A Man and his Chicken
Breathedge is a survival game developed by indie game devs RedRuins Softworks and published by HypeTrain Digital. It was released on Feburary 25, 2021, after an extended period in early access.
The game puts the player in the role of the Man, Sole Survivor of a deep-space crash of the funerary liner "Unnamed" operated by the Breathedge corporation while attempting to bury his recently-deceased grandfather. With only his family heirloom, the Immortal Chicken, and a smart-mouthed corporate AI built into his spacesuit for company, the Man must scavenge, craft, explore, acknowledge innumerable shout-outs, bury his grandfather once and for all, get to the bottom of an Ancient Conspiracy and maybe chase after the mysterious "Babe" who keeps sending him seductive messages not-so-subtly trying to get him killed...
Breathedge takes noticeable inspiration from the earlier survival game Subnautica; the core gameplay loop of scavenge > craft > explore > scavenge is highly similar. However, while Subnautica played into the horror of being isolated on an alien planet, Breathedge takes a far more darkly humorous and occasionally absurd tone. For example, one of the very first things you do in the game is try to plug a leak in your shuttle with the Immortal Chicken - only to be informed that leaks are best plugged with things that don't have holes at each end...
At the 2023 Summer of Gaming event a sequal was announced.
Breathedge contains examples of the following tropes:
- Achievements in Ignorance: The player character somehow manages to start a fire over the course of solving a 3x3 jigsaw puzzle.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: With the exception of your spacesuit AI, who remains loyal and helpful throughout the game despite shouting the occasional corporate platitude, every other AI is not particularly impressive. The highlight has to be the military Gatekeeper confusing a chicken in camo pattern paint for a high-ranking general!
- The All-Solving Hammer: The immortal chicken is used as the solution to a startling array of things, ranging from grounding electrical currents to plugging leaks to (due to an extremely fortunate resemblance) convincing a military robot that it is a general. It even contains a virus to shut down the evil AI.
- Antagonist Title: The Breathedge corporation is ultimately responsible for all the death and destruction of the game, and launches a full-out war to take over human space in the epilogue.
- Big Bad: Mother Station, a Hive Mind formed from hundreds of Breathedge spacesuits, is primarily responsible for the attack that caused the "Unnamed" to crash in the first place, and is the final enemy that must be defeated to beat the game.
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: A smuggler's eye can be used to access smuggler's caches in certain spots. Your chicken will hold the eye for you.
- Breakable Weapons: All of your tools, weapons, and vehicles have a set durability that is reduced through use or damage, and will break once that durability is depleted. For tools and weapons, a point of durability is lost each time the item is used successfully. The exception is the Infinite Handy Scrapper, which has infinite uses as per the name even though its durability is listed as 999. For vehicles, they lose durability when damaged but can be repaired with the Repair Tool.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: One of the ways the game has you reduce radiation in order to access more areas is to go to the game's setting menu and enable "reduced radiation" (an option that only appears when you're told to do so); a slide-show in-universe contains instructions to do so.
- The Conspiracy: The Breathedge corporation, exploiting its position as the premier space funeral service provider in human space, secretly experimented on and developed an army of corpse-powered "coffinbots" and scattered them all over the galaxy under the pretense of offering dignified funerals. One of their experiments resulted in the creation of the rogue AI Mother Station, who conspired with the Green Universe terrorist group to bring down the liner "Unnamed" to allow her to subvert the coffinbots aboard and kickstart the war, but the plan was bungled resulting in the mess the Man finds himself in at the start of the game. Oh and Grandfather, a brilliant space engineer and AI developer, discovered this and worked to subvert it, even posthumously taking control of his coffinbot to fight Mother personally. All of this is explained to you in one paragraph.
- "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Towards the end of the game you find that your grandfather left a sticky note on your face with helpful information, which Man only removes after being told about it. The player has likewise been completely ignorant of its existence due to the Unbroken First-Person Perspective.
- Could Say It, But...:
- At one point your suit's AI recognizes that you need confidential information about the Breathedge corporation to survive, which its programming will not allow it to tell you. However, its programming does allow it to point out that there are numerous other suits around with the information which could be forced to reveal it using a drill. Your character decides to use the drill on himself to get your suit to talk.
- Shortly afterwards, your suit explains that "Unfortunately, due to the security protocol, I cannot tell you that the special magnets built into his engineering boots can be used to illegally open the back panel of Breathedge coffins" and then goes on to explain that it has "no right to explain" about the confidential features in the coffins that make doing this necessary, which it proceeds to describe in detail.
- Dissonant Serenity: The suit AI speaks almost always with the same cheerful tone, no matter how dangerous, disgusting or surprising the situation may be.
- Dressing as the Enemy: In Chapter 2, there's a defunct military base whose AI doorman won't allow in civilians, forcing you to scan and then craft a military suit to gain entrance. The doorman still refuses to allow you entry because you're just a grunt, but your trusty General Chicken passes the check, thanks to a passing resemblance to the base commander.
- Early Game Hell: Just getting around in the first chapter is seriously hampered by a limited oxygen supply. You'll have to gather resources to set up oxygen stations to get yourself far enough to gather the resources needed to reach the next chapter. The next chapter introduces faster vehicles and additional limitless oxygen stations, reducing the need to constantly replenish oxygen at the primary base.
- EMP: EMP grenades can be crafted. They temporarily disable hostile robots and can be used to safely retrieve the energized Breathedge cores scattered around the various wrecks.
- Interface Screw:
- Freezing areas slowly ice up your helmet. The effect isn't fatal by itself, but good luck not dying when you can't even see your map markers. The effect is reversed by either finding a heating coil in one of the nearby wrecks or exiting the area.
- You can craft an upgraded helmet which is coated in lead paint. Put it on and you'll immediately see (or not, as the case may be) why that extra radiation protection isn't very helpful.
- Meat Versus Veggies: The core of the conflict between the Green Universe and the rest of human society. Since Future Food Is Artificial is in full effect, it's more than a little strange. Which, to be fair, is entirely in line with the rest of the game.
- Most Definitely Not a Villain: "Babe" will constantly direct you to do suicidal things that you will obviously know better than to attempt, only to then make some lame excuse as to why they suggested doing so.
- Ms. Fanservice:
- "Babe", whose profile picture is just a close-up of a woman's cleavage. This is deliberately exploited by The Dragon - who's pretending to be her for most of the game (using a pair of Fake Boobs the entire time) - to (poorly) try to exploit Distracted by the Sexy to get you to kill yourself. The real Babe uses the same avatar but is more modestly dressed in a Form-Fitting Wardrobe spacesuit.
- You wouldn't expect the Big Bad to be this but Mother, despite her avatar being the standard Huge Holographic Head when viewed from the front, apparently felt the need to display a (rather shapely) naked human backside to anyone viewing her avatar from behind.
- Nigh-Invulnerable: The Immortal Chicken is well-named. It survives the vacuum of space with no issue. The Man even starts exploiting this to clear up stray electrical currents.
- Pink Elephants: When you first use the Dispenser to rebuild an airlock, it comes out bungled. Your suit adjusts your perception to correct the problem, assuring you that there are probably no side effects as a unicorn prances across the bottom of your screen.
- Ray Gun: A blaster can be crafted late in Chapter 2. It helps with certain challenges, such as destroying turrets, though it isn't strictly necessary.
- Shout-Out:
- The most obvious would have to be the player's goal in Chapter 2 being to make their way to a ship called ''Normandy,'' formerly captained by a man named Shepard. The objective marker for said ship even uses the Systems Alliance logo from that franchise.
- Among the dead Normandy crew is a green haired man who apparently wore heavy make up.
- One of the photos you can come across shows Grandad and the younger player character hanging out with a guy named "Ricky" and his grandson.
- While exploring the debris Man finds vats containing mutated cows with elongated heads. He later encounters one aboard a military capsule, having accidentally released it, with one of the dead crew even sprawled out on a table.
- In the ending, you find your ship has crash-landed on an ocean planet with another destroyed liner in the distance resembling the Aurora from Subnautica. Fortunately it's All Just a Dream.
- Take That!: Looking at a particular poster reveals the ruling party evidently banned sickness at some point in the past, with the description revealing that, apparently, just ignoring it did absolutely nothing to stop a pandemic.
- Throw Down the Bomblet: Grenades can be crafted from beef cans and fertilizer. They aren't practical as weapons because they have to be individually equipped, but do come in handy for certain tasks.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: The player character is literally named "Man".
