Broken Sword

Broken Sword began in 1996 as Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (released in the US as Circle of Blood), from British studio Revolution Software led by Charles Cecil. A classic point-and-click adventure with hand-drawn art, it followed American tourist George Stobbart and French journalist Nico Collard as a Parisian bombing investigation led them to a centuries-old Templar conspiracy. The game became known for its witty dialogue, carefully crafted puzzles and cinematic storytelling, making it one of the most acclaimed adventure games of the nineties.

Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror, released in 1997, stayed faithful to the same visual style and the same pair of heroes while tying its plot to Mayan mythology. Both first two games later received expanded remasters - a Director's Cut of the first game and a reworked version of the second reached game consoles and later mobile phones, opening the series up to new generations of players. Broken Sword 3: The Sleeping Dragon, in 2003, marked a sharp turn: the adventure moved into 3D graphics with a free camera and a fully controllable character, which some fans found jarring due to the unfamiliar controls, even as the story around the Voynich manuscript and religious secrets pushed the plot further.

Broken Sword: The Angel of Death, released in 2006, continued the same 3D approach and once again entangled George and Nico in a conspiracy built on Templar and Rosicrucian motifs, this time also reaching Wii. The turn back the other way came with Broken Sword 5: The Serpent's Curse, funded through Kickstarter and released first in episodes across 2013 and 2014 - the series returned to hand-drawn 2D art and classic point-and-click controls, a move fans welcomed as a return to what had made the series famous in the first place. Around the same time, simplified versions of the earliest games also reached basic Java-powered mobile phones, adapting the point-and-click controls to small touchscreens and keypads and bringing the series to players away from PCs and consoles.

Over more than two decades, Broken Sword thus travelled from the hand-drawn point-and-click style of the nineties, through experiments with 3D, to a deliberate return to its roots, and thanks to George and Nico, its intricate plots and its distinctive humour, it remains one of the longest-running European adventure game series.