin Sabel
controller	Walter Claus
Professor Nock	Lars Wasserthal
Prick	Janis Zaurins
Peter	Timo Riegelsberger
Petra	Eva Wagner
The new	Olgierd Cypra
Guard at the reception	Sönke Städtler
Alfred	Mike Nikitin
bladder	Alexander Scala
pastor	Christian Stawicki
Mr. Hornbusch	Detlef Tams
Bobo the Brain	Carsten Fichtelmann
Puzi	Marko Formanek
leopard	Marco cases
Make-up artist	Franziska Reinhard
Edna's mental trainer	Simone Kesterton
Oscar	Detlef Tams

reception

Reviews

reviews publication Rating GamesTM 66% Meta-ratings Metacritic 56

In the international press Edna & Harvey: The Break Out received average to negative ratings; the Metacritic review database aggregates 7 reviews to an average of 56. In addition to the known technical weaknesses, the English translation was also criticized.

The game was received almost entirely positively by the German-speaking press and therefore received above-average ratings. The average of 34 reviews aggregated by the German-language review database Critify is 84%. GamesTM gave the lowest rating with 66%. The best rating was given by www.gamigo.de with 99%. The editorial team of Gamona states that a high rating is not justified solely because of the graphics and the rather outdated controls, but still gave a high rating of 93%, because of the plot, the characters and because the editor a higher rating than with Ankh wanted to forgive. ( Basically, "Edna breaks out" is the long overdue slap in the face of all those who believe that they can measure the value of art using disgraceful numbers. Because no character in the game in recent years has touched me more than Edna, nobody has me so much Bring laughter, [...] "Edna breaks out" has heart, brain, soul. For me already the game of the year. ) Golem.de also comes to a positive result, because of the "crazy" humor, the "entertaining" jokes and the "wonderfully crafted characters". "Gamigo" praises the unusual plot. Since the action takes place in an asylum, unfamiliar opportunities for action and dialogue would arise. ( "Because here you can finally do what other adventure games only succinctly say with a" it doesn't work that way ": namely try" everything "! A nice conversation with a washing machine? No problem. Show Harvey his evil twin from the parallel universe ? What are mirrors for? " ) Other pluses are the characters and the synchronization. Furthermore, the graphics would be appropriate to the style of the storyline and characters.

On the other hand, there are other reviews, such as those from the editors of onlinewelten.com , which use the same arguments as the above reviews, but have a low rating in the end. In this evaluation, the "scrawly graphics", "hardly any wooden animations" and the "music that takes getting used to" are more important. The technical elaboration of the game implemented in Java resulted in deductions in the evaluation in several tests. This was expressed by the low resolution of only 800 × 600 pixels and the very long loading times, especially when saving and loading game states.

Awards

The game has been nominated for several awards, including the TOMMI children's software award for "Best PC Game 2008". In addition, it won the German Developer Award 2008 in the specialist award category for “Best German Youth Game 2008 - USK max. 12 "and the audience award as" Best German Adventure ", as well as several times as" Adventure of the Year ", including from 4Players and GameStar .

Web links

• Edna breaks out at MobyGames (English)
• ednaunpack , on github.com , installation for Linux, macOS and all Java platforms

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Nicole Lange: When copy protection becomes too expensive . derwesten.de. May 13, 2008. Accessed December 31, 2011.
2. ↑ Edna breaks out! for Mac OS X! . MacTechNews.de. July 3, 2008. Retrieved January 20, 2016.
3. ↑ Mac version of ASH
4. ↑ Just out of the institution - but how? . Netzeitung . June 16, 2008. Archived from the original on February 7, 2009. Retrieved on December 10, 2011.
5. ↑ Steffen Haubner: From studies to games company . Hamburger Abendblatt . June 27, 2007. Accessed on December 10, 2011: “ The Daedalic company wants to assert itself in the rough market for computer games - and is supported by business and government. "
6. ↑ Audio commentary of the game (subsection 'Cell of the Key Master')
7. ↑ Klaus Ungerer: In conversation: Game developer Jan Müller-Michaelis - Why do your characters sigh? (PDF; 148 kB) Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . May 17, 2010. Archived from the original on December 26, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved December 10, 2011. 
8. ↑ Message about the auction of license rights
9. ↑ Crazy Auction - Become the publisher of Edna Bricht Aus in Vanatu at PCGames.de, June 10, 2008
10. ↑ Article on T-Online.de
11. ↑ Open Edna Bugfix Project ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Daedalic Forum (Xzar, Feb 3, 2012) 
12. ↑ Gamezine.de: Point-and-click classic Edna breaks out appears today as a revised Anniversary Edition. Retrieved January 4, 2020 . 
13. ↑ ^{a b} GamesTM June 2008 edition ( Memento from February 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), quoted from www.critify.de
14. ^ ^{A b} Metacritic.com: Edna & Harvey: The Breakout. Retrieved January 4, 2020 . 
15. ↑ Edna breaks out (PC) . critify.de. January 29, 2012. Accessed on January 29, 2012: " Meta-rating based on 34 reviews 84/100 "
16. ↑ Arnd Rüger: Edna breaks out - test . gamigo.de. June 10, 2008. Archived from the original on August 5, 2008. Retrieved on December 30, 2011: “ RUMMS! Now it has happened ... the adventure genre has a new king ... pardon ... queen! "
17. ↑ Matthias Grimm: The best adventure of the year: Edna shows the grown-ups where the rabbit gets the pepper! . gamona.de. June 10, 2008. Retrieved December 30, 2011.
18. ↑ Critique of golem.de
19. ↑ onlinewelten.com: The madness has a system
20. ↑ Test: Edna breaks out - back to the good old days . PC Games. July 1, 2008. Retrieved December 30, 2011.
21. ↑ Test - Edna breaks out . Adventure meeting . June 10, 2008. Retrieved December 30, 2011.
22. ↑ German Children's Software Prize: The best games for children . Spiegel.de. Retrieved January 20, 2016.
23. ^ The winners of the German Developer Prize 2008 . deutscher-entwicklerpreis.de. 2009. Archived from the original on May 13, 2009. Retrieved on December 10, 2011.
24. ↑ Adventure of the year on AdventureCorner.de
25. ↑ Adventure of the year on 4Players.de
26. ↑ Most humorous game of the year on 4Players.de
27. ↑ Adventure of the year on Gamestar.de