Runaway: A Road Adventure

Runaway: A Road Adventure brought to mobile phones the distinctive graphic adventure from Spanish studio Pendulo Studios, about student Brian Basco, who, after a road accident, gets tangled up in a plot full of mafia, secrets, and strange characters. Just as in the computer original, the player moves through stylized, comic-book-like environments, talks to characters, collects items, and combines them to solve classic adventure puzzles. The characters encountered along the way are strongly stylized and often comical, which, together with the story's unexpected twists, gives the game its characteristic tone reminiscent of genre film comedies.

The mobile version had to significantly simplify the large-format, hand-drawn graphics of the computer original, yet it kept the distinctive comic-book visual style and the humorously written dialogue that made the Runaway series famous. Controls were adapted to a directional pad and a confirm button instead of pointing with a mouse, and interactive points in the scene were highlighted or cycled through by switching the cursor step by step, so the player didn't have to needlessly search the screen pixel by pixel. The audio was significantly reduced due to device limitations, yet the game still managed to at least hint at the atmosphere of each chapter of the story.

Even in its stripped-down mobile form, Runaway retained its characteristic humor and mysterious plot, which meant it also reached players who otherwise wouldn't have picked up the PC version. The port is today an interesting example of how a European adventure game with a strong visual identity sought a wider audience through mobile phones that were mass-market at the time, before touchscreen controls and a different puzzle design took over adventure games on mobile. For collectors of mobile ports, Runaway remains one of the most distinctive adventure games of its era and proof that even then European creators had plenty to offer to a broad audience in the field of graphic adventures.

Why play it: For lovers of European adventure games with a strong visual identity, who will appreciate that the port retained its characteristic humor and mysterious plot even in its stripped-down mobile form.