Runaway: A Twist of Fate

Lore & Background

Runaway: A Twist of Fate begins six months after the events of Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle, with the funeral of Brian Basco. Co-protagonist Gina Timmins attends, and after the funeral receives a text message from Brian claiming to have been buried alive. She opens his coffin to find Brian's friend Gabbo from the mental institution. The pair leave the cemetery while dodging two gangsters. The story unfolds through flashbacks and present-day sequences, revealing Brian's escape from an asylum, the framing for murder, and the involvement of a killer codenamed Tarantula. The game concludes with Brian and Gina selling a lump of volcanic rock for $10 million and going on the run. A post-credits scene reveals that Dr. Bennett survived the shooting at Chapman's house.

Reader's Guide

Runaway: A Twist of Fate received generally positive reviews, becoming the highest-scoring Pendulo game on Metacritic at the time. By 2017, HobbyConsolas reported it was still one of the highest-rated Spanish games on Metacritic. In March 2010, ABC reported that sales of the Runaway series had risen to 1.5 million units worldwide. According to GfK, the game sold another 11,348 full-price copies in Spain within roughly 18 months at a retail price of €20. The DS version received mixed or average reviews. In 2011, Adventure Gamers named Runaway 3 the 97th best adventure game ever released. Pendulo chose to retire the Runaway series after this release, citing exhaustion with the franchise, though an iOS spin-off titled Hidden Runaway followed in 2012.

Did You Know?

• The game was first shown under its full name in February 2008 at the Game Developers Conference.
• Several versions of the game were scrapped before the team settled on the final story and structure.
• The Spanish version launched on March 25, 2010, with an exclusive special collector's edition to mollify fans annoyed by the delay.
• A Twist of Fate was ported to iOS in 2013.