A Semi-Sweet Adventure
The main draw to Broken Age is definitely it's return to the classic adventure game style in terms of game play. This is the type of game where the player spends an inordinate amount of time on one screen, clicks on everything they can, and once the player has finally exhausted all the options, they move onto the next screen and start doing it all over again. Of course there is more to it than that. There is a logic to puzzles in Broken Age . The game wants you to think about it's world a certain way in order to get from one moment to the next, but Broken Age is still a point-and-click adventure game. It would be surprising if this game was able convince players who aren't fans of the genre that this was the game for them.
Like most adventure games, some of the solutions to the puzzles provided in Broken Age can seem counter-intuitive. For the most part though, the puzzles are completely solvable. As someone who has struggled with adventure games in the past, there was not a single problem I wasn't able to solve on my own in the first act of Broken Age. That isn't to say that the challenges Broken Age provides aren't difficult at any point. there are plenty of moments that will force the player to think outside of the box. The player has to constantly ask how the items within Broken Age's world interact with the world itself. Once one solution presents itself the rest of the solutions start to slowly present themselves like jigsaw pieces slowly fitting together as the picture begins to take shape.
If the classic adventure style game play is the main draw for Broken Age, then the artwork and world design is what will keep the player coming back for more. Broken Age looks every bit as beautiful as it does interesting. The places that the plot takes the player are an absolute blast to explore, and the characters are fun and comical in ways that make it exciting to interact with them. Unfortunately the plot for the first act of Broken Age falls flat. From moment to moment Broken Age is a blast, but as a cumulative story it can seem nonsensical (less fantastical, more incohesive). As far as the ending of the first act, it felt disappointing and left me wondering where the story would go in Act 2, not because i was interested, but because i didn't understand the decisions being made. With that being said, it is easy to look past Broken Age's story and just enjoy the scenery while it lasts.
