It's a classic Tim Schafer point-and-click adventure. There's nothing really wrong with Broken Age. To criticise Broken Age is, in many ways, to criticise old-school adventure gaming itself. How embarrassing, then, that the self-proclaimed saviour of adventure hasn't done any of this. I think we know the answer to that last one, actually, because TellTale already did it, a couple of months after Double Fine's Kickstarter closed: you get a good license, you give players a reason to care, and you make genuine changes to the long-standing formula. One, did adventure actually need saving or was it ticking along quite nicely, thank you, even if nobody wants to give you $100 million to do it? Two, does anyone really want adventure to be "saved", or can we just quietly pop it back on the back burner with others like simulation, there to be loved by few and ignored by the many who'd rather be shooting terrorists in the face? Three, how the hell can you "save" a genre which has built into its very definition a bunch of strictures the mainstream gamer is never going to embrace? When Double Fine popped up in in early 2012, determined to save adventure, there were questions to be asked. Especially now that genres exist that also feature decent writing and characters, but let you do something - anything! - else. There are something like 30 million people who like shooting terrorists in the face, but significantly fewer who like solutions such as "find the one of 16 identical-looking items on this screen which is clickable, and start it up by combining a washing machine, crab claw, pair of underpants and dog whistle" enough to do nothing else for eight hours. That's basically true of video game "puzzle solving" in general, but it takes a certain kind of personality to enjoy ponderously strolling back and forth between the same six locations repeating the process over and over again without stopping to shoot terrorists in the face between lever pulls. Most point-and-clicks can be solved by pixel hunting, picking up everything, then clicking everything on everything else until something happens. The developer's insistence that the glory days of adventure will return was a welcome balm to those left moderately chafed by the passage of time.īut there's a good reason big publishers are leery of point and click adventures, and that's because it's a niche genre with a lot of problems. We, gentleman all, would open our hearts and our wallets so Double Fine could resurrect a genre that had been neglected too long. Adventure was on its deathbed, the victim of greedy corporate busybodies and underbred console kiddies. Some users have complained about crashes and bugs but we experienced no problems, which ruins a potentially hilarious headline pun.ĭouble Fine was going to save Adventure. It took Brenna less than three hours to complete Act 1, and she's not especially clever about puzzles. Sales of the first act are expected to expedite development of the second. Very few have made it to market yet.īroken Age is being released in two parts, as Double Fine got a bit excited and designed beyond its budget. Notable followers of the next few months include Project Eternity, Wasteland 2, Star Citizen and Shadowrun Returns. The infamous Double Fine Adventure, which raised $3.3 million via Kickstarter in early 2012.ĭouble Fine's unprecedented success is widely credited with beginning the Kickstarter revolution for mid-sized developers. Brenna checks her inventory for useful items and sets out to solve the puzzle of whether anybody really wanted that in the first place. Broken Age is Double Fine's love letter to and resurrection of the adventure genre.
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