Decline Broken Age - Double Fine's Kickstarter Adventure Game

It's not doing much worse than yesterday, it's just been displaced by a franchise discount on Splinter Cell and some Kingdoms of Amalol stuff. Also Octodad.

 

I'm just speculating of course, but the timing of the 2nd kickstarter was very wierd. I think it is possible that they use Massive Chalice's fund for BA. And nobody will know. Of course this is quite unethical.

I don't think anyone can control that, even if they look at DF's books.

 

I've been playing this for a bit and..... it's ok. Nothing special. I don't really like the art style and the story is a bit lame too. It is most defintely not even close to the quality of Monkey Island or Grim Fandago, that's for sure.

Anyway, how in the hell did this game (act 1 to be more exact) cost $2,5m to produce? I've seen better adventure games that evidently costed much less to produce than Broken Age. Maybe Tim is just terrible with money, I dunno.

Nobody will notice if Tim spends cash that was meant for Massive Chalice on Broken Age, especially if he puts it back later with cash that double fine earned from sales.

 

Good reviews, bad reviews...it's Tim Schafer and goddammit I'm not not going to at least check this out.

Bought and d/l'ing now. Have a feeling I'll agree with Yahtzee as usual, but heck. Why not. I already feel non-backer guilt. If nothing else it's my apology for having not paid for Psychonauts years ago.

 

I suspect that a lot of people, like myself, were actually convinced by the more positive reviews to wait until the full game is released. It just doesn't seem like a game that suits episodic structures.

Whether the game is still on those peoples' minds when the 2nd part is released is a different matter.

 

I will say that after about 30mins in I am indeed getting that classic Schafer/Gilbert vibe and Elijah Wood has done a pretty good job with the lines. Actually reminds me a lot of Curse of Monkey Island (which I know is neither Schafer nor Gilbert but still a favorite in the genre for me) in some ways. So far I do agree with Yahtzee that the puzzles are fairly easy and obvious, but again I'm only 30 minutes in. At first I didn't think I was going to be into the art direction or style very much but I'm beginning to actually love it. I am really impressed with movement and the way the visuals are presented. At a very cursory glance I can see both sides of the coin here, though I can easily say I'm glad this exists and I'm glad I own it.

 

Having finished the game, a question....

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Did anyone else expect the wolf to be just the next step in Mother's training of Shay? "Alright, he's tired of these adventures and he's gotten a bit older. Time to move things along." So a mysterious new actor enters Shay's life and guides him on newer, more consequence-prone missions. "I didn't know my actions would decide who lived or died!"

Shay just takes the Wolf at his word that he's not a sleeker, more advanced version of his stuffed buddies, and that there are actually rescued aliens in that quarantine chamber. The Wolf could empty the chamber (if it had anything in it at all) while Shay is asleep, and say a refugee ship passed by or something. And in the process of helping him, Shay had to solve a number of problems, whose solutions and required items all happened to be nearby, and usually highlighted in some way. The machine outside the fusion orb chamber refuses to provide a helmet, the teleporters gain a temporary glitch that shrinks heads, and his smaller environmental outfit (complete with helmet) happens to be on display. And after he accomplishes his task...the teleporters work like normal.

Shay thinks he's getting one over on Mother, but you occasionally see Father peeking out of the ship windows while Shay sneaks around, and there are a metric fuck ton of those little workers all over the place. I refuse to believe Mother didn't know something.



Edit: Of course the hold probably stores all the sacrificed village girls, but that knowledge came after I actually finished the game.

 

It does not get any better.

 

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I thought the exact same thing (and I played the Shay section first too). Especially on the second rescue mission when Marek gives away that he's just making up when they have to leave

 

So it will be bioshock infinite all over again? Oh no.

 

yes is the short answer

 

What matters is that the money must be there when MC is developed. If it gets cancelled because they have no funds available and you can prove it, I think it would constitute fraud.

And in any event, directing money from a project into any risky business, like loans without collateral to another project, gambling on the stock exchange, etc, should still be treated as fraud, they will be just hard to prove.

 

And another thing. My grandmother used to say, if you want to know if you can trust a man, just look at his eyes.

 

So, about 1.5 hours in and I can safely say this is no adventure game, let alone a classic one. It's somewhat pretty and mildly amusing, but it's boring and it's a slideshow.

 

This game's pretty Unique. "Sweetly disturbing" is perhaps the best way to describe the frankly pretty fucked-up setting for both main characters. Schafer really likes doing this kind of stuff, harmless and innocent on top but horrible and evil just beneath the surface. Like in Psychonauts, where you could find the suppressed memories of the super-peppy psychic disco lady showing how her children had died in a house fire locked away in a single dark and evil room, this also has a sense of cheer and peppiness overlaying horror.

Oh Tim Schafer, you Tim Schafer you!

I agree though, it's not much of an adventure game. Pick up hammer, use on nail right NeXT to it. I blame motherfucking Telltale for this shit.

 

Seriously, the most difficult thing so far was putting the cloud shoes on the stair. At least it was probably the only thing that wasn't hammer on nail. Not that you could ever get stuck to actually think about anything seeing how you seem to get a maximum of 3 objects at a time.

 

After comparing this to Monkey Island 3 where we get a dozen of stuff from a snakes stomach(some of them was only there for the lulz) I can clearly say this game is only an adventure game by Walking Dead standarts... Or dozens of stuff you can send through time between 3 characters in Day of the Tentacle.
So much for classic adventuring.


Edit: I mean Broken Age has potantial but as now it just geting wasted.

 

I believe that is entirely intentional. Modern gamers simply cannot be arsed to combine a rubber chicken with a stick to use on a zipline, that takes effort and makes thar branes hert. The Codex, I would claim, is in the minority here, requesting harder adventure games whereas the average gamer cannot be arsed to stay stuck at the same plot point for hours trying to combine every inventory item with everything in the game World.

The only recent game I can think of that was challenging in this sense was The Whispered World. And frankly, it made me realise that a lot of the oldschool puzzles actually sucked and were way too far-fetched.

 

The problem with this theory is that even mainstream reviews said that the game had too easy puzzles.

 

So they overshot.

 

Yes.

 

I think that's allowed:

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...i-meets-gamedev-story-for-ios-an/posts/208395
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...d-kickstart-part-2-the-pc-mac-space-adv/posts

 

Well the pitch was a classic adventure game, not an adventure game for modern gamers. If the latter had been the pitch, well I probably still would have contributed because it was my kickstarter, but I would have been significantly less excited and disappointed.