Review: Broken Age - Act One
When Double Fine and 2-Player Productions started a Kickstarter campaign back in February 2012 for a project that was titled “Double Fine Adventure”, it brought lots of speculation as to what this project would turn out to be. Tim Schafer, the CEO at Double Fine’s last adventure game was Grim Fandango, which was released back in 1998. To much surprise (or little surprise, depending on who you talked to) the campaign for this untitled Double Fine adventure game broke records and made history by raising 3.45 million dollars, the most (and still the most) money raised for a project on Kickstarter.
The project then turned into Broken Age, an adventure game about a boy who is stuck trying to get out of the daily grind of his life aboard a ship and a girl who desperately wants to kill a monster that roams town to town demanding a sacrifice of the town’s best women. The two stories, provide for an interesting premise for an adventure game. However, the stories were not complete because of some developmental delays that caused Tim Schafer and the Double Fine team to split the game into two parts.
Although this raised a little bit of controversy, I think it was all struck down when players reached the end of the first part, where a cliffhanger was presented. I thought they did a great job of wrapping up the first part of the story, giving players a cliffhanger that will definitely make them come back when the second part is released later this year.
Shay, the name of the boy stuck on the ship Bossa Nostra, starts out getting awakened from his sleep by his “Over-Mother” that runs the ship. She is very over-protective of Shay as she guides him step by step through his daily routines, using her machine arms to make sure he gets where he needs to go. They go through a series of non-dangerous missions that put Shay through a trial of boredom. He’s desperate for something more fun, something more dangerous, something that will get him out of his daily routine and out of the clutches of his “computer”.
His answer to the to his problem comes when he finally stumbles upon a secret passage that leads him down to what looks like the control room of the ship, where he meets Malik, a shady creature who is disguised as a wolf. Malik lays a mission on Shay that tasks him with saving different creatures in different systems, a mission that is much more dangerous than his “daily missions”.
On the other hand, Vella a young women from the town of Sugar Bunting is going to be part of the Maiden’s Feast, which is each town’s sacrifice of young girls to the Mog Chothra, the gigantic monster that has been ravaging the lands. The young girls are set outside the town, in a staging area where the Mog Chothra will pick which sacrifices he wants, which he then eats.
Vella happens to escape with the help of a bird named Jessie, and ends up in the cloud village of Meriloft. From there, she has to figure out a way to get back down to the ground to find a way to destroy the Mog Chothra once and for all. Along her journey, she meets a (close to insane) lumberjack and she also finds her way to the town of Shellmound, the next city that will be hosting their Maiden’s Feast.
Both stories have their mysteries. What is Shay’s Over-Mother hiding from him on the ship, and why is she so overprotective of him. And, as for Vella, why do the people of the land think that this Maiden’s Feast idea is a good one. Vella always mentions that it’s time to stop Mog Chothra, but she is always met with crazy looks and is blown off every time. I assume that these questions, and probably more new ones will be answered in the second part. At least I hope.
It’s nice that the game allows you to freely switch between Vella and Shay’s story at any point during their respective adventures. If I was stuck on what to do next during Shay’s story, I could just switch down to Vella and take a break from Shay for a little while. I used the switch function a lot as I made it through the stories.
Probably one of my favorite parts about the game in general is the art direction that Double Fine took with Broken Age. Every character model and every location that you can visit is hand-drawn and bursts with color. Every screenshot that you see from the game looks like you could hang it in an art museum. Yeah, its that good. I can just imagine that a lot of the money from the Kickstarter probably went into the art of the game, because it looks gorgeous.
A lot of money also probably went into getting the voice actors to do the characters. There is a lot of talent that signed on for the project and I was generally impressed. Elijah Wood did the voice for Shay and Masasa Moyo did the voice for Vella. They both did a really good job and they both managed to capture the emotion of each character brilliantly. Other talent included Jennifer Hale, Richard Horvitz, Nicki Rapp, Ginny Wescott, and even Jack Black.
Now, as for the gameplay. The game blends classic adventure game style with a more modernized feel. Each character still has their respective inventories where they can put items that they pick up up, just like your classic adventure games. You can also interact by clicking and dragging your items to other items or to other characters. Dialogue between characters presents itself in the form of dialogue trees. However, just because there are dialogue trees, doesn’t mean that the story differs much based on what you say. It just allows you to ask questions in a different order if you so choose. The puzzles were not too hard, in fact most of them were pretty easy to figure out. There was only one puzzle that tripped me up, and that was during Vella’s story. Other than that, if a player makes sure that he picks up every item that he finds, they should have no trouble getting through the game.
The game is fairly short (I completed both stories in just under 5 hours). Perhaps this is because it was only part one of the full story. Or maybe it was because the budget that they had (even though it was pretty substantial) was not enough. Either way, it would have been a little nicer to get a little more time to spend with Shay and Vella and maybe a little more puzzles that challenged the imagination like the classic adventure games of old.
Even though the game is short, it packs a lot of humor and charm into the couple of hours that it takes to complete. A lot of dialouge was subtle, but funny at times and there was lots of clever lines. (In particular, my favorite was from the mayor in Shellmound when you try to give him the cloud-shoes from your inventory). And if your really observant, there is even a way to unlock an 8-bit mode, which allows you to play the game with retro graphics, LucasArts style. If you are stumped and want to find out how, click here.
All in all, I am pretty pleased with the adventure that Double Fine put out. Like I said before, it does a great job with blending classic style with a modern feel that makes it seem like this is the direction that adventure games are going. The art style is awesome and the charm and humor that was put into this game makes it a memorable experience. Hopefully the second part offers more in terms of length and puzzles, but more importantly, I am just eager to see the second part so that my questions are answered.
Also, that cliffhanger…
