Aussie CRPG Broken Roads has new release date after last year's sudden delay
After some extended bug squashing, it's now coming out in April
In November last year, the Australian post-apocalyptic CRPG Broken Roads was abruptly delayed mere days before it was meant to come out. Review code had even been sent out to press. But it was clear that the game needed more time in the oven, as developers Drop Bear Bytes acknowledged they needed "additional polish time and QA manpower" to test the "thousands of permutations" available in its deeply decision-driven storyline. Happily, that polish time has now come to an end, as the devs have today announced a fresh release date of April 10th.
"We appreciate the community’s patience in allowing us to give Broken Roads the polish and attention it needed to get to the finish line," said game director Craig Ritchie in a statement. "Broken Roads is now in its best state ever, with more polish, more voice acting, over 400,000 words of dialogue and more than 150,000 end-game permutations. We hope you all have an amazing time playing it."
150,000 end-game permutations, you say? Crikey. A single thousand would have been quite enough, if you ask me, but 150 of them? Hopefully the wait will be worth it.
I've certainly been looking forward to Broken Roads over the last year or so, if only to really get into the nitty gritty of its philosophy-based Moral Compass system. Every decision you make will shift your alignment towards or away from one of its four main schools of thought: Humanist, Machiavellian, Utilitarian and Nihilist. It's an ever-sliding scale that will have a deep impact on how you navigate and survive in this desperate world, though its turn-based XCOM-y, Baldur's Gate 3-like combat isn't to be sniffed at either.
It should certainly make a different kind of RPG experience, at least, even if it is one that's mostly grounded in the CRPGs of yore, such as Fallout, Pillars and Wasteland. To find out more, head on over to its freshly dated Steam page, where it and its many thousands of ending permutations will be let loose in two and a bit weeks time on April 10th.