Urban Runner

The game itself is an interactive movie controlled with a mouse. As with many games of this type the player progresses by collecting items, talking to characters and solving puzzles. The player will also accumulate Clues - pieces of information which are essential to solving the mystery - which are separate from the inventory and cannot be given away or lost.

Should the player be having difficulty in progressing, they begin the game with three Jokers to use, which act as a hint system.

Max Gardner (Brandon Massey) is an American journalist in Paris, where he investigates a story about a drug trafficker who is protected by an influential politician. To get the dealer talking, Max offers him incriminating photographs in exchange for some information. When Max arrives at the meeting point, the drug lord is dead and Max is mistaken for the killer.

While evading the authorities, Max continues his investigation and finds an ally in Adda—the murdered drug dealer's lover—and the two of them work to uncover the conspiracy behind the murders.

According to the French newspaper Les Échos, Urban Runner was created by a team of 50 people. By December 1995, it had been in development for one-and-a-half years and its budget had risen to 15 F million (equivalent to nearly 3.6 million € by 2023). Three months were spent on the game's live-action film shoots. Les Échos reported that Urban Runner's budget had climbed high enough that it would need to sell 500,000 units to break even.