So I beat the game (or at least what's available right now), and if you clicked on this link I hope you did too cause it's going to get spoilerific in here (maybe)

Ready? Ok.

So Merrick is probably a bad guy, right? I mean he made Shay pick up the Maidens for some reason that is not known yet (probably has to do with this Project Dandelion they keep talking about). But he has to have some connection with the ship cause the talking crochet-thing mentions crocheting a wolf costume. Also, if the Mog returns every 14 years and Shay did this for the first time, well that means that either there are more Mogs or that Shay was going to get....replaced, right? To me it seems like the ship was pushing him to do what he did (cause too much stuff just lined up too perfectly on the ship, think of the doll, the drive-thing suddenly running out of yarn and shutting down, the wiring thing etc.) without him actually realising it. What did you think of the ending?

Also, did anybody figure out a way to get in that room where the computer tells Shay that it "is preparing a surprise" for him? I'm just speculating here, but DF said you can unlock an 8-Bit retro mode in the game, so maybe that's there? I dunno. I wasn't able to get the train ticket agan, maybe that has something to do with it (or not, who knows)

I'm guessing most of the things that you weren't able to solve in this act will be confronted in the second one, like the snake for example! 8-bit mode is achieved by setting the game to the lowest resolution possible :)

Anyway, great way to end the game. I'm super-stoked to play the next part. The big reveal in the end really made me a bit shocked. I actually thought that it was the Dead Eye God that was Shay, but man, was I fooled! Do the have any connection though? He spoke about Project Dandelion.

And on the note of thinking that you're someone else. I thought it was really clever to portray "mom" as Vella as well, when you hear her talking about sacrificing. I'd think at this point that the computer and Merrick are both part of the problem, so to speak.

Well, I enjoyed it very much! Can't wait to see how they wrap it up.

I thought the same, it wasn't until I was fighting the Mog and Vella was calling the dude Alex that it dawned on me that they weren't the same person.

@hampe said:

I thought of that as well at first. But I'm pretty sure he mentions that he is from the same planet as Shay (I can't remember the name of it Lorune or something liike that). Anyway I really liked the story twist at the end (even though it was inevitable that their paths will cross) and I'm really excited for Act II. Did they say when Act II should com out?

Sooooo, that brown meat paste Shay eats for dinner. You guys think that was the maidens?

Yeah, Alex Rigopulos came from planet Loruna and is part of Dandelion mission. But he has been in cryogenic sleep for 300 years though, so taking relativity into account, planet Loruna should be long gone.

I didn't expect that Shay would meet Vella in such a way though. I though the 'mother' computer seems to be hinting that she's digitised version of Vella, since she mentioned about the maiden festival. Plus since the computers know about the sacrifices, are they really the good people?

Merrick is plain shifty, just look at those eyes. It's like wolf in wolf's clothing.

I feel like Alex is a clone and so is Shay. It sounds like there are multiple Mogs and that each Mog has a kid in it. Alex's might have been destroyed by Steelbunting back when they were a warrior town and he just never realized it wasn't a ship? Or there is the possibility the Mog stuff comes from Alex who is actually from the planet Lorune. I'm super intrigued to see how they wrap it up.

Yeah I definitely thought that there was going to be some strange circular time travel going on (Shay is the Dead Eye God, and Mother is digitized Vella). But I think the big question no one mentioned is what is the deal with Dad? When Shay is sneaking around the ship for Marek you see him outside the window, but he doesn't stop you, and if you recall Mother says he has work to do "outside". It's not clear if they are working in concert to drive Shay to Marek, or if Dad is doing this behind Mom's figurative back. What's happening to the maidens? Why are they taking them? Does every ship in Project Dandelion have a Marek? Is Marek also Dad?

Lots of questions to be answered, I thought it was a great end to the first act, and can't wait to play more.

Did anyone catch what "Dad" said to Shay while he was asleep?

Oh my god we have to wait a year for all of this

I loved the game, but man, was that ending rushed! Damn the realities of game development!!

We don't! Second part comes out in April! =D

It didn't seem particularly rushed to me. I actually found it to be a pretty tidy ending and a good cliffhanger for what's to come in the second act.

It was just unfortunate that there was a cliffhanger at all, I think. All these "reviews" coming out now, people complaining about price and puzzle difficulty and nobody has seen the whole game yet. It felt like a demo to me. It did not seem like they planned this to be published in installments from the beginning. Then again, it's not like it's officially released yet (I did encounter some minor bugs). I think this just highlights the weird state PC gaming is currently in (with its alpha, beta access, backer access, early access, official release, free/paid DLC, microtransactions, constant development states).

That being said, there seems to be a lot I missed when playing through Shay's story, like "Mother" (what ship computer called "Mother" has ever lead to a good ending?) commenting on the Maiden's feast. I was totally fooled by the whole Alex/Shay thing, as well, but in a good way. I may have to play through it again when Part 2 is released.

I thought Marek was just another way for Mother to entertain her son. You never see the creatures you "rescue" and Shay never seems to really be in any danger. It just felt like more make-believe, just updated for a slightly less gullible teenager.

I loved the characters, by the way. Yes, they are not fully developed yet, but it's at best half a game right now. I really liked that Vella would try to punch Shay at the end, that really fit her character. Overall, it's just so beautifully whimsical and charming that it makes every other issue I have with the game so far seem insignificant.

I found the end to the act pretty satisfying. It seemed odd that there was a lack of voice acting though. They've been pretty talkative characters up until the point they meet then it turns into a silent movie. I wonder if it'll change for the full release.

I'm super curious and I'm sure everyone else is as what happens next. There's just so many questions and I don't even know if this second act is even going to answer them. What's the deal with Shay? Why is he aboard this ship that captures these girls and has been doing so for many years now? If Merrick is in control, why invite Shay to his "lair" and trick him into "rescuing" these adorable looking creatures? Are they even in space at all considering the mog is clearly staying on the same planet? Maybe I missed something.

It just hit me that (possibly) Shay had unknowingly been capturing the maidens. If memory serves, each time he "rescued" those creatures lined up with an instance of the maidens getting sacrificed. And the times when there was one last creature that Merrick said to abandon, those (maybe) lined up with the times that Vella was almost eaten. Vella escaped by attacking Mog Chothra each time it tried to eat her, and Shay's ship was mysteriously attacked by something each time Shay insisted on rescuing that last creature.

There are some potential holes in that theory, and I don't know what implications it would have on the plot of part 2, but I think it could be a cool place to take the story.

@bbalpert said:

I just finished Act 1, and that seems to be exactly what was going on. I believe that Marek's talk about enemies approaching (up until the final group) was simply to keep his story straight and perhaps cover up his choice to leave maidens behind in each location. If I recall correctly, when Marek first uses the hostiles as excuse for halting the rescue, he falters over the explanation slightly. Obviously, in the final 'rescue', there was a real threat, which Marek more clearly states. This, I think, was the only time there was real danger as Vella and Alex were throwing a wrench into everything.

The only thing I'm really uncertain about are the hints at the end of Shay's section that he might not have actually been in space. When Shay collapses after the attack, the stars in the background fall or fade out, and he stays planted on the apparent floor, unhurt by any vacuum of space. Then, when Vella stumbles into Mog's mouth, she seems to be on the outside of Shay's ship, but inside the world of the spaceship Truman Show-style. There was what appeared to be the black background of space, minus the stars as it was when Shay got knocked out. Or maybe I'm just confused...

Now I want to go back and compare some images. I will update if I find any better evidence!

@punkycrisps: No, I think that's it exactly. "Space" was a way to keep him from trying to leave the ship (but why that would be necessary we don't yet know), and would be the only way for Shay to continue to live after his Act I story. I imagine he realizes that it's not actually space when he hasn't suffocated.

I feel like everything that happened on the ship was elaborate smoke and mirrors to get Shae to omnomnom the maidens with mog'chothra and bring them back over the 'poison' wall where the mogs come from. We know that mogs have been nomming maidens for hundreds of years through Alex's story, which mirrors the mother computers, obviously fake, story she gives to Shae as to his purpose. It is highly likely that the mother computer was fabricated in order to deliberately make Shae restless and Marek was fabricated to give him a reason to unwittingly kidnap the maidens. Unless something untoward happens to them, the children in the mogs are led to believe they are saving creatures in a daring space mission but they are simply kidnapping girls and taking them back over to where the mogs originate from.

For what purpose? The old lady at the start of Vella's story posits the mogs return whence they came after eating their fill of maidens, presumably to mate. Considering the only Mog-riders we know of are male I feel like there is another civilization on the other side of the forbidden poison curtain and all they need from the (decidedly more insane) other side of the wall is women.

So yes, Broken Age is basically Mars Needs Women.

I enjoyed the game (took me around 4-5 hours to complete) and I was actually surprised about the reveal at the end. I thought the little critters were actually baby Mogs and they were being sent Lavos style around the galaxy for some unknown reasons. The maiden angle is pretty good because you don't know if they're being used for food or for reproduction. They're all teen girls and the person inside the Mog has been a dude so it would make sense that they're needed to spread the "seed" in Project Dandelion.

@golguin said:

I think it's totally for reproduction. Remember the story that his "mom" tells him, the story of the sacrifice she had to make and how it was actually a great honor. Totally the same things said to Vella. I think Merek is all part of the "game" in that he get's him to go from galaxy (village) to galaxy (village) to rescue (eat) creatures (maidens). Also Mog's come every 16 years (or so?) - about how old Shay seems and the maidens the same.

Essentially "Project Dandelion" is a match maker for the kids of Loruna (or just bringing girls back), has been going on for a very long time and may even be the same planet. It makes me wonder if it's always been setup the same way (Project Dandelion - Picking flowers. (also spreading seed as mentioned). Alex also spoke of "manually overriding the controls" much like Shay did. Though Alex's mastery of non-fake controls and non-Mog Shaped ship makes me wonder if he knew much more about what was going on, so it wasn't so much of a preschool like ruse before.

Super curious where they go with this!

I just finished it and I quite enjoyed it. I thought that Shay was gathering some sort of dark energy or fuel that would be used to fire at people so I was way off about the ending. Yeah it ends on a cliffhanger but I feel that it wrapped up quite nicely. I believe Tim Schafer mentioned in the quick look ex that the cliffhanger was always going to be there, it's just that you have to wait to move on since act 2 isn't done yet. Either way, I'm definitely excited to see how things play out in act 2.

edit: Ok, now that I think about it, if you play through Shay's part and then Vella's, it makes sense why you would theorize that Shay would be the Dead Eye God.

At the end Marek seems genuinely concerned when the actual danger is present as well, if he was just using Shay he probably wouldn't have sacrificed himself to throw Shay out of the way. So as creepy as he is it can't be cut and dry he was a bad guy.

The order of rescuing creatures/sacrificing maidens lines up perfectly as well to the people who were wondering about that. cloud city girl left behind, Vella fights her way out, and the creature struggles and seems to fall, etc.

I actually wasn't able to recount what was going when the game finished until I thought through all of the moments in the game and then realized I was picking up maidens in Shay's mini game (I did Shay's portion first). Then everything was falling into place about what Project Dandelion is potentially, etc.

I actually thought it ends at a perfect point where dozens of questions pop into my head on where the story goes and the motivations of all of the characters that has been introduced so far. The only bummer out of it is knowing that many environments in Part 2 are going to be recycled from Part 1 if Vella is exploring the ship and Shay is exploring Vella's world.

Mogs come every 14 years, and I think Vella and Shay are both 14.

Mother-Computer says that she's trying to find a planet for Shay to inhabit, maybe the Maidens aren't dead, and they're to help him populate his new home? I don't know, I'm still not sure how Marek and Mother connect.

EDIT: Also, Alex seemed to be wearing the same clothes as Shay, only red.

I stayed away from the backers "making of" videos, once I decided that I wanted this to be a fresh experience with no spoilers (and I'm only thru Vella's half of the story, so I'm not even really reading these comments), but was it common knowledge that Alex Rigopulos was going to have his name and likeness in this game?

Gotta say that his appearance (and Jack Black's voice) were a couple of really nice (unexpected) surprises.

@spiritof: I think it's kind of generous to call that Alex Rigopolous' likeness. I thought it just looked like a dude.

What's more surprising is that Steven Dengler didn't snag that one. He has donated high enough on a lot of Kickstarters to get his name and/or likeness in the game (crewmember in FTL, godstone in Banner Saga, just of the ones I know about). Maybe that would've been too weird since he has literally directed funded Double Fine in the past.

Did you guys hop back and forth when you were playing? Which character did you finish first? I feel that finishing shays first made it very obvious what was going to happen.

I played through all of Vella's story first and then did Shay's part. I actually thought that Shay was collecting mini Mogs to send to other worlds because the Wolf secretly wanted to destroy the Universe like Lavos in Chrono Trigger. It wasn't until the end that I realized that the mini game was actually the maiden ceremony.

I would switch characters whenever I felt I reached the end of a story arc, like I started with Vella then once I got to the cloud place, I switched to Shay.

I finished Shay first too but meeting Alex made me all confused in the head about timelines and stuff so I wasn't able to connect the dots until the very end.

Me too, It was when Alex mentioned Project Dandelion that made connection. I guess Shay wasn't the only baby they put in that ship to preserve the species. Although Alex said he was in cryo sleep for 300 years, maybe every time Shay goes to sleep he's frozen so that's why he hasn't aged a lot(Alex broke out of his cycle a lot sooner).

When i was doing the 'virtual claw game' i did get the feeling something nefarious was going on(why was Marek capturing all those creatures?). I played a little bit of Vella first so at that point i started to draw the connection to the Mog(there was that one maiden in the clouds moping that she didn't get picked, Shay "saved" all but one of the creatures in the first "game").

I think maybe it all has to with what Marek and Vella's grandpa said. Marek said that "the universe is at war," while grandpa told Vella that they used to fight the Mog before they developed a truce and started offering sacrifices. I bet Alex will explain most of that stuff to Shay in part 2.

I'm curious, if you play all of Vella's story first, where does it cut off and switch to Shay? I thought it was interesting how after finishing Shay you can switch back to him at anytime but he's just lying on the hull/floor. I assume something must have happened between him getting knocked out and Vella killing the Mog/Space ship.

Yeah, and for that matter, do you see that final meeting from Shay's perspective if you finish the game with him? Playing as Vella second, the game ended with her being the one who wakes up and starts looking in the ship-carcass before finding Shay. If you're Shay, do you see him get up and start to walk out of the ship?

It's really cool how your perception of Marek changes after the game finishes. From Shay's perspective, Marek is rather callous and cruel by demanding that Shay not "save" all of the aliens. However, once you realise it's actually Shay gathering maidens, it seems like Marek was actually being merciful and trying not to have Shay gather every single Maiden.

I think that Marek might be the "previous Shay". Meaning the guy who did everything Shay did, but 14 years earlier, since that's the indicated cycle. That is of course, if it isn't different ships/Mog Chotras every 14 years, which in turn would explain Alex.

It's really interesting how the chose to end this, and reveal quite a few things right there, like the poison fog most likely being the atmosphere and of course the whole maiden feast ceremony. Some really neat little details.

I played Vella first by the way, and didn't ever switch, and I'm glad with that decision now.

I think right now the "Marek is level 2 of the computer's machinations" theory makes the most sense. Shay has been prepared for all of his life to want to rescue innocent animals. When he is ready to grow up that is when Marek appears and offers him a suspiciously fairy tale series of vague rescue missions that fit into Shay's worldview. It also accounts for how he acted during the attack saving Shay's life at the cost of his own possibly.

I think the "Mom and Dad were prior iterations of this story" also makes sense. I think there's some dialog that would support this or, in the case of Mom, make it hard to dispute. I wonder if they're necessarily literally Shay's parents or whether they're from countless generations back. I wonder why they're complicit in Mog Chathra's travels around the world with Marek though.

I really like Mom being a sacrifice and Dead Eye being a spaceman in the two stories. Each sort of had a red herring to throw at you so the last thing you would expect would be the stories being concurrent.

In other notes, I wonder if Sugarbunting is destroyed. I... don't think it was? I can't be sure though. I bet the Snake will play a big role in act 2, maybe that path leads back to Sugarbunting. I think it could be cool if Vella could get Merek's earpiece and talk to Shay through it though that might be hard due to the fact you have no idea which story players will do first. Maybe next time they'll be linked closer and you'll need to play both equally to progress forward.

Edit: More random notes. Is Dead Eye God's ship another Mog? Perhaps one that was felled by Steelbunting? He looks like Shay, perhaps they are clones and not biologically born of the maidens? If getting maidens in those days was a genuine fight perhaps they waited for longer before sending the Mog into battle to abduct ladies and actually gave them real training with the real equipment. Or maybe real training would happen after they abducted the girls.

I had noticed that both Mog Chothra and the ship had a hexagon thing going on but I had not realized that was supposed to be more meaningful than ooh weird monster shapes and weird space shapes.

@lackingsaint:

I played all of Vella before playing Shay. Vella's story ends with her lying on the beach after "defeating" the Mog. It then automatically switches you to Shay. Once the ship is attacked from Shay's point of view then yes it directs you to the meeting on the beach, but it is from Vella's point of view (she wakes up first, then you see Shay walk out of the ship).

I'm wondering if the Dead Eyed God dude, Shay and Merrick could possibly be clones of one another? There is quite a striking visual similarity in facial appearance between Shay and D.E.G, both mentioned Project Dandelion, and perhaps Merrick's reason for knitting a wolf costume is to hide his similar appearance to Shay as to not startle Shay? I'm thinking something along the plot of the movie Moon staring Sam Rockwell. Just some thoughts but this game was excellent. Can't wait for Act II.

In one othe the lates podcasts, Vinny talks about an item that he picked up, and that you could use, but then had to go back and collect again to use later, or something. It was a small point of critique they had about that game. Does anyone know which item that is?

@flaboere: Pretty sure he means the peach, or whatever the fruit was. You could just eat it, and not use it to solve the puzzle, but then you can go get another.

Firstly, for Shay's story, everything to do with space is a lie. There is no spaceship, everything is happening inside a contrived environment. Shay's story is a right of passage test that requires him to rebel against his "Mom" and voluntarily take part in Marek's tasks which is to choose a "sacrifice". Marek tells Shay that HE needs to choose because of his "Instinct".

Considering that the creatures that he is choosing to rescue are the "best every village has to offer". What is happening here is actually NOTHING SINISTER! Shay is just choosing his bride. Why else will you dress up like a wedding cake... (... or a lure...)

This tradition was started roughly 300 years ago when the real spaceman, Alex crash landed on this planet. Alex said that at the time "Steel Bunting" was a town to be feared. There was war ravaging this land. Levina had said that there was "too much blood shed".

Mog Chothra was created as means of stopping this blood shed. Presumably all the village elders were in on it. The creation of the creature was probably based upon the technology in Alex's ship.

The computer tells Shay that she IS a sacrifice girl. This implies that probably 14 years ago, she was one of the girls that was picked by Mog Chothra. The computer may very well actually BE Shay's mother. So who is Shay's father? Likely the only other person living inside Mog Chothra... Marek.

The game has not given the reason yet for why Mog Chothra has to have a "crew", but somehow, Shay presence is required to keep Mog Chothra and this whole elaborate illusion running. Otherwise war will break out again.

I think it was a stroke of genius to break this game into 2 acts. This is not just a cliffhanger but the mother of all dramatic pauses. Need time to let it all sink in.

Ah, you're right! I never would've guessed something was off about that dude.

Just finished it, just enjoyed it. I was grinning going "Ah, Tim, making the spaceship seem like the future when it was really the past all along!" And then it turns out Alex actually isn't Shay, and there's probably clones involved.

As for more conspiracies, I think Curtis the Lumberjack is in cahoots with the snake, and Mog Chothra backwards is Dracula.

Can't wait for part two, super glad I backed this thing.

Great stuff!

yep.