Edna & Harvey: The Breakout

Did You Know?

• The game was originally developed as a university project by Jan Müller-Michaelis, co-founder of Daedalic Entertainment.
• Jan Müller-Michaelis created his own game engine using Java to implement the game.
• Valve rejected Edna & Harvey from Steam three times on the grounds that their target audience did not care about the game.

Plot

Edna starts the game trapped in a padded cell, accompanied only by her toy rabbit Harvey, whom she treats as a conversational partner. She cannot remember how she got there and must find a way out. Her escape involves crawling through ventilation shafts and recruiting other inmates as allies, including a pair of people sharing a single sweater, an individual trying to transform into pure energy, and a character who can craft keys for any lock. Along the way, Edna decides to prove her father’s innocence, even though he was executed for murdering the son of asylum director Dr. Marcel. Harvey grants Edna the power to revisit past moments, a skill called Tempomorphing. After fleeing in Dr. Marcel’s car, they crash in a swamp and split up; the Keymaster pursues Edna, seeking revenge for her freeing “someone who should never be released”—himself. He traps them both in a church, but Edna escapes and returns to her childhood home. There she discovers that she, not her father, pushed Dr. Marcel’s son down the stairs, and her father took the blame. Dr. Marcel arrives, intending to erase her memory as her father requested, but Harvey has repeatedly restored it. Edna faces two choices: destroy Harvey to permanently lose her memory, or follow Harvey’s urging and attack Dr. Marcel. If she destroys Harvey with scissors, she is given a new name and happily performs housework for life. If she attacks, she knocks Dr. Marcel down the stairs with a mallet and vanishes, leaving only Harvey’s remains on a beach.