Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle Hands-On

How do a chainsaw, a bottle of female bear pheromones, and an empty gas can help you catch wild salmon? If faced with a puzzle such as this, odds are you're playing an adventure game. In this case, it would be Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle, the follow-up to 2003's colorful adventure about beautiful young people caught up in zany events. And with the game coming to America next March, we got a chance to check out a work-in-progress version for an update.

Like its predecessor, The Dream of the Turtle looks more like an animated cartoon rather than a computer game, thanks to the colorful cel-shaded graphics. The game features an equally colorful cast, headed up by hero Brian Basco and his girlfriend Gina Timmins. The first game covered how Brian, a cool physics grad student, meets Gina and helps her escape the clutches of the mob. The sequel features more adventures gone awry, as a dream vacation turns into much more after a plane crash, a secret military camp, and more come into the picture.

In many ways, Runaway is a very traditional adventure game, in that you get to guide a character around incredibly detailed environments in pursuit of clues and objects that you can use to solve various puzzles. This will involve a fair amount of "pixel hunting," as you move the mouse cursor over the screen and wait for it to change shape, indicating that you can examine or interact with the object in question. If you ask Brian to examine an object, he'll usually have a humorous description for it. You can then try to have Brian pick up the object and put it in his inventory for use later on, and it'll be up to you to figure out how to make use of the odd assortment of gear that you can collect.

And weird puzzles seem to be at the heart of Runaway, though this seems to be in line with the game's slightly over-the-top story. For instance, at one point Brian and one of his friends, Joshua, must travel to the Alaskan wilderness to meet the reclusive Professor Simon. To enter Simon's walled compound they must utter the secret password, which only Joshua knows. However, Joshua loses his short-term memory after devouring colorful, though toxic, berries, and the only way to cure him is to feed him raw salmon, which is where the aforementioned puzzle comes in. Brian must figure out how to catch a salmon with the odd array of objects at his disposal. Or, as Brian explains it, you must figure things out, as the characters in Runaway have a habit of breaking the "fourth wall" between you and them.

There are more than 100 places to explore in the game, though we only saw a handful of the Alaskan locales in the version that we played. These included a run-down shelter, the wilderness areas outside that shelter, and a ranger cabin. Navigation is simple. All you do is move the mouse around the screen until it turns to an arrow and then click to have the character move to the new location. If you want to move around the existing location, point and click to where you want the character to move. The entire game can be played by using just the mouse. You don't even need to hit a key to access the character inventory, since all you have to do is move the mouse to the top of the screen to reveal the inventory button.

There's a considerable amount of voice acting in the game, and the quality is on par with most animated shows. Conversations can be handled just like in most role-playing games, as you're given multiple response options so you can choose the direction of the conversation. You can expect plenty of eccentric characters, if the ones that we encountered were any indication. Joshua is a bit of a strange milquetoast, while a wilderness photographer that you encounter is a bear fan bordering on the verge of geekdom. All indications are that this promises to be an irreverent adventure for the MTV generation. We'll find out when Runaway: Dream of the Turtle ships in March.