Runaway: A Road Adventure

Runaway: A Road Adventure is a point and click adventure game developed by Péndulo Studios, S.L. in 2001. The game follows the long tradition of two-dimensional adventure games like the first two installments of the Broken Sword series. It enjoyed immense popularity in countries like Germany and France, where the adventure genre is still very much alive.

The original Spanish version of the game was the first to become available for purchase in its homeland Spain in July 6, 2001, with other localizations waiting up to two years for their publication, including the German version in fall 2002 and the rest of versions during 2003. It was released in the United Kingdom in May 2007. The original publisher was Dinamic Multimedia and it was their last distributed title before their closure. After that, the distributor has been FX Interactive.

Runaway has been released on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM.

A sequel: Runaway 2: The Dream of The Turtle was released in November 2006 in France and Germany and was released in March 2007 in the United Kingdom, USA and Spain. A third game, Runaway 3: A Twist of Fate was released on November 26, 2009.

Story
Brian Basco sets off from New York to California, but plans to make a quick stop on his way there to pick up a book at a bookstore. On the way there, he just avoids running over a fleeing girl who then blacks out. Brian takes her to the hospital and finds out that her name is Gina Timmins and that she witnessed a Mafia murder. He saves her from the killers, but now he also has to run away.

Characters
Brian Basco, the only player-controlled character, is a student of Physics who just got accepted to the University of California, Berkeley. He is portrayed as a shy, almost nerdy, young man at first.

Gina Timmins is the girl Brian almost ran over with his car and immediately fell in love with. She works as a dancer in a New York City nightclub, where she is handed a mysterious crucifix and shortly thereafter witnesses a murder.

Gustav and Feodor are two hitmen working for the Mafia. Gustav, who wears an eyepatch, is seen as the head of the team, while Feodor is prone to rash acts of brutality. They are sent after Gina at first and Brian as well later on.

Technology
According to the developer, the game was developed using a mixture of external and internal produced tools to achieve the combined 2D and 3D graphical look of the game. Internally, the game engine utilised three dimensions to model the characters and objects, but then a special filter was used to render them two-dimensionally to the screen. This gives the effect of making it look like a traditional cartoon-like 2D adventure, while enabling real-time lighting and shading effects, camera changes, and panoramic shots.

Soundtrack
The original soundtrack for Road Adventure contains all four songs from game, the CD is included in the special collectors' edition. All the songs are composed by David García Morales and performed by singer Liquor.

Collector Edition
The special collectors' edition was published by Microsoft

In addition to the game itself, the edition includes a CD with the soundtrack, as well as a DVD with a 25-minute TV report including interviews with the creators, several previews and a great sample of sketches, storyboards, character designs, backgrounds, etc.