Despite starting as a road trip through a generic post-apocalyptic landscape, the upcoming CRPGBroken Roadshas evolved into one of the most authenticallyAustralian gamesin recent memory. That detail has become a central draw to the game, according to its developers.
It’s not uncommon to set a roleplaying game after the end of the world.Fallout,Wasteland, andHorizonall follow the same basic idea in different combinations to create their iconic post-apocalyptic experiences. But despite the differences in mechanics, narrative, and even the nature of the end of the world across the numerous franchises in the post-apocalyptic RPG space, a vast majority of the stores share a particular throughline:they tend to be North American experiences.
The developers ofIndie gameBroken Roadsquickly realized they had the untapped potential of an apocalypse down under, said developer Drop Bear Bytes’ co-founder Craig Ritchie in a recent interview with Game Rant. Seizing that opportunity has gained the game a lot of praise, particularly for gamers from the Wheatbelt, where the game is set.
When we had Western Australian people playing the gameat PAX Australiaa couple of weeks ago, they were so excited to see some of these landmarks that we just couldn’t believe some of these little locations were in there and so on. The response from Australians has been great, and we just hope it’s going to be fun and interesting for international players.
The region of the Wheatbelt is rendered inBroken Roadswith intimate detail. The developers used thousands of photos of the region to create an accurate image. From the color of the ground to the plants to the buildings, everything has been painstakingly recreated from their research, Ritchie explained. The sounds of the game, as well, are authentically Australian. The birds and wind blowing through the trees players hear at Wave Rock were recorded at the actual Wave Rock and implemented in the game. The creatures in the game are also authentically Australian, though some have beentransformed by the post-nuclear worldthat has redefined the Wheatbelt ofBroken Roads. Real-world towns like Brookton and Merredin are also represented in the game with a veneer of post-apocalyptic garnish. Buildings in the game even reflect their real-world locations.
Broken Roadshas been developed in partnership with the Victoria State Government and Film Victoria Australia, but perhaps the most interesting partnership Drop Bear Bytes engaged in was with the native Noongar country from Western Australia. Ritchie said the developers reached out to First Nations people from across Australia and received responses ranging from appreciation to encouragement to not even try, but the most important Aboriginal partnerships were with the Noongar.
You definitely have to speak to somebody from the region. We’ve managed to have a few people over the years just help us design characters, help us improve artwork, help us write dialogue, share traditional stories and dream time stories that we’ve gotten into the game, right down to unique artwork. We’ve commissioned artwork that’s been put into the game that was made specifically for the game by numerous Aboriginal artists as well.
It was important to the team at Drop Bear Bytes to reflect the stories of Australians, and that work would be hollow without including the Noongar stories that are woven into the tapestry of the Wheatbelt. Working with Aboriginal communities was essential to telling those stories rightly and respectfully, and Ritchie said he learned a lot from the process. Those stories aren’t the primary focus of the game, but it was a dimension the story needed.
That process began before even writing a single line of code, Ritchie explained. It was part of the refocusing of the game on Australia from a moregeneric post-apocalypsethat unfolded in the earliest moments of the game’s development.
In the space of the first four to six weeks, it went from a generic post-apoc road trip across somewhere to a generic road trip across post-apoc Australia to a very, very narrowly focused narrative-driven RPG in one portion of Western Australia.
That transition came as a series of realizations Ritchie and the team went through early on. The initial road trip quickly became something traversing Australia, and as the focus on the studio’s environment came into focus, the narrowing scope focused tighter–first on Western Australia and then specifically on the Wheatbelt and the area surrounding Brookton and Merredin. The Wheatbelt is Western Australia’sfarming and miningcommunity, offering ample material for the post-apocalypse ofBroken Roads.
But if all the Australian-ness of the game confuses audiences abroad,Broken Roadshas a feature reminiscent ofFinal Fantasy 16’s Active Time Lore, though instead of explaining the backstories of a fictional world, the game’s encyclopedia includes explanations of Australian slang, terms, and what it means when someone uses “mate” in a threatening manner.
Broken Roadsreleases November 14 for PC, Switch, and Xbox Series X/S.
