So... What does everyone think of Broken Age? [spoiler-free musings only]

[Eggie]

The almost-finished Beta of part 1 came out yesterday. I came here fully expecting ten pages of discourse and it turns out no-one even made a thread.

Putting it side by side with it's spiritual contemporaries I am liking it better than Lilly Looking Through and worse than Primordia and where exactly it fits on that scale I guess I'll figure out in the next few hours.

Here is something! Was not expecting Vella to be mean! Was kind of a shock, not sure how I feel. She looks all wide-eyed and innocent but she's Simon the Sorcerer in a cute dress! Don't be fooled! Watch out for her! Man!!!!

Edit: Oh okay, not hours. I'm done. I liked it! Mostly...

[Chicky]

I've played through a couple hours as Shay, absolutely love the art direction, the tweened animations and high res traditional looking assets are a big plus for me, and the characters are suitably cute!

It's annoying that Shay doesn't have a talking animation for when he's moving, he can be running off lines of dialogue whilst you're walking about and his lips will stay sealed. Surely this is something easier to do with the style they've gone for (i presume the head, arms, torso etc are all separate elements). Oh and it got stuck on a blank screen with GUI elements about 1 hour in, so i had to reload.

Otherwise lovely so far, not very challenging yet...

[Azure]

It was fairly easy , but the art and writing were lovely. Looks amazing on mt big widescreen monitor.

[Grim]

I'm waiting for the complete game. I hate this episodic bullshit... But having said that- pretty excited about it. I've always been a LucasArts, not Sierra, fan!;)

[Eric]

The art reminds me of PBS Kids shows my son watches, what with the textured puppetry. I think it's lovely so far, though I've only played for 10 minutes, and especially like the work in moving the camera in natural ways, close-ups of characters talking, zooms to corners of rooms, etc.

[Secret Fawful]

It's fine, I suppose, but I wish it would stump me on a puzzle eventually. My guess is they've got harder puzzles in the full game. My HOPE is that they have harder puzzles in the full game.

[Stupot]

I haven't received it yet
Judging by the DF forums and KS comments, I'm not the only one... oh dear :/

[Eric]

I never got it either, Stu, but there's a link from another backer in the comments to request a new link from Humble Bundle. That worked for me. You have to have Steam to install.

But yeah, it's a disappointment to have to do that. Not sure if the fault lies with KS or with them, though.

[Stupot]

@Eric, is the link you're refering to the 'resend keys' link? because I tried that and just got an email with my three previous Humble Bundle keys but still no Broken Age.  I have steam already, though

But not to derail the thread, I do think this game looks great. Glad it's finally released. It was a long and bumpy ride for everyone involved, not least the backers, but it has been fun and now I can't wait to play it. Though I am almost tempted to wait for the full version.

[Eric]

Yeah, that looks like the link. It's being tossed around a lot more today than yesterday, which means a lot of people are in the same boat. Is your HB account the same as your KS email?

[Stupot]

Yep, both the same, but I checked all my other email accounts anyways and no sign of it. But I've email humble about it so I'll just wait and see what they say.

[Vince Twelve]

I've been playing it at night with my kids.  They love it.  It's definitely too easy for me, but not for them.  It's been a blast so far.  We only play a half hour or so each night, so it should last us a few days.

Art & animation are gorgeous and the writing is charming as hell and very funny.  I've had a couple visual bugs here and there, but nothing too jarring.

[veryweirdguy]

It's a bit shorter and easier than I'd like, but I'm definitely looking forward to Act II. Very charming, and absolutely gorgeous - I hope anyone who asked "how can an adventure game cost so much?" sees the difference between this and a one man indie P&C made in a weekend.

I doubt this will keep a place in my heart the way things like Grim Fandango or Monkey Island do, but I'm also not the age I was when I first discovered those games.

Good work, Doublefine! A-!

Spoiler

The twist at the end really took me by surprise!

[close]

[Anian]

I'm waiting for the complete game. I hate this episodic bullshit... But having said that- pretty excited about it. I've always been a LucasArts, not Sierra, fan!;)

+1

[kaput]

I'm waiting for the complete game. I hate this episodic bullshit... But having said that- pretty excited about it. I've always been a LucasArts, not Sierra, fan!;)

+1

It's not episodic per-say, though, is it? The second part will just be the full game, right?

Anyway, the game oozes personality and looks pretty great. It's a bit 'click this one thing and then this thing happens' atm, but it'll get better and more challenging. Hopefully. They were always gonna have a lot to prove with this game and it's a given that not everyone will be satisfied. But on a whole I think they done a pretty good job. The cast won't have been cheap either...

[veryweirdguy]

The cast won't have been cheap either...

I believe I read that the cast (at least, some of them, presumably the bigger names,) worked for the bare minimum, the legally required amount, as a favour. Given their small parts, I doubt they would have had to sacrifice much time for it (especially Wil Wheaton, Pendleton Ward and Jack Black.)

(Don't ask me to source that as I have noooooo idea where I read it.)

[Eric]

Aside from a few bugs, I really enjoyed playing this. We played over dinner while my son sat and watched, enthralled. As I said above, the animation style is similar to some shows he watches -- stuff like Daniel Tiger -- so he loved it.

The puzzles were a bit on the easy side, but the story was enjoyable. Some elements, both puzzle solutions, and parts of the narrative, are telegraphed a little too far in advance. But, for the most part, I'm invested in the tale, the world, and the characters. I want to know more, and am already counting down the days until the next release. The voice work is amazing, as has been noted.

However, I will say that this didn't really have the feel of a class point-and-click, which is what I think many backers were hoping for. In addition to the graphics being modern, the story and the arrangement of the world also seemed different. Not as much was explorable / not as many objects were clickable. It felt in places like an adventure game being optimized for a future tablet computing / iPad experience. Vela's world especially suffered a little from my feeling as though I'd crossed vast amounts of space with little effort. I know some material was cut out that would have mitigated this.

As I said, though, the characters, the story, and the world are all rich and promising. I look forward to the next part and don't at all regret backing. For the documentary alone, I think my money has been well spent.

[Azure]

Yeah on the cast the director mentioned the budget being much smaller than other games, which indicates the bigger actors prob took a pay cut. Jack Black has obviously worked with Schafer before, and Elijah Wood was a backer

[Esseb]

I'm really missing a way to look at things. This game made me realize the way I play all adventure games is I enter a room then look at every single interactive object before doing anything there. There's not even a hover text to tell me what anything is.

I guess losing that ability is the tablet market's fault.

Other than that, I'm really liking this so far. And the occasional graphical glitches in this beta are charmingly AGS like. The main character passing straight through some objects when moving in the z direction for instance.

[Snarky]

I don't use a tablet, but on my Mac trackpad I can easily "right click" by using two fingers. Works like a charm. Do tablets not have similar tech?