While I haven't met many Australians in person, there is something undeniably appealing about the idea of hardy, forthright, upbeat humans who try to do their best no matter the odds. In the gestalt of human nature, the Australian outlook is unlike any other so when the chance arose to experience a uniquely Ozzie spin on the Fallout formula, I jumped in with all four trotters...

Unfortunately, some twenty hours in, what I hoped would be a refreshing dip into a post-apocalyptic RPG has barely gotten my toes wet.

All the ingredients are there. Broken Roads sports quite nice, isometric 3D graphics (reminiscent of Disco Elysium) supplemented by hand-drawn illustrations; pleasant music, decent writing, and underlying mechanics that – while not as complex as Fallout's – promise enough diversity to make for a fun enough trip to the outback...

But none of that outward promise is ever fulfilled. Despite dialogue variety, conversations and quests are mostly linear. A "morality wheel" mechanic hardly affects game-play beyond a few, static stat modifiers. Map locations are small and offer little of interest. Party companions feel like strangers you got saddled with (rather than folks you chose to bring along). Combat is simplistic and the core impetus of the plot meager, at best, feeling more like a trickling stream you could follow rather than rapids that pull you along.

What Broken Roads reminds me most of is "game design by committee": a hodge-podge of ideas that, individually, have merit, but aren't necessarily suitable for each other, thrown together without any inkling of how to unify them or even make them work. That's the only way I can account for the mismatch of quoting philosophy in loading screens and then drinking beer and picking up manure in-game. It's like the devs never decided what their game was supposed to be about — and then went ahead and made it, anyway.

Which is a shame, because – despite its limited game-play and fuzzy focus – Broken Roads is a tantalizing enough package, as a whole.

I mean, sure, not all of the illustrations are up to the same standard (with a few looking like they were done by interns for work experience); some bugs crop up (like one that triggered dialogue with a dead NPC, effectively freezing the game); and a few transitions seem stilted and poorly designed (like having to watch a conversation partner slowly amble across the entire width of a town so dialogue could start without any means of skipping the animation); but, on the whole, it's a nice looking, well put-together little game the devs obviously cared about. With a bit more content and a more cohesive design, it could have been something worth playing.

As it stands, however, it is just another in a long line of gaming mirages: tantalizing when it's a prospect on the distant horizon, but not much at all once you experience it in person.

If you have money burning a hole in your pocket and nothing to play or really want to brush-up on your Ozzie slang, Broken Roads is not without its merits. But if you wanted to make a big splash into a decent RPG, I'd keep your cozzie stowed: this is one pool you don't wanna dive into.