Breathedge: grandpa's funeral turns into a shipwreck in space — and the chicken survives

The studio's smart-mouthed humor wins over as many players as it drives away; the real question is how long each one keeps laughing before the joke wears thin.

A funeral in space that becomes a wreck in the void

The guy goes by Man — no last name — and he was on his way to a funeral in space, carrying his own grandfather's ashes, when the hearse he was riding in shattered in the middle of the void. He comes out of the disaster surrounded by debris, bodies drifting around him and a chicken that, by all appearances, simply cannot die. What starts as grief curdles into conspiracy: the plot he uncovers in the wreckage drags the reluctant hero into a mission to rescue a princess.

Survival revolves around duct tape: with it you can build just about anything, from the useless to the essential — including objects that can end the adventure very abruptly if you handle them carelessly. The player raises a station of their own, sorts out oxygen and power, sets up solar panels and fills the place with scrap, furniture and a hamster farm. Outside it, you can put together a small rocket or a full-size space shuttle to cut down the distances between the wrecks.

The tone is pitch-black comedy delivered with relentless cynicism, cutscenes botched on purpose and an enemy that seems to have crawled straight out of the script's own fever dream. It's the work of RedRuins Softworks, out since February 2021. The store page files the game under action, adventure, simulation and indie — labels that never quite capture the running gag threaded through the whole playthrough.

The sequel is under construction, and the studio still mocks its own delay

RedRuins Softworks' updates on the Steam page keep the same crooked tone as the game. One post from April jokes about turning to a text generator to write the announcement, then drops the idea a line later, claiming not even a machine would write like that. Another, from June, says Breathedge 2's early access arrives in August and promises a video of the game's opening minutes, with no firm date for it to show up.

The older entries trace the road already travelled: a playable demo of Breathedge 2 released during Steam Next Fest, followed by development updates and a preview dubbed Canyons, a separate project announced with the same sarcasm. This is not the silence of a studio that walked away from its first game — it's one that keeps posting, and the running gag has become part of its official voice.

Those who came for the Subnautica comparison left satisfied

The comparison that comes up most is to a space survival game in the vein of Subnautica, and more than one player notes that the game itself plays with the resemblance. One of them, with 25 hours in an August account, calls the building and the campaign solid; he admits that the on-foot stretches after the third chapter drag, but chalks it up to a one-off level-design issue rather than a lack of content. Another, with 49 hours in a separate account from the same month, praises the references scattered to other games, films and characters, and laughs at the jokes found along the way.

A player with 35 hours logged in an August account recalls the gift from a friend named Edna, who was battling a serious illness and would pass away soon after; she describes the game's story as funny, the humor as biting, and says the chicken in the plot left her feeling sorry for it. A second person, with 4 hours recorded that August too, found the graphics simple but pretty, and suggests the game explain earlier on how hunger, thirst and health actually work — a criticism that doesn't stop her from recommending it.

Someone who spent 23 hours in the game, also in August, sums up the biggest annoyance: only four quick slots for dozens of different tools, which forces constant swapping — and even so, they recommend the whole package.

Where the joke wears out, and the oxygen becomes a leash

The very joke that drew a laugh from the player who got the game as a gift from a friend no longer here is the one that makes another player give up after a short while. The most common complaint across the English accounts is the overload of gross-out humor: gas, pee and sex gags strung together until the lines pile on top of one another. One of those players, with 1 hour in an August account, admits that several environmental jokes land well — but the game itself cuts into the scene to explain them, and the joke dies right there.

It's ten at night and the oxygen meter is blinking red while you're still trying to remember which bolt unlocks the next door: that's the kind of moment where the controls let you down. The game asks for precision to pick up item by item, Skyrim-style, but the movement is fast and imprecise — and it gets worse in the stretches where the oxygen pressure pushes you forward, the opposite of stopping to aim with care. The player who reported this, with 0 hours marked in an August account, ended up doubting anyone had calmly tested that section.

After 17 hours, someone who also compared the opening to Subnautica called the middle of the game more of a slog, turned to a mod for infinite tool durability, and quit for good once the home stretch asked for little more than walking around doing nothing — the ending, this person chose to watch afterwards, outside the game. And the player who put in 13 hours and watched two suitcases full of items vanish from the base after a technical glitch regrets being unable to recommend the whole thing over that alone.

The joke pays off, for anyone who gets past the opening

The real divide isn't between liking and not liking space survival — any game in the genre splits players that way. It's about how much locker-room humor each player can stand to hear while trying to pick up bolts and manage oxygen. On Steam, where the game is sold and where the store page and the opinions used here come from, those who reach the end tend to come away recommending it — a sign that, for anyone who gets past the opening, the joke is worth the hassle.

Players who laugh easily at crude humor make it through the sluggish stretch of scavenging and oxygen without minding much. Those who don't run into the wall in the very first hour, exactly as the accounts that dropped the game early did — and that first impression never shifts afterwards.