About the Game
Born of a love for traditional computer role-playing from franchises such as Pillars of Eternity, Fallout, Wasteland, Tyranny, Pathfinder, and Baldur's Gate, Broken Roads provides a rich, engaging narrative in which players make their way across a desolated future Australia. Blending together traditional and all-new role-playing elements on top of a classless system offering nearly unlimited character development options, Broken Roads presents players with an original morality system: the Moral Compass. This novel design sees dialogue options and questing decisions influence, and be influenced by, a character's philosophical leaning.

Immerse yourself in a game world set in post-apocalyptic Western Australia filled with intricate lore, deep history, and compelling characters. As you embark on your epic journey, complex storylines, branching quests, and memorable encounters await. Uncover hidden secrets, unravel political intrigues, and confront moral dilemmas that challenge your assumptions about right and wrong. Every decision you make shapes the rich narrative, leading to multiple outcomes and ensuring a truly personalized gameplay experience. From the grand overarching plot to the smallest details, the world is brought to life with atmospheric descriptions and vivid dialogues, delivering an immersive and unforgettable adventure.

The game seamlessly merges classic RPG elements with innovative features, providing players with a unique and customizable gameplay experience. Building upon a classless system, it offers an extensive range of character development options, allowing players to shape their abilities and skills to suit their playstyle. The inclusion of all-new role-playing elements adds depth and complexity to the game's mechanics, intriguing moral choices, and immersive narrative arcs.

The Moral Compass introduces a groundbreaking morality system that goes beyond traditional notions of good and evil. Instead, it focuses on a character's philosophical leaning, allowing players to shape their protagonist's world view in unique and nuanced ways.
For example, a character who leans towards utilitarianism may prioritize the greater good, making decisions based on the overall benefit to society, even if it means sacrificing individual lives.
With every tough decision that is made, the characters Moral Compass can shift, potentially making them more broad or narrow-minded or even able to change their morality entirely as the journey progresses.
The system allows players to create a protagonist with a unique moral identity that influences their journey and relationships, but also is influenced by every choice they make.

Roam the vast Outback, explore decaying urban centers, and navigate treacherous desert regions as you uncover the secrets of this hauntingly beautiful and dangerous land. Survive, fight, and forge alliances in a unique setting that captures the essence of Western Australia's diverse people and landscapes and brings a fresh twist to the post-apocalyptic genre.

Screenshots
12 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
4 February 2025 hotfix details:
- Container names are now displayed when pressing TAB
- Containers/bodies which have been looted will display " (empty)"
- The names of items which can be picked up are now also displayed when pressing TAB
- Fixed various human and animal combatants' blood splatter VFX not playing in combat
Hello everyone and welcome to 2025!
We hope you’ve all had a good break over the new year and like us you’re likely back in the swing of work, study, or whatever you usually do with your time.
A few community members have asked for a roadmap for what to expect this year. We’re hesitant to commit more than just a few months, so below is a rundown of what is on the way in early 2025.
The biggest change is that from today’s patch, we now have a means to switch branches to the English-only updates, which is where we’ll be posting all of the new content fixes, narrative changes, journal improvements and so on, and once done we will work on localising for all languages.
Roadmap for Fixes and Patches
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We’ve seen some players asking about a roadmap of what they can expect in Broken Roads this year, so here is the basic list outlining the key areas the team is tackling first:
- We have high confidence it is now sorted, but if any Steam Achievements still aren't unlocking for some players after today’s patch, we’ll keep digging into the matter until it is solved.
- Southern Cross is a high-priority area receiving improvements to player interactions, expanded choices, and enhanced role-playing opportunities in key moments.
- Merredin Election issues will be addressed with clearer details and options for the player to engage (or not) as they choose.
- Refugees will see significant changes and improvements, with more interactions and resolution options. This update may take a few months to fully implement and test.
- Eliminating 'teleportation'/instant fast traveling for story beats or other locations wherever possible. This will require time to test properly.
- Companions and smaller NPCs will be significantly fleshed out, with some receiving complete overhauls, particularly companion interactions at the convoy in Merredin.
- Continuing to address and squash bugs along the way.
Recently Addressed Issues
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- Fixed a bug affecting some save games (caused by a null reference related to Moral Traits used in combat) not loading.
- Steam Achievements not unlocking should be fixed with the new patch, but will wait for players to confirm. Any time you enter Brookton, Merredin, Kalgoorlie or (spoilers) the final scene in the game it runs a full check on any achievements you have locally which are not registered on Steam.
{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/38613301/e22a6ce87540c951c4984955daf0a53517f398e0.png - Fixed a bug where enemies (random encounter raiders and animals) would lose their weapons or loot if fought in a previous random encounter. No more dingoes attacking with fists!
- Certain weapons, such as cleavers, now have a small percentage chance to inflict the bleeding status effect, rather than guaranteeing it on every hit.
- There was a very late-game moment that could teleport you to an unavoidable combat encounter if you asked about a particular character too many times. Without saying too much more at the risk of spoilers, this no longer moves you from the conversation you are in but instead will wait for a future scene load, and will likely be iterated on further to make this feel more natural.
- There were some instances where objects in combat had the incorrect cover applied, making it impossible to shoot over the hood of some cars or past certain tall trees. These have now been assigned the correct cover type.
- Fixed a bug where Jake Anderson was sometimes incorrectly spawning in Bally Bally Hall during the Barter Crew origin story.
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Responding to Player Feedback
- All new Steam reviews from the last 1-2 months will be read and responded to.
- All Steam comments and discussions have been answered this week.
Steam Branch Switching Feature
- Players can now easily switch to the English-only branch via Steam’s branch switching feature.
- This branch includes all new narrative, quest, companion, and other changes.
Update Cadence
- Based on reactions to our previous major patch, we will prioritize smaller, more frequent updates rather than waiting a few months for larger patches.
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Non-English Versions
- For now, non-English players can continue to enjoy the game in its current state with the latest fixes as of today.
- The new changes will be available in the English-only branch. Once the updates are complete, localization and translation will follow.
Bug-Free Quest Resolutions
- Commitment to achieving 100% bug-free quest resolutions.
- Ongoing patches to address edge cases discovered post-release, some involving unexpected sequence breaks.
- Players are encouraged to report bugs via the Discord report-a-bug channel.
Steam Deck Status
- Fully playable on Steam Deck with Playable Status confirmed by Steam.
- Verified Status withheld due to text size concerns, despite recent increases.
- Valve’s specific feedback on glyphs and text size will be addressed in an upcoming update.
Again, we don’t want to commit to specific timelines for these. Given that QA and bug-fixing can take who knows how long if unforeseen issues arise, any dates we put out now are likely to change.
Thank you to all players for their continued feedback and support as we work to improve Broken Roads!
PLAY NOW:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1403440/Broken_Roads/
That's all for today, ‘ol cobber! Follow Broken Roads to stay updated and don't forget, your choices are the key.
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SOCIAL: DISCORD | TWITTER | YOUTUBE | WIKI
- The Drop Bear Bytes team
We’ve just released another small polish patch and also wanted to share an update on our user reviews.
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Steam User Reviews:
Recent Reviews hit Very Positive
We’re extremely happy to see the upturn in positive user reviews on Steam. While the number is still of course small, having enough people post reviews recently to see the shift not just to Mostly Positive, but Very Positive has been incredible.
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The number of players to reviewers has varied quite a lot throughout the year, with the unsurprising trend of unsatisfied players leaving negative reviews more often than happy players post a positive review.
In April and May we were looking at 30-40 players per review, which is around the Steam average. As the patches improved the quality of the game we started to see a significant drop off to the point where recently we’ve seen one review posted for every ~90 to 100 players. What matters, though, is that more and more people are recommending Broken Roads, so a huge, sincere thank you to everyone who does so.
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After the rough launch, we released a number of patches and hotfixes based upon player feedback, adding in requested features, more dialogue, VO and additional combat, plus fixing numerous bugs. The above image shows that 75% of players between 28th April and now have reviewed the game positively.
By the late May patch we had added over 10,000 words to the game, opened up the Overworld map in the origin stories, additional companion reactivity, fixed literally hundreds of bugs, more ways to resolve certain quest objectives, and much more.
The team continued to update the game to a total of 10 patches and hotfixes, and the reactions during and immediately after the recent Steam Autumn Sale have blown us away. It’s very rewarding to see the efforts pay off and the comments in the Steam discussion threads getting more positive, so thanks to everyone who has been supporting, posting bugs, making suggestions and generally just engaging with the community as we continue to improve Broken Roads.
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We’re very proud that the patches have created such a steady increase in player sentiment to the point where 82% of players after the May patch have recommended the game on Steam. There’s nothing more beneficial for us at the moment, so if you liked Broken Roads and appreciate the improvements made since launch, please post a review.
We’ll keep patching and improving in the coming weeks and months. Thanks again to everyone who has played and reviewed Broken Roads!
Patch Notes
WARNING: SOME SPOILERS INCLUDED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PATCH NOTES:
- Fixed a logic issue with Lake Deborah's main quest not showing the next objectives at certain points.
- Additional objectives were added for Lake Deborah to clarify how to progress The Revealed Religion.
- Polished some party and NPC locations during the first arrival and opening sequence at Lake Deborah.
- Polished some of the player options when discussing returned books with Talia in the Lake Deborah library.
- Removed prompts to ask questions related to gaining entrance to Southern Cross once the player has already completed the quiz.
- Corrected some enemy inventories to line up with their equipped weapons.
- SPOILER: Reduced the time between returning Machiavellian books in Lake Deborah and triggering Talia telling the player that Brooke was reading them.
- SPOILER: Reduced the time it takes to construct Lake Deborah’s watchtowers from 48 to 24 hours.
PLAY NOW:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1403440/Broken_Roads/
That's all for today, ‘ol cobber! Follow Broken Roads to stay updated and don't forget, your choices are the key.
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SOCIAL: DISCORD | TWITTER | YOUTUBE | WIKI
- The Drop Bear Bytes team
What’s Been Happening with Broken Roads’ development?
We have racked up hundreds of pages of feedback, notes, suggestions and draft material for improving Broken Roads, and now is the time to implement. We’ve been focusing on improvements that don’t require translations for now, with a lot of focus on improving the weapons and consumables (in terms of AP required, damage, range, reload time, and dollar value).
We’ve also worked on removing some of the moments in the game that used to instantly transport the player to the next location or to complete a quest objective. This approach involves a lot of testing as many things can go wrong, so it’s slow work, but there’s more of this to come.
We’ve also identified some specific quest, journal and objective issues that can still be made considerably clearer for players (we’ll be focusing on Lake Deborah, Merredin and Southern Cross for the next patch).
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Steam Deck Verification Update
Broken Roads is now officially classified as Playable on Steam Deck, with the feedback that some of the text and controller glyphs were still too small even with the Large Font option enabled. We’ve addressed all of the points requested by Valve and are resubmitting for full Steam Deck Verified status along with this patch going live.
What’s Next?
More polish and bug fixes, but also the bulk of the work to expand on and improve pretty much every area of the game. We’re doing all of this in English only at first, and will be releasing these updates on the English-Only branch. There’s a new feature in Steam that allows players to seamlessly switch branches without any technical knowhow, and that’s what we’re focusing the next update on.
Without having to get the text translated or put through localisation QA, the turnaround will be much faster. We’re also no longer limited by word count restrictions and can flesh out all of the dialogues we couldn’t at launch, and have the freedom to completely rewrite entire characters, conversations and quests to make the game as good as it possibly can be.
Once this is done, we’ll get to work on localisation and translation and of course patching consoles to get to the same point.
Thanks again for your patience and to everyone who continues to support us as we press on with making Broken Roads the best it can be.
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Patch Notes
WARNING: SOME SPOILERS INCLUDED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PATCH NOTES:
- - Increased various font sizes and controller glyphs for Steam Deck. These can be accessed by all users when the Large Font checkbox in the settings menu is ticked.
- - Increased the size of some tutorial images for better readability on portable devices.
- - Reworked all companion reactions in the Merredin convoy banter to make them considerably less likely to respond unfavourably towards the player.
- - When leaving Merredin interiors, the game no longer teleports the player character back to the convoy area for convoy events. These now only occur when returning to Merredin from the overworld map, except for two specific story cases.
- - Gated certain rude or tactless player options behind low Charisma checks.
- - Fixed a bug where characters could incur attacks of opportunity when getting closer to their targets.
- - Adjusted the contents of Col’s shop (Hunters and Collectors) and various Vendor inventories in Merredin.
- Adjusted the prices of many consumables in the game.
- Adjusted HP recovery and secondary benefits of various consumables.
- Adjusted the prices of almost every weapon.
- It now costs less AP to switch to secondary weapon than to reload for all weapons except Pistols.
- Changed Blasers and SR98s (as well as the upgraded versions) to require 2AP to reload.
- Changed min and max damage for numerous weapons, including Spiked Clubs, SR98 upgrades, and Hunting Rifle upgrades.
- Changed the Min, Max and Optimal ranges between weapon types to further distinguish between them and require differing strategies.
- Reduced the damage of the SR98 +3 to be more in line with other max upgraded weapons.
- Reworked Revolvers to now have a small Knockdown chance, a larger optimal range and a wider damage range than Pistols.
- Revolvers now require 2AP to reload.
- Pistols are now the only ranged weapons that require 1AP to reload.
- Shotguns have from 10% Knockdown chance to 30% Knockdown chance depending on the upgrade.
- Spears are now optimal between 1 and 2 units away from the target.
- Mad’s Bat and Makeshift Axe have a range from 0 to 1.5 units and are always optimal when in range.
- All other melee weapons require being 0 to 1 units away from the target and are optimal in this range.
- All Cleavers now inflict bleeding.
- Hammers have from 10% Knockdown chance to 50% Knockdown chance depending on the upgrade.
- Spiked Clubs have 5% Knockdown chance to 30% Knockdown chance depending on the upgrade.
- Many small tweaks to difficulty of various combat throughout the game based upon where the average player level and party composition would be at that point.
- Small adjustments to enemy combatants' equipment and loot throughout the game.
- Changed a few animations for some of Merredin’s residents and NPCs.
- SPOILER: Priss no longer kidnaps the player if they talk to Scott Measure a second time. This can still be triggered by antagonising Angela Smith after the first meeting with Priss.
- SPOILER: Fixed a bug what was incorrectly determining Angela Smith’s reactions to the player when they threaten or antagonise her prior to the pub debate.
- SPOILER: Removed a dialogue break when talking to Mick after Priss first threatens the player.
- SPOILER: Reworked companion calculations in the final dialogue in Kalgoorlie to decrease their likelihood of abandoning the player character.
PLAY NOW:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1403440/Broken_Roads/
That's all for today, ‘ol cobber! Follow Broken Roads to stay updated and don't forget, your choices are the key.
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SOCIAL: DISCORD | TWITTER | YOUTUBE | WIKI
- Craig Ritchie,
Game Director - The Drop Bear Bytes team
Current Release
Not available
System Requirements
How to Install
setup.exe
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
9.6 GB
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