Edna & Harvey: The Breakout is an adventure game in the same vein as LucasArts' pre-1994 games created using the SCUMM engine. The game screen shows a two-dimensional cartoon world where Edna, the playable character is incarcerated within a mental hospital. The bottom edge of the screen contains a list of verbs which must be clicked on before the player clicks on an item within the game world in order to manipulate it. When the player tries to combine or effect one item with another each combination produces a different response, unlike in most games of this type where an incorrect combination would result in a response of "I don't know why you'd want to do that." During play expensive in-game objects such as cars can be defaced by the player, this does not affect the game in any tangible way but represents an act of rebellion