Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (2002 video game)

Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars is an adventure game for the Game Boy Advance, created by Revolution Software and released by BAM! Entertainment in March 2002 across North America and Europe. It adapts the 1996 original by building a new version from scratch, selecting which content from the earlier release to keep. The biggest change was the controls: instead of a mouse-driven point-and-click interface, players use the GBA's d-pad to move the main character and perform actions. This GBA version later served as the basis for the Director's Cut of the game. A planned GBA port of the sequel, Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror, was canceled when the studio closed, leaving this as the only Broken Sword title on the platform.

The player controls George Stobbart, who witnesses a bombing at a Paris café that kills a man. He teams up with journalist Nico Collard to investigate the attack, uncovering a secret society and a conspiracy tied to the Knights Templar. The plot largely matches the original, with some dialogue cut. George travels through France, Spain, Ireland, and Syria, meeting people connected to the murder and eventually discovering that the victim was a Templar targeted by an assassin. When offered membership in the Templars, George refuses and escapes by setting off an explosion.

Gameplay is a 2D third-person adventure where the player solves puzzles, talks to non-playable characters, and collects items that can be combined or used on the environment or given to NPCs. Some incorrect or slow actions can cause George to die, forcing a reload from the last save. Unlike the point-and-click original, the player directly controls George’s movement, designed for the smaller screen. A button can be held to highlight all interactive points, and selecting one makes George walk over and interact.

Development started after a prototype graphics engine proved feasible, with full work beginning in May 2001. The team was small—mostly Tony Warriner and Steve Ince—and Warriner called completing it one of his proudest achievements. The game used a new engine instead of Revolution's Virtual Theatre engine. Designers prioritized the most important parts of the original, adding less vital content as space allowed. Backgrounds were compressed using JPEG, reducing them from 7MB to 1.95MB by setting a low global quality and cleaning up artifacts. The game used a 2