7/5/2023 0 Comments Broken age act 2 shay![]() ![]() But the designer's followers pined for another Tim Schafer adventure, and jumped at the chance to crowdfund it. Schafer went on to found Double Fine and focused on developing games in other genres. ![]() Grim Fandango's commercial failure helped lead to the demise of the adventure game genre in the late 1990s. Grim Fandango was praised by critics, but it was largely ignored by consumers, and managed to only develop a relatively small cult following. ![]() Schafer is a legendary adventure game designer whose credits include the Monkey Island series, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle and, most notably, Grim Fandango, released in 1998. The enthusiasm of backers for the project can be linked to the game's designer, Tim Schafer. This was a record at the time, and opened the doors for other developers to use the same strategy to fund their games. Developer Double Fine Productions initially asked for $400,000, but ended up raising more than $3 million. I’m happy with what I backed, and I rather think that’s the main thing.The game's funding came primarily through a Kickstarter campaign. It’s maybe a little slight and it has a few minor issues in its pacing and storytelling, but it’s something any adventurer should be happy to puzzle their way through. Broken Age doesn’t quite live up to stone-cold classics like Monkey Island or Grim Fandango, but that shouldn’t be taken as a mark against it, because all that means is that it’s not a 10/10 game. It’s a shame that it had to be split into two, but at least now it’s all one again.īeautiful art, excellent writing, and clever puzzles are the hallmarks of the best adventures, and they’re all present here. The story functions better as a single arc without a break, the increase in difficulty feels a lot more natural when played as a whole, and there are a lot of hints to puzzles and plot points in Act One which only become relevant in Act Two. It’s very much one game that works a lot better – in every respect – when it’s not split into two. On the other hand, it’s the sort of puzzle I love: it looks complicated and confusing at first, but once you figure out how it works, it’s beautifully elegant and entirely simple.īroken Age is, ironically enough, not a game of two parts. On the one hand, it’s sort of annoying to have to alt-tab back and forth to another window (or make physical notes). One puzzle (revisted several times over the course of Act Two) involves rewiring devices, and which wire goes where has to be pieced together from clues lying around that… don’t actually talk about wires. I can’t go into specifics without spoiling puzzles, and the majority of them are good enough that I really don’t want to do that, but I will say that I actually had to take notes at one point. Not Discworld levels of insanity, but it requires a good amount of lateral thinking that asks you to ponder a couple of steps ahead. Act Two is significantly harder to judge, because… well, because it’s significantly harder. The first Act shouldn’t take a seasoned adventurer more than maybe three hours, tops, and that’s if they’re exhausting all the dialogue they can and examining everything in search of a joke. Shay is now exploring Shellmound and its surrounding environs, and trying to make some sort of amends for the “help” he’s previously provided, while Vella is stuck on the spaceship and attempting to put her righteous fury to good use. Act One is a really comfortable, charming, well-designed adventure.Īct Two picks up where the first left off: with Shay and Vella having swapped places. Most of them are entry-level adventure game stuff, but they all work consistently with the game’s internal logic, and the dialogue and environments hint at the solutions well enough to give you the occasional nudge, but not so transparently that it feels like signposting. Mostly, though, I was impressed by the puzzles, few of which I could actually remember thanks to my aforementioned ability. I went back through Act One again to refresh my memory on everything that had gone before, and was once again thoroughly charmed by Shay and Vella’s separate journeys. Going back to Broken Age was a pleasant surprise. ![]()
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