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Humorous point and click graphic adventures have always had my interest, and Runaway seemed to bring back memories of Monkey Island right from the artwork.
Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle begins with Brian Basco on vacation with his girlfriend Gina, in Hawaii. They decide to take a little plane trip to see the famous Tiki Fall on Mala Island, but strangely enough, all trips to the Island have been cancelled, except for one by Platypus Tours.
Reluctantly, Brian boards the plane with Gina and their pilot, Otto. But it’s not until they find themselves losing altitude really fast with an unconscious pilot in the cockpit that things take a turn for the worst. With only one parachute available, Brian does the heroic thing: makes Gina put it on, forces her out of the plane and tries to soften the landing.
That’s where the adventure begins, with Brian’s quest to find the missing Gina. Stuck in the middle of the jungle, his first task is to get as many useful things as possible and reach civilization to ask for help.
The game is divided into six chapters, but don’t think they will be short and easy to get through. As any good graphic adventure, key items have creative uses beyond what you would expect them to, so sometimes you might not see the solution for a puzzle right away and will experiment with everything on everything else, but other times it becomes all so clear. Word of advice: look at everything, touch everything, watch the changes in your cursor as you move it around in a certain area. You might miss something important, like I did right before leaving the plane.
It does helps talking to everyone about everything, and do pay attention to what is said, since it will either help you later or be just funny and worth reading. Every encounter is memorable and you get to appreciate every character, even the bad guys.
Through his crazy adventure, Brian will get involved with the military, meet with aliens, chat with pirates, disguise himself as a scientist, bring a bird back from the dead, go ice fishing and experiment with alien technology. It seems like all these events couldn’t even fit together in the same story, but they do, and they work too.
The pace of the story is slow, yes, but it lets you explore and think at your own pace until you finally find or remember something that 
“clicks”. Hearing what Brian says about each object in the inventory can reveal some clues as to what you have to use it for. The puzzles are varied and make the gameplay refreshing, since what you have in your inventory in each chapter is completely different from what you had in the one before.
I really enjoyed the artwork and the animated sequences. It was like watching a cartoon, only it was based on what I was playing. It’s great to see that in one moment you control everything and in the next the story advances all by itself.
Everything is really well written and the voice acting is fantastic and present for every line of text dialog. Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to find a new option for a dialog with a character is to go through 
previous dialogs until you see the new option. This can be a little annoying, and could have been solved by eliminating the already exhausted questions and showing only the new one.
The jokes in the game are very light-hearted which make it fun for the entire family, but adults will definitely laugh at different things than children. You will also find some hilarious references to Indiana Jones, Men In Black, Deal or No Deal, Hellraiser and even Monkey Island (Swordfight of insults? I remember that!).
The relaxing style of gameplay makes for savoring the adventure even more. You can play a bit now, solve some puzzles and progress a little, then come back later and continue the adventure. Since you can save anywhere whenever you want, it makes it very convenient for short game sessions, though this is one adventure that I’d recommend that you at least play it by chapters, so you don’t forget what happened before and what you need to do next.
Runaway: The Dream of the Turtle is one of those games that you can’t rush, like a good meal. You just want to sit back, relax and delight in everything it has to offer. And then right at the end, you’re left wanting more.
Special thanks to Ted Brockwood and CDV for providing a copy of this title.