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Broken Age - Double Fine's Kickstarter Adventure Game

Self-Ejected

Bubbles

I'm forever blowing
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A DRM-free version of Act 2 has just been leaked. Kill all pirates.
 

J_C

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Latest update with documentary is up. I love these guys. The management was fucked up, but they are putting their sweat and soul into this game. One of the best team to be the fanboy of. :salute:
https://www.kickstarter.com/project...nture/posts/1209413?ref=backer_project_update


Release Details & Episode 19: Last Call


Holy smokes you guys! We’re less than one week away from the release of the fully complete Broken Age, and the end of our shared Double Fine Adventure. It’s been a crazy emotional ride, and we’re so happy you guys were here with us along the way!

It’s all go at the studio at the moment as the team prepares for launching the game on a thousand different platforms all around the world and at the same exact time. Meanwhile Tim, Greg and Ray popped over to Europe to speak to some press folks out there, talk about animation, and also get haircuts in weird retro video game stores. We’ve also been celebrating the 10th anniversary of Psychonauts!

When can I play Broken Age Act 2?
Most excitingly of all. we’ve been getting ready to share Broken Age Act II with all of you fabulous Backers! We’re working with Humble and Steam to get codes out at 12:01 am Eastern on Monday April 27th, 24 hours in advance of the public release.

That’s really, really soon you guys! Not so soon to stop you getting in a playthrough of Act 1 before then however, which is useful because we highly, highly recommend playing through the first act before starting the second, as here are numerous plot and puzzle elements that continue on from the first act.

However! Achievements for Act 1 will not unlock until Act 2 does, so you might want to hold off until then to play through if you care about such things.

Trailer preview
The Two Player Production chaps have weaved us up a cinematic trailer to share on launch day. We thought you might like to preview it before it goes live...


(Reminder, this video can only be watched on the Kickstarter website, or the backer forums)

Double Fine Adventure Episode 19
Our adventures aren’t over quite yet, and a new episode of the Double Fine Adventure is here to prove it. This one is pretty emotional, and runs from the end of last year until a few weeks ago, covering layoffs, hate campaigns, and crunching until you get sick. There’s still one more episode to go before the series comes to a close though!


(You know the drill, click through to Kickstarter or the forums to watch)

Episodes 1-18 are now publicly available on our youtube channel, so please share them with your friends and family!

bit.ly/DFAdventure

Backer Big Box
With the game now complete, we can start to plan for the $100+ tier big box. Before we do though, we need you to tell us what it should look like. Here’s Tim to explain the options...


Please go and vote on the box you desire most on our forums. Note that only one style of box will be made for everyone, the winner of this poll.

PC Retail Box
Anyone who didn’t back at the $100 or above tier, but still wants Broken Age in some kind of physical manifestation, you’re in luck! Our friends at Nordic Games have boxed up the game, with a snazzy cover design by Cory Schmitz and have shipped it out to retailers, just like we did back in the 90s. Here’s a preview of what it looks like. Note that Shay and Vella are on a transparent case that can be flipped around. You can pre-order it on amazon right now!

61629e2680cc99454fa7fae7e9796f6e_original.jpg

Broken Age auf Deutsch
We are finally able to announce the vocal cast for the German version of the game! These are the voices you’ll be hearing if you wish to play in German...

Vella - Charlotte Uhlig
Shay - Louis F. Thiele
Marek - Martin Sabel
Mom - Daniela Bette-KochCurtis - Jens Wendland
Harm’ny - Dirk Hardegen
Gus - Michael Krüger
Dialog Tree - Gilles Karolyi

OK Folks, that’s it for now, but you’ll hear from us again when backer keys are out!

Episode 19 Show Notes
1:15 — It’s funny that Tim asks if it’s ok to drink on camera after the bar crawl in Episode 3 where he’s clearly pretty wasted.

1:56-- http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...vestors_as_prominent_board_members_resign.php

4:48 — DFA episode 1 from three years ago features this quote

7:59 — If you want to see more of Gabe, check out the Amnesia Fortnight 2014 doc. He was the writer on Dear Leader

9:56 — Ben first appeared in the doc way back in episode 8.

10:47 — Ben’s big contribution to Act 1 was the Mog Chothra battle at the end of the game. Check out his Sidequest for more info on that.

11:13 — If you watch Lee’s introduction in Episode 3, Tim makes it clear that Lee may not be able to stay on the project for very long before some other project steals him away. It’s finally happened.

14:55 — Grim Fandango Remastered was released on January 27th

15:42 — Lydia left Double Fine after Act 1 wrapped. Lee handled the effects work until he left the project and the role was filled by Panya.

21:53 — Boston Market was known as Boston Chicken until 1995

22:00 — Boston Market’s Recipe for Macaroni and Cheese: 3 cups spiral shaped pasta, 2/3 cup milk, 1 lb Velveeta cheese, cubed, 1/4 teaspoon dry mustard, 1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric, salt and pepper to taste. Send your results to Ray at Double Fine.

25:33 — the view from the top of Double Fine HQ

28:53 — We’ll get those blurs out of there real soon, guys!

31:22 — You might remember Vic from Episode 14 and 15 of the doc when he was the Test Lead on the game. Now he’s the Associate Producer!

31:28 — Nordic Games is a Swedish publisher. Recently they published stuff like The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and The Book of Unwritten Tales 2

35:44 — The UPS package on Anna’s seat is actually the Nordic games build sent by Oliver from the future. Obviously a lot of stress could have been avoided if they had opened it.

40:54 — That’s Mark Hamer, who replaced Lee on the art side of things for the final few months of the game’s production.

46:06 — Justin can actually transform into a phone at will, as he does in this scene.

55:50 — Levi was last seen during the Act 2 art jam in Episode 15 and was not involved in Act 2 otherwise.

58:33 — Oliver is eating Target brand frozen pizza. It smelled really good and made people hungry during the meeting.

1:00:00 — This is the longest DFA episode of the series. Until the movie.

Also, that beard!
 

J_C

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If a publisher funds a game, they'll take a hefty cut out of the profits.
Good luck with that if you are not a AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA developer. Royalties became rare, espcially for smaller devs. Ask Obsidian who much money do they get after their previous games.
 

felipepepe

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If a publisher funds a game, they'll take a hefty cut out of the profits.
Good luck with that if you are not a AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA developer. Royalties became rare, espcially for smaller devs. Ask Obsidian who much money do they get after their previous games.
That's exactly what I'm saying. Obsidian got pennies from the publishers in their previous games, but 100% of the profit in PoE is theirs. Quite a sweet deal.
 
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Bubbles

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Finished it. I had (wisely) stayed away from act 1 before, so I played it start to finish in one go. Autosave says it took 9 hours 10 minutes, but that's with a fair bit of idling.

The first part was horrible, as discussed at length. The Shay part of Act 2 is largely more of the same -- perhaps slightly more difficult. There are also some lulzy "science" puzzles, like changing a solution from 0 pH to 7 pH by adding three pieces of 3 pH compound and one piece of -2 pH compound :D and a really, really, really stupid way of creating a mold for a molten iron cast.

But since the solutions aren't hard to figure out, it's all tolerable. Overall, it's nothing they couldn't have put in act 1. Especially since the total number of non-reclycled screens in the Shay section is

4, including the endgame

and some of them are shamefully low-res.

The Vella section though... it gets quite good. By 2015 standards, many of the later puzzles can even be considered hard - I spent over 30 minutes stuck on one of the last puzzles, and the final puzzle actually surprised me with its relative complexity. Most of the harder puzzles aren't exactly "classic" in the Monkey Island sense, but you do need to think about them and ponder all possible tools at your disposal. If this game doesn't get an extensive hint system in the release day patch, the average Act 1 fan is going to flip their shit.

There's also a highly aggravating bit of meta puzzle design in that

Shay and Vella each need information for two of their puzzles that can only be found by the other person. However, the two can never communicate, so when you use the solution you found with the other char, they just say..."Hey, that worked! How strange!" I think that's meant to be funny, but it might just be sloppy design.

Overall, there is a heavy amount of graphical recycling, some really weird walking animations, and a relatively low amount of new characters:

1

I suspect Tim spent the past year just scribbling down jokes and figuring out what direction he was going to take with the puzzles, because there is nothing else in evidence here that should have consumed much time or creative effort. Much of the new writing is also pretty sloppy, and most of the "big reveals" are on the perfunctory side of things.

However, I did find that the second act ended up being much funnier than the first one. The humor gets nicely dark on occasion, and there's a very peculiar face licking joke.

Overall verdict: is gud by 2015 standards, casual backlash imminent.
 
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J_C

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I don't get the joke.
He's asking whether you are jacking off to Tim's prepubescent daughter.
Ah. My post about her daughter was an injoke about Tim making the game to her daughter. And since that puzzle is elementary school level, I asked if her daughter is old enough to be in elementary. Sorry toro iy the joke was too complicated you.
 
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Self-Ejected

Bubbles

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A 3 pH compound increases the pH value of any solution by exactly 3 points.
 
Self-Ejected

Bubbles

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They don't explicitly say that there's a -2 pH compound. They just give you one that always subtracts 2 pH from a solution, so logically it must be a -2 pH compound.
 

Redlands

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They don't explicitly say that there's a -2 pH compound. They just give you one that always subtracts 2 pH from a solution, so logically it must be a -2 pH compound.

I don't think you understand what pH is then, because pH doesn't work like that at all.
 

J_C

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They don't explicitly say that there's a -2 pH compound. They just give you one that always subtracts 2 pH from a solution, so logically it must be a -2 pH compound.

I don't think you understand what pH is then, because pH doesn't work like that at all.
It is not a chemical puzzle, but a mathematical one, so it doesn't fucking matter what a pH is.
 

Sceptic

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Divinity: Original Sin
Then don't use pH as the framing device for your puzzle. Or use mathematics that actually match the way pH works.
 

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