Aussie philoso-RPG Broken Roads is emerging from its state of koala-like hibernation with a new release date. After a lengthy delay, it’ll now arrive on April 10 this year, which so far as I can tell is a date with no relevance to Australia at all apart from being the birthday of lawn bowler Steve “Biscuits” Glasson. So it’s probably to coincide with that.
Once upon a time, Broken Roads was one of our most-anticipated games of 2023, and it was meant to hit on November 14 of that year. That went down the dunny after a last-minute delay that punted it into 2024.
As a wise man once said, “Late is just for a little while. Suck is forever,” so I can’t be too mad at the hold-up. Still, Broken Roads’ heady mix of highfalutin’ philosophy and a distinctly antipodean post-apocalypse is intensely intriguing to me, so I was a bit put out to hear I’d have to wait even longer to get my hands on it properly. It felt a bit like the CRPG renaissance of the last few years had been put on hold.
As you navigate the wastes and get up to CRPG hijinks you’ll be called upon to make choices that will shift towards four different philosophical poles: Nihilism, Utilitarianism, Humanism, and Machiavellianism. Sounds like a blend of Mad Max, Disco Elysium, and Baldur’s Gate to me, which coincidentally might be the thing I want most in the world now that I think about it.
So here’s hoping that delay let the devs at Drop Bear Bytes get everything in order for a ripper release in April. Game director Craig Ritchie reckons it has, at least: “Broken Roads is now in its best state ever,” he says, “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.”
If you want to keep tabs on Broken Roads ahead of its release, you can find it over on Steam.