Story :
Broken Age is new Point and Click adventure game by Double Fine Adventure , written and directed by Tim Schaffer .
The story revolves around a young boy , Shay and a girl , Vella . Vella lives in a village among Bakers . The people of that village , used to be warriors until giant monster “Mog Chothra” started to visit their lands after every few years . To prevent entire village from being destroyed and eaten by the monster , the villagers had started an event called “Maiden’s Feast” long time ago , where they sacrifice their young and attractive maidens , to make sure that the monster only eat those maidens instead of destroying the whole village . While other girls happily sacrifice themselves to save their village , Vella seems to be against this tradition .
On other hand Shay lives aboard a ship and not allowed to leave it by the computer , kept calling itself his mom . Shay soon finds out that things outside of the ship are not as calm and peaceful as inside the ship , and he have to do something about it . While I loved the story of Vella (and played it first) , the story of Shay didn’t felt as epic as Vella’s sometimes . May be it’s just the matter of preference but overall story of both characters is great and have both emotionally engaging and funny moments . Dialogues are also very well written .
Design and Gameplay :
The art of broken age is stunning and the game is 2D like classic adventure games . User interface on PC version is designed fully for mouse . Simple UI of adventure games is even more simplified in Broken Age where you right click to open inventory and left click to select item . Clicking on item will give you brief description of the item . To use these items you’ll be holding LMB on items and then dropping it on the object where you want it to be used .
Broken Age also features dialogue options . Unlike Broken Sword , that shows pictures of different characters , events or objects during conversation and you have to select those to talk about that stuff , Broken Age shows dialogues that players can select like RPGs . Of course selecting different dialogues will not affect the storyline like RPGs but you can get more information about the characters , objects or events around you . I also found myself getting items to be used later in the game when chatting with characters and selecting different dialogues to get more information . So , engaging in conversations is important to proceed . The game controls are great but I found them less responsive sometimes , specially during the beginning and end of the game . UI didn’t felt too responsive .
The Game also allows players to switch between characters at any time . Since both characters have entire different storyline , I decided to complete one story first before taking a look at events of other world . Players have choice of completing both stories as they want .
Presentation :
Broken Age looks great . The visuals and art are stunning . Character models are also well designed with great cartoonish animations and facial expressions . The game features outstanding orchestral soundtrack , and great voice acting . Sound effects are also great and since this is 2D game , it should have no problem running on lowest end PCs . Character animations and movement of camera during conversation and cutscenes is brilliant . There are some scenes in the game where your character moves away from screen , in these scenes unlike old adventure games , the camera follows your character until he/she stops moving , it just looks great .
Final Verdict :
Broken Age Act 1 have great story , presentation , characters , sound effects , music score , voice acting and gameplay . It took me 5+ hours to complete the first Act which is half of the overall story , yet it is closer to the length of full 60$ so called AAA games . Ending of the Act 1 leaves you wanting more . On other hand it is also epic and that is the reason why I can’t wait to find out what happens next in Act 2 .
Pros :
+ Great Story
+ Voice Acting
+ Sound Effects
+ Music Score
+ Gameplay
+ Intelligent Camera
+ Campaign Length
+ Character Switching Option
Cons :
- Some moments in Shay’s story aren’t as epic as rest of the game
- UI feels less responsive than other adventure games