Decline Broken Age - Double Fine's Kickstarter Adventure Game

I'm glad I didn't give him any money. But then again I only discovered his KS after it was done, so it was sheer luck, because I loved that ks movie. I still love it, it's the only quality thing of all this affair. I'm going to watch it again and dream of better games.

 

I knew it would be so bad, I refused to back this or pay attention to the game. I can't stand Tim Schaffer trying so hard to be "clever" or "zany". His Double Fine games are mostly unbearable.

 

Whatever you think of BA, you should see that it is not in the same league in TWD as far as interactive movies go. TWD uses QTE-s, even less and easier puzzles and lots of cutscenes. Also, BA doesn't have the light C&C elements of TWD, neither it is action packed enough.

 

Wow, people aren't being vocal about it, but even in happy land around 1/3 of the backers are disappointed:



Is a consensus that the game is too easy, 1/3 are not satisfied with the controls and another 1/3 felt the game did not meet their expectations.

 

The game is in the 20-30 best seller games bracket on Steam.

Not selling that well... Although it could get better on january 28th, when the game will actually be playable by non-backers.

 

Or instead of being a half empty guy you could be half full and say that 2/3 of the people are satisfied with it. And just to be more precise, not 1/3 felt that the game didn't meet their expectations, because it is only 67 people. (That 139 is natural, not dissapointed).

It is the best selling adventure game, so I don't think we can expect much more from this genre.

 

Illl be very interested in seeing if people are actually going to pay full price for a half a game now and half a game later.

 

Well, in this case we have you for that.

The Walking Dead topped the charts many times, as did The Wolf Among Us.

 

TBH Broken Age might be a pretty bad adventure game, but at least it's an adventure game. Which can't be said about the Tell Tale offerings.

 

Sure, but even Tim and DF can't compete with such popular franchises.

 

Why not? The Wolf Among Us is not a popular franchise, only got its fame from being from the same developer as TWD. Tim Schafer and Double Fine aren't exactly newcomers themselves.

 

I definitely agree that DoubleFine is an AAA developer that robbed hardcore fans to make a sugary mass-market hit.

Will every major Kickstarter project be like this? After all, they want to be rich more than they want to be artists. And you know those Sierra hacks were just dying for somebody to throw them a bone. They'd be dumb if they fucked up their one chance at salvation.

 

See-I think that Adventure Games really level the field when it comes to competition. They aren't reliant on technology so a small team can make the 'next best thing'. An indie isn't going to be able to compete in the FPS market, or the MMORPG one because the technologies and resources of companies making those games just far outstrips anything a small company has. But an Adventure Game just needs a good story and clever puzzles. I say 'just'...but as with most simple things they are sometimes the hardest to get right!

Now one thing that admittedly an indie cant compete against those larger companies with is advertising, but I think its pretty safe to assume that Broken Age doesn't suffer from that! The Kickstarter success practically guaranteed a 'free ride' to the press.

The big difference may have been in the 2 different markets...TT have carved a niche for themselves in the 'Interactive Fiction' side of games. Unfortunately BA hasnt put enough focus on the interactive fiction part to appeal to that crowd (multiple outcomes and choice based game play instead of puzzles), or enough focus on the 'puzzle solving' side of things to appeal to the others. Its kinda floating in the middle...but not the good floating that has elements that BOTH sides like - rather its floating where it contains elements that neither side are particularly fond of...

Then again I could be completely off. The full Steam release will tell!

 

I think the hype around it will guarantee a lot of money, if its going to be more than 3 million dollars to pay for the loans that Double Fine took? I don't know, it's possible but what is big on steam nowdays is some kind of lego sandbox or multiplayer zombie survival sandbox. Double Fine will make some cash but they have loans to pay and need money to make the second half and there are a lot of people not willing to pay for half a game and are going to wait for it to be finished. At first glance, making the game so easy that any retard can finish can look like a good move from a pure cash point of view but as Pyke mentioned this is going to make the game feel a lot shorter and with steamers demanding more and more time for the cheapest price possible, they aren't going to get rich with it. They gonna get a rough ride.

 

Hopefully.

 

Depends on the type of game, I think. Isometric RPGs, for example, aren't particularly easy to turn into mass-market hits. I think the worst we can expect from those is:

- Dumbed down in anticipation of a future tablet release. This was the case for SRR, although in all fairness, it was supposed to be a tablet game to begin with. It was also more of an old XCOM -> new XCOM kind of dumbing down, and the game had more important problems anyway.

- Too easy. Probably the biggest problem with SRR, and a real concern for the biggest kickstarters, I feel. There's a reason why Sawyer wants Eternity to have all these hardcore modes and special difficulty levels - it's so idiots can faceroll through the game on normal, while the special modes can provide a modicum of challenge for experienced players. You can visit the Wasteland 2 thread for a myriad of complaints about difficulty as well.

- Just shit. No real explanation needed.

Now that I think about it, it's strange that Schafer et al didn't provide multiple difficulty modes. I haven't played the game, but from what you guys are saying, a lot of the puzzles are easier than they should be because of the overabundance of hints provided. Why not let players pick a "Hard" mode, with no hints? It's not unheard of in adventure games, and I can't imagine it would that expensive to implement,

 

The hints are integrated into the dialog. To keep a flow they would have had to write and record a number of dialog sections twice. It also sort of goes against auteur theory which Schafer seems to believe in.

 

I was thinking about this as well. It would have been such an easy solution for them, yet they only made an easy mode.

There aren't that many puzzles in BA, so I think they could have afforted a few extra lines.

 

Huh? Are you saying that he believes the easy puzzles are an integral part of his artistic vision, and cannot be modified without damaging it?

 

I think he believes in the artistic vision of what he has created and both different difficultly levels and two versions of dialog would go against it.

I am reading well between the lines here, and I could be totally wrong however.

I also don't see Tim as a very stubborn guy and he probably would have done it if they planned it from the beginning, but it's probably too late to fix now.

 

God, I need to vent this. Broken Age is a REALLY bad game; bland as hell. Basically they fucked up everything. Not only is it a bad, boring and shallow game, but it becomes glaringly obvious that it is a big step back from LucasArts games.

There's no look/take/use/etc. Only left click and everything will be conveniently solved for you. The problem with this is that the game lacks the descriptions you would get by looking at stuff in the backgrounds; plus there hardly is anything to interact with. This sadly means that a big part of the charm - listening to humorous or moody phrases or one liners is absolutely gone.

But the worst part is not the controls, or the easy as shit puzzles.

As Ron Gilbert recently said in an interview with Tim Schafer, adventure games are really an excuse to look at pretty sceneries and listen/read good writing. Well, the game fucking fails to deliver any of these.

It's so goddamn bland and uninspired that you can almost taste the unmotivated design team.

The sceneries are devoid of any real detail. Yes, they look pretty, in a gay-as-hell-21st-century-progressive-fairytale sort of way. There just isn't anything of interest to look at. Forget the interiors and computer huds from Full Throttle.
Also, the characters don't show any fucking emotion. The voice acting is the typical sedated crap you get nowadays. It's almost like the developers tell the actors to not put themselves into the characters, but instead make them all sound the same. Plus, as the expressions from the characters' faces change pretty much NOTHING, the game doesn't really put a definite emotion through.

The game world is simply not interesting. Other thing that bugged me was when they zoomed the characters' faces in the dialogues; you can see the poor quality of the backgrounds up close: blurry, not very defined; you can pretty much tell they were made with photoshop in a hurry. I'm certain that if they had pixelated everything in the game it would all look sharper, and well, better.

Music was pretty off too. At times it felt pointless and irrelevant. At others, strangely out of mood.

And the writing is as bland as everything else. Not funny, not moody. This guy fucking lost it. Forget the "nerd" 1990's-Simpsons humor you would find in DotT, you'll find none of that.

What else can I say, I did not expect too much when I saw the first screens they released way back, expecting a sort of snuggle-feel-good game, but hell this was really mediocre. What the fuck did they do all this time? Were did all the money go, to voice actors?

 

The easy puzzles are the worse thing, not that your hardcore soul doesn't like this lighthearted story or the lighthearted visuals.

Hurr-durr, the visuals are shit, the music is shit, the voice acting is shit, the characters are shit, the mood is shit, tha story is shit, it is not funny. Jesus...

 

Day of the Tentacle was lighthearted. Monkey Island was lighthearted. But they had freaking SOUL.

This piece of afterthought videogame does not.

 

A lot of thing can be said about this game, but not that it doesn't have soul.