REVIEW – Tim Schafer has been in the gaming scene for several decades, but for creating Broken Age, he needed the help of Kickstarter – although he asked for 400 thousand dollars, he got almost 9 times the amount of that, but it still took more than a year to create Act 2 after publishing Act 1. But is the game any good?

Double Fine didn’t take a detour from the classical point-and-click genre. It’s a good move, because it’s nice to see games like this nowadays – it’s really feeling good to take a break from racing, shooter or even RPG games. It is a nice change of pace in general.

Don’t be shy, be Shay!

In Broken Age, we have two main protagonists. Shay’s voice might be very familiar to you, because the voice actor behind him is none other than Elijah Wood. Vella”s voice is by Masasa Moyo, you might have heard her in Batman: Arkham Origins as Candy’s voice. The two teenagers’ story will tie together eventually, despite having different background stories: while Shay’s starting off on an automatic space ship with only imaginary missions with almost way too adorable backgrounds, Vella is participating in… let’s be honest, a ritual, where someone is about to be sacrificed. I don’t want to spoil how their story will be tied together, you should rather check the game out to see how it happens.

The game is a bit modernized. You can switch between Shay and Vella at any time, and it is indeed worth to do so: in case you get stuck like at a puzzle, sometimes it’s just a switch that’s needed to progress. Sometimes I overcomplicated the puzzles, when the solution was in fact, very easy. Speaking of puzzles: they are stylish (it applies to other things, we’re getting back to that later) and will make you stick to the game for a bit more time. Is it a positive thing? Of course. There was a few though, which felt like a bit tiresome to do so. I don’t say it’s bad, it was simply making me go back and forth for a while, and while we’re at this topic…

Walking wanderer

…I’d get to possibly the biggest problem of the game. It’s easy to get lost at some points, especially at the first few parts at new locations. I was checking out others playing the game, also ending up doing the thing that I did, although there was one… interesting person in that crop, so to say. You won’t always have that required „click” to move on and connect those dots together. Don’t get me wrong: when it happens, Tim Schafer’s story gets into going very quickly. This is the guy behind games like Monkey Island or Grim Fandango – the latter one is available on the PlayStation 4 as well. He has good writing here going on in Broken Age too.

After Act 1, the second half begins ramping up the – welcome – challenge quite nicely, so you better be prepared for that. Maybe this is why I ended up playing the game ASAP after stopping the previous evening!

Colorful

I’m going to admit it: I really like how the game looks. Instead of going for really brutal graphics put together, Double Fine decided to go for a stylish art, which kinda looks like they were painted on a canvas. There are a lot of colors on the screen and the characters aren’t lagging behind in that either. I’d really say that Broken Age looks… memorable. And even if you end up forgetting how the game looked, the audio will probably stick in your head: other than the aforementioned Wood-Moyo duo, the other characters also have excellent voice acting, which is backed perfectly by the great background music as well. Really good job!

Why the long wait?

Good work needs time, but I can’t get over the time between releasing Act 1 and Act 2 – I do have to say that the PlayStation 4 was waiting for the latter in order to have the complete gave available right from the start. Did the devs spend the money on hiring Elijah Wood perhaps? I don’t get it.

I do recommend playing Broken Age though, especially if you have played previous SCUMM games. Great story, terrific audiovisuals,  nice challenge, but still losing itself at some points. It’s recommended to those who arent into point-and-click games too. It’s not revolutionary, but let’s face it: we expected something brand new… so because of that, it’s a decent job, but nothing special. Sadly.

-V-

Publisher: Double Fine Entertainment

Developper Double Fine Entertainment

Genres: point’n’click adventure

Publication: April, 2015