Breathedge

Review

How lucky would you feel being in the shoes of this guy?  He lost his beloved grandfather and needs to transport his coffin all the way to the other side of the galaxy. For his trouble, he will be accompanied by his late Grandpa’s favourite little creature, a chicken! What a cracker of an inheritance, wouldn’t you say?! Not only does he have to share a small cabin with a bird from the Phasianidea family, but the vessel they were travelling on crashed into a large iceberg! Bugger . . . that’s the wrong story . . . I meant, a large asteroid! Would you believe it if I told you that the only two survivors are indeed him and the bird? And the only semi-liveable section is his cabin; the rest of the vessel is scattered all around the asteroid’s field. What a breathtaking situation! Welcome to Breathedge.

Breathedge is a survival game set in deep space, developed and published by RedRuins Softworks in September 2018 as an early access on the Steam platform.

As you start the game, you’ll have to fix a gas leak somewhere within your cabin. You can try to plug it with the chicken, or find another item with which to fix it. To be honest with you, I laughed out loud when I used the chicken! My first laugh of many that I have encountered in this game so far. You’ll be able to use the bird for everything in this game!  (By the way, the chicken has not sustained any injuries, as it seems to be sort of a divine bird!)

There are tasks that you have to complete, but ultimately, you must find a way to reach the evacuation point. Early on, you’ll only be able to manage a space flight for 50 seconds at a time before you manage to find items such as condoms, wire and a few others to craft an oxygen balloon which can give you a whopping additional 25 seconds on your next flight!  For me, the first hour or so was simply gathering floating items in space and bringing them back to the cabin.  On the processing table, you can follow blueprints to blend various items together to create food, use ice blocks to make water, and craft instruments out of metals.  I made an instrument that breaks bigger objects into small pieces so that I could collect them. I must say that the game encyclopedia is well done and has plenty of hints for you to discover.

Once you have created your oxygen balloon, you’ll be able to fly further out into the asteroid field where you’ll find debris from the vessel. There you’ll find new items and even some small puzzles, and on completion, you’ll receive items which can help you create important upgrades for your spacesuit. One thing you need to be careful of (apart from losing all your oxygen) is to keep a resource of food (nutritious goo and other such delicacies), as well as water (which you can initially collect in space as ice). If either one of these two gauges drop down to zero, you’ll die. The other ways to die are: a) if you stay too long in space without oxygen, or b) you are exposed to too much radiation.

The gameplay is standard, as you’ll use the WASD to move around and the mouse to pick up or activate objects.  You can even pee, which is hilarious! There is plenty of humour in this game; you’ll have some good laughs, without a doubt!  As this game is on early access, this is the first chapter out of five planned, and I must say that I can’t wait to play the next one.

Graphics are splendid, and I love the Russian music when in the cabin - just marvellous! The controls are very responsive all round. You can also remap the keys if you wish. There are a few little bugs, but nothing drastic. Thank God the game automatically saves when you re-enter your cabin!