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3.34 from 916 ratings
4517 members have it in their collection · 99 playing now · 2282 backlogged · 358 wish listed
How long? Main story 10h · with extras 12h · 100% 12h (from 43 logged playthroughs)
Review SuperEffective 2/5 · Dec 9, 2022
Frustrating because this game started off so well with great animation, interesting stories, and puzzles to solve, but then... it just dragged, I stopped caring about the characters, and the story went in a direction that I didn't care for. Two stars instead of 1 star for the beginning of the game. DNF.
Review Capsulejay 3/5 · Oct 10, 2017
My wife and I recently finished playing through Doubefine’s crowdfunded point-and-click adventure game, Broken Age. If you’ve ever played other adventure games directed by Tim Schafer (Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, etc), you probably already know what to expect from Broken Age. For those unfamiliar, the game consists exploring the environment as one of two different playable …
My wife and I recently finished playing through Doubefine’s crowdfunded point-and-click adventure game, Broken Age. If you’ve ever played other adventure games directed by Tim Schafer (Day of the Tentacle, Monkey Island, Grim Fandango, etc), you probably already know what to expect from Broken Age. For those unfamiliar, the game consists exploring the environment as one of two different playable characters, collecting miscellaneous junk used to solve puzzles, and having snarky dialog with NPCs.
The game starts out strong by introducing you to its protagonists, Vela and Shay: two reasonable people trapped in two very different, but equally, absurd worlds. The game’s visual style, which looks like moving children’s book illustrations, gives the world and characters plenty of personality while still making items and objectives easy to discern. Snappy dialog, featuring the signature LucasArts/Doublefine sense of humor, further adds to the charm of the game world.
Pretty pictures and quirky characters aside, Broken Age is a game that’s all about puzzles. The puzzles are all initially of the pretty straight-forward “use item X on environmental object Y” variety and gradually increase in difficulty and obscurity throughout the game. This is all part of the standard point-and-click progression that one would expect from a throwback adventure from Tim Schafer. In the second half of the game, a different type of puzzle is introduced in which long sequences of actions must be completed in a very specific order for the game to progress. This is where the game makes the transition from clever, but occasionally arcane, to tedious and frustrating. Many of sequential puzzles require traversing the map in-between steps and switching between characters, with a single incorrect step resetting the entire puzzle. Compounding this issue, the game often isn’t particularly good at conveying what you did wrong. As a result, for the last handful of puzzles, my wife and I resorted to using a guide to spare ourselves the aggravation of using trial and error to finish the game.
Overall, Broken Age is an adventure game with a strong sense of style and personality but suffers from gameplay mechanics that fall apart in the second half of the game and make the game feel like it’s dragging on. I expect that players that are already fans of Tim Schafer’s work will find enough to like here to make the game worth playing, but newcomers will probably find it too discouraging.
Review magillfoote 4/5 · Jan 17, 2017
The art style is great, the writing is charming, and the old-school point-and-click style is spot on. But the two "acts" of the game feel quite disjointed, and certain puzzles are completely unintuitive. It's hard to fault Broken Age for this, however, because they're symptoms of the old-school point-and-click genre. Unfortunately, in some ways, Broken Age feels a bit like …
Read moreThe art style is great, the writing is charming, and the old-school point-and-click style is spot on. But the two "acts" of the game feel quite disjointed, and certain puzzles are completely unintuitive. It's hard to fault Broken Age for this, however, because they're symptoms of the old-school point-and-click genre. Unfortunately, in some ways, Broken Age feels a bit like style over substance. But don't get me wrong - this is still way better than a lot of games out there.
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Review SuperFieroStatus 4/5 · Feb 11, 2014
Broken Age is a Double Fine-ass Double Fine game. As a point and click it's fairly standard, but art direction, story, and sheer quirkiness are what make it special. Only Double Fine could pull off this kind of strangeness. The game is broken into 2 characters, a boy and a girl, and you can switch between them a la Gemini …
Read moreBroken Age is a Double Fine-ass Double Fine game. As a point and click it's fairly standard, but art direction, story, and sheer quirkiness are what make it special. Only Double Fine could pull off this kind of strangeness. The game is broken into 2 characters, a boy and a girl, and you can switch between them a la Gemini Rue. The girl section is a little stronger gameplay wise, but the boy's area isn't bad. It's just a little hard to comprehend in a couple parts, as every point and click is. Their fates are intertwined and the way they tie them together is fantastic. Really recommended for anyone interested in point and clicks, and anyone looking for a unique world that only Double Fine could bring.
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Review deepdoop 3/5 · Jan 27, 2014
8/10
Tim Shafer’s first point-and-click adventure game since the legendary Grim Fandango is another great addition to the genre, with memorable characters and jokes, but may be a little easy for adventure aficionados.
See the full review here:
http://gamecepticon.blogspot.com/2014/01/tim-schafer-returns-broken-age-act-1.html
