For New Yorker Brian Basco, scientific study and having a career in Applied Physics is everything! He is as "excited as a kid in a candy store" when his application for a position at the University of Berkeley is accepted. Before setting out on the long trip from New York to California, Brian remembers one last errand to do. Little does he know that this slight detour would change his life, and his life style, forever!
Minding his own business driving along the New York streets on the way to a bookstore, he cannot avoid hitting the beautiful girl who runs out in front of his car! He does the right thing and takes her to the hospital. When she comes to, he learns that she witnessed a murder and that vicious gangsters are after her! Because Brian helped her, his life is also in danger! And so the story of Brian and Gina begins...
In this point-and-click adventure, you play Brian in 3rd person as he figures out how to avoid and escape the Mafia-like thugs chasing them. Their travels will take them to a variety of different places (a Museum, the Arizona desert etc.) during the six game chapters. Put your thinking cap on to solve situations and puzzles using objects and conversation with people they meet.
The game features drawn cartoon-like 2D and 3D graphics and cut-scenes. Its original soundtrack includes over 24 songs. Interact with almost 30 different characters with interesting, and often comical, personalities. Find and use a multitude of items that can be manipulated within the inventory window.
Was followed up in 2006 by Runaway 2: The Dream of the Turtle.
This Video Game contains examples of:
- Alliterative Name: Brian Basco. Saturn makes a joke of it, asking how no one came to address Brian as BB.
- Asshole Victim: Willy, the janitor at the museum, who runs his own laboratory equipment business, where he actually steals equipment from the museum to sell, and appears to spend much of his time slacking off, is the first to be killed when the mafia attack the museum.
- The Atoner: Oscar claims to have a troubled and dark past but he is found and put in the right path by Mama Dorita.
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: What Brian and Gina are really looking for is a severed finger, which they need to use to access the bank where the money from the truck heist is.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: Joshua is an odd character who believes he can make contact with aliens in the desert. After helping him setting all his machines a strange beam of light abducts him in the middle of a crater. leaving a surprised Brian very freaked out.
- Damsel in Distress: Gina is captured by thugs and must be rescued by Brian. Basically the entire game is dragging her out of trouble, and Brian confesses that he simply cannot let her die on his watch even after finding out the truth.
- Drugs Are Good: Brian uses drugs to relax his mind, so he can be put in a trance to serve as a medium.
- Easter Egg: Sushi has a Hollywood Monsters poster in her workplace, also you can see the protagonist of that game in a coffin in Mama Dorita's house.
- Foreshadowing: When you talk to Carla, she tells you to not trust in Gina. She was right.
- Frame-Up: In order to get the mafia off their back, Brian gets a recording of Gustav and Feodor's voice, and Sushi uses it to call their boss, to make it look like they decided to keep the money for themselves.
- Hidden Depths: Lula the Drag Queen is an ex-pro basketball player and Carla a former marine soldier and pilot.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Brian muses that he feels like he lost control of his life, with someone controlling him like a character in a computer adventure game.
- Locking MacGyver in the Store Cupboard: When the mafia catches Brian, they lock him in a cabin storeroom and take all his items away - he is able to escape with the items in the room.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Brian encounters both aliens and shamans in his journey. It's never explained (and leaves him puzzled) whether those things really were magical or can be interpreted rationally. He also meets Wupuchim, the mysterious last chief of the Hopi tribe, who appears and disappears all of a sudden, and is strongly implied to be not entirely human (probably a ghost or a spirit of sorts).
- The Mafia: Gina Timmins witnessed these guys commit a murder. Now she and Brian Basco are on the run from them.
- Manipulative Bitch: Gina manipulated everyone from the start. Even though she did become attached to Brian in result, she goes as far as tormenting Johnny's spirit beyond the grave.
- Must Have Caffeine: Dr. Olivaw has to restore all of the artifacts for the museum's Mayan expedition on a very tight deadline - she had to drink a lot of coffee to keep going, and she is still very irritable.
- Once More, with Clarity: Gina first tells Brian that her father was killed by the mob. But later in the game, it is revealed that her father is unharmed, and the one was killed was another man named Johnny the Indian who stole money from the mob.
- Pixel Hunt: A lot of small objects in this game are well hidden in the scenery so you will need to scan every last part of the screen to avoid being stuck.
- Really Dead Montage: Gina gets one. Later subverted, as it turns out she is actually alive.
- Slipping a Mickey: Brian knocks out a guard by slipping a pill into his beer.
- Stealing from the Till: Willy, the janitor at the museum, runs a laboratory equipment business by stealing and selling equipment from the museum.
- Unreliable Expositor: Gina partially lied when she first told Brian why she is in danger. It wasn't her father she saw killed, it was Johnny, a friend of Gina's who was involved in a truck robbery for the mafia a few years ago.
- Viewers Are Geniuses: A couple of the puzzles requires you to have some real-life understanding of physics.
- At one point you need to power up a device using a battery but the only one you can find doesn't have enough charge left. The solution is to put the battery in a freezer so that the resulting voltage hike will be enough to power the device for a few seconds. Something that you would most likely not even consider unless you knew a thing or two about battery chemistry.
- Made even worse by the fact that a nearby janitor has some working ones that he refuses to give you.
- Another puzzle requires you to cut open some very hard seed pods, but no knife you can find is sharp enough. The required solution ( put the knife in a fire first) also not being very obvious unless you have some basic knowledge of metallurgy.
- At one point you need to power up a device using a battery but the only one you can find doesn't have enough charge left. The solution is to put the battery in a freezer so that the resulting voltage hike will be enough to power the device for a few seconds. Something that you would most likely not even consider unless you knew a thing or two about battery chemistry.
- Willing Channeler: Brian agrees to be host to a spirit.
