Adventure Gamers - Forums

I’ve been holding off on Edna and Harvey for ages, being sure I wouldn’t like it, as I’m not especially fan of cartoony graphics, I don’t like verb parsers and I prefer darker games over comedy. Also after I finally got it on a Gog sale together with the rest of Daedalic’s games, AVG insisted the exe file was a virus and vaulted it.

But, I reinstalled it this weekend and have been playing around 5 hours now (Edna and Harvey the Breakout), and I love it!
I have several issues with the UI; I wish I could lock an interaction so that I could go through all the looking at and talking to without pressing it each time, and the inventory is driving me crazy, but I’m still enjoying it immensely!

Love Edna, like the setting, and really enjoy all the interactions.
I’m scribbling on everything, cutting things, reading comic book stories.. I was sad when I had to give up the dictionary because I’d not be able to get definitions about everything anymore!

Favourites include: learning all the inventory items’ favourite tv-show, torturing the Bladder(and made myself need to go to the toilet), the brain, “freeing” the twins, New beginning painting, “the master key”.... So many of Edna’s interactions are funny and quite unexpected.

It has to be one of the most enjoyable games I’ve played in a long time, and as I said, I don’t usually go for humour games!

yeaaa ..this game will be for us to talk about for decades to come and how great it was ... strange that its kinda underrated or at least not praised enough ...YET

Yeah, Edna rules!

A.A - 21 March 2013 03:33 AM

It’s sequel, however, did not. It stopped being humourous, and was instead quite off-putting in it’s meanness. A really strange, uncomfortable experience.

Hm.. I don’t know about “mean”, but both games had dark undertones.

I steared clear of Edna and Harvey for quite some time aswell. As some of you may have gathered, I’m quite picky when it comes to artwork (backgrounds in particular), and to me it looks like the artwork in E&H is done by a 10 year old (granted, a talented ten-year-old, but a ten-year-old nonetheless). Compare it to Chains of Satinav or a New Beginning and it’s almost hard to believe E&H is coming from the same company. Deponia has a pretty similar artstyle to E&H, but without a doubt, there’s a LOT more effort put into the art there.

Anyway, the praise Edna and Harvey received here and in other forums made me realize I had to let my visual preferences take the back seat, and give the game a chance. I’m glad I did! Though, I was initially disappointed by Edna’s voice actor, it didn’t take long before the games apparent qualities began showing:

What the game lacks as far as art is concerned, they more than make up for with its incredible amount of interaction and the very humorous way it’s presented. It was a breath of fresh air from the ocean of modern AG’s with an incredible low amount of hotspots and even less interaction possibilities. This took me back to the old days, where every scene of an adventure game could capture your curiousity for a long time. Being stuck in Edna and Harvey was never boring or frustrating, because they actually managed to make trial and erroring FUN. Who’s ever done that? One could almost think that Josh Mandel was in charge of creating all the hotspots and their related texts.

I also think that Harvey was a wonderfully deranged sidekick that could give even Max a run for his money

If not for my issues with the artwork, Edna and Harvey would easily have been my favourite game from the Daedalic catalogue.

Like Dag i also avoided Edna & Harvey for a long time, because of the childish looking artwork, but i am so happy that i finally gave it a try. It is really a brilliant game.

I also like Harveys New Eyes very much, perhaps not quite as good, and not as many interactions, but the homour is just as quirky as the first, and as others have said a bit darker, which suits me just fine.

Dag - 21 March 2013 10:25 AM

It was a breath of fresh air from the ocean of modern AG’s with an incredible low amount of hotspots and even less interaction possibilities.

Agreed! You can even argue that Edna and Harvey is “hardcore” in that regard, as Daedalic “lightened” things slightly in The Whispered World (but for a good balance, IMO). Haven’t played the latest Daedalic’s games so I’m not sure how they fare in that regard, but I do hope that they continue with the trend of hight interactivity with their games.

Dag - 21 March 2013 10:25 AM

This took me back to the old days, where every scene of an adventure game could capture your curiousity for a long time

While I agree with you to an extent about the graphics, I must confess that Edna and Harvey graphics, while simple in its nature, has a tons of charm and uniqueness - not only that, but it’s exactly the graphics, like for example this shot that seemed quite retro-interesting to me. It’s almost like a Cartoon Network style, with the “warm” and colorful atmosphere of Toy Story’s and such.

Dag - 21 March 2013 10:25 AM

If not for my issues with the artwork, Edna and Harvey would easily have been my favourite game from the Daedalic catalogue.

Oh, and which one is?

diego - 21 March 2013 01:12 PM

Dag - 21 March 2013 10:25 AM

If not for my issues with the artwork, Edna and Harvey would easily have been my favourite game from the Daedalic catalogue.

Oh, and which one is?

Hmm, a difficult question, as I hold them all in pretty high regard, but if I had to choose one, I guess I would have to go with The Whispered World, which pulled my strings in all the right ways. It was one of those games where after seeing a screenshot from it, I wasn’t able to rest untill I had the game in my hands. Visual beauty is something I value quite highly in adventure games, and The Whispered World is one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever played. I’m also one of those who sympathized with (and to some extent even identified with) Sadwick, rather than getting annoyed by him. Great game, great puzzles, great setting, great story, breathtaking visuals… one of my modern AG favourites.