Runaway: A Twist of Fate, the 3rd installment of the Runaway series by Spanish studio Pendulo, turns out to be quite a pleasant surprise. While it tells of a light-hearted story without much depth, it does bring good old traditional point-and-click adventuring back to the PC with some evolved next-generation gameplay mechanics. While we totally missed the first Runaway, we had a terrible experience with the 2nd installment, Dream of a Turtle. Perhaps playing the game on the DS was a terrible first shot at a game you haven’t tried on the PC yet, with dumped down graphics and the missing voice acting, it isn’t the ideal platform of choice. But Dream of Turtle was not without faults of its own, that the sheer amount of items that you need and the frustration and wrath the game will incur within your soul, when the games’ protagonist simply refuses to pick up items that you will need later because he stubbornly refuses to see the reasons to use it now. We played 75% of Dream of a Turtle but finally gave up on the bland but frustrating gameplay, shelving it somewhere now covered with layers of cobwebs permanently.
Thankfully, A Twist of Fate fixes everything. The art is crisp and the new voice cast is excellent, even while it is obviously a translated effort, the script seemed flawless without errors — that you probably can’t tell it is originally written in Spanish. Every item that’s not nailed down is pick-up-able, like it should be, and the hotspot finder function which is invented somewhere along the last decade eliminated the time-consuming pixel hunting that plagued the genre. Not only that, the built-in hint system is excellent — it reminds me of Sierra hint line back in the 90s, except someone from Pendulo Studios will give you some helpful advices, along with them sometimes sarcastic humor that will more than jog your brain, and you don’t even have to pay for it. The hints won’t give you a walkthrough-like direct instructions, but it is helpful enough that it is virtually impossible to get permanently stuck in A Twist of Fate, unless you are a serious dim-wit. All of these addition makes the game feel very modern, that it is the next generation of adventure games, in a good way, and it is quite enjoyable.
If we had to critique the story of the 3rd installment of A Twist of Fate, it is that it is probably a less exciting plot than Dream of a Turtle, but the better gameplay really moves it along, and the good writing and humor will make you forget that you aren’t reading classic literature. Newcomers to the series won’t feel left out playing the end of the trilogy, because of the structure of the narrative — much of it in pieces, in a good way, and that the game does recap what happened before at key points within the plot, which is smartly interwoven into the narrative, it really is not necessarily to have played the previous titles. But for those who has, it would be a treat to see how the characters have developed throughout the series, that the protagonists have gained confidence and wits. The game does draw to a fine and satisfying conclusion, ending plot threads from both the first game and the obvious cliff-hanger ending of the second.
Pendulo Studios did a mighty fine job with A Twist of Fate, and as long-time adventure lovers we enjoyed it thoroughly. So we are going to eagerly anticipate any new projects the Spanish studio is working on next, hopefully we see something new and not the continuation of Runaway, even though that would still be welcomed.
