“Some of Broken Roads’ biggest inspirations have been shows like Opal Hunters and Aussie Gold Hunters,” Broken Roads art director Kerstin Evans tells me., “The contestants on these shows are living in the outback, trying to scrape through everyday life, working their hardest to make it to the big payday. Many of them live in makeshift dwellings, wear the same clothes every day, live off cans of beans, and are more concerned with surviving than living lush. These shows have been a great resource for researching how to make our environment and character designs more authentically Australian.”
For context, Evans has been leading the striking visuals of the game since its inception in 2019. I’ve been following Broken Roads since its announcement that year. A lot stood out to me when I first saw it - how much it oozed original Fallout vibes in its top-down, karmic dystopia, for one thing. However, the visuals were what really hooked me. They had that hand-drawn feel rather than the gritty, pixelated realism of older RPGs, and while it looked quaint and beautiful, the horrors of the world were impressively retained. “The visual expectations of games have changed quite dramatically in recent years,” Evans tells me. “The quality of a game is no longer judged on how realistic the graphics are.
“The retro aesthetic is very much a product of the time when the original Fallout was made, and I think the roughness comes from the overall mood of the game world’s setting. Fast forward to now and there is more room in the market for games with varying art directions. The visuals in games no longer have to look ‘real’ to have value. Some of my biggest inspirations from the past decade are Darkest Dungeon, TellTale’s The Walking Dead, Dishonored, Guild Wars 2, and Don’t Starve. All of these titles are among a great list of games that dared to break the mold and lean into their concept art style, rather than translate the concept art into hyper-realistic graphics. In more recent times, the success of games like Disco Elysium further proves that we can and should be experimental with the aesthetic of our games.”
While Evans and the team are conscious of letting their personality and style come forward in the execution of Broken Roads’ aesthetic, they also want to ensure that they keep the feeling of Australia intact. There aren’t many video games in apocalypses that take us beyond typical settings like America or Russia, so it’s exciting to see a huge nation bursting with culture get the opportunity to shine, especially with so few games set there. Naturally, the devs at Drop Bear Bytes want to ensure that it’s done right.
“We do a lot of research into what our country and its people actually look like, rather than what we think it looks like,” Evans tells me. “Craig [Ritchie, Drop Bear Bytes co-founder] has been to many of the real-world locations in Western Australia that you’ll see in our game. He took over 1,000 photos that we use as a reference for creating our levels.”
That collaboration between the art team and the developers shines through, and it’s seemingly part of the culture at Drop Bear Bytes, at least from the outside looking in. “My core responsibility is to ensure that the visual direction of Broken Roads is consistent with Craig’s creative vision for the game,” Evans says. “That is, make a game that feels like you’re playing in the artwork. To keep the wider team aligned with this goal, I created concept art depicting our visual target for Broken Roads. The team uses this image as a core reference for all visuals in the game.
“As the art director, I do have to make some tough decisions to keep the visuals of Broken Roads aligned with our visual target. That could mean anything from suggesting a more efficient workflow for the artists to having a difficult conversation about cutting back on content in the game itself. Any decision I make, I consult the wider team about, and ensure that it really is the best decision for the project.”
Kerstin’s journey into the world of game development has resulted in one of the best-looking indie games in recent memory. Broken Roads has a mesmerizing aesthetic, and that’s thanks to her and the talented artists over at Drop Bear Bytes. It’s exciting to see a resurgence of this graphical approach, prioritizing style over realism - we see that approach in the anime look of Genshin Impact, the stylized realism of Half-Life: Alyx, and - as Kerstin put it herself - fellow isometric adventure game, Disco Elysium. Broken Roads’ painterly art style is akin to other indie hallmarks like Owlboy and Roki, modern classics in their own right. It’s wonderful to see a continuation of this mindset and I cannot wait for it to launch later this year so I can dive in and explore this striking rendition of Australia.
You can currently wishlist Broken Roads on Steam. The game will also be launching for Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation in late 2021.