Broken Age

Broken Age

If you have read some of my other posts you may know that I am a massive fan of the point and click adventure and the impact they had on my early gaming life. A while back the genre seemed almost dead with only a handful of companies releasing decent titles. But over the last year or so the point and click adventure is making a comeback with the likes of Telltale games and there Monkey Island, Back to the Future and Sam n Max games. What about Daedalic? Who made the great Deponia, or Wadjet Eye Games and their epic Gemini Rue.

All great games, but for me they seemed to be lacking a certain something… then I heard about Broken Age.. from the mind of one of the genres heavy weights “Tim Schafer” the man behind Grim Fandango and the  Co-designer of the early classics, The Secret of Monkey Island, ’Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge and Day of the Tentacle.

The project started on kickstarter hoping to raise $400,000. This was to fund the project and help record a “Making Of” Documentary. Within 9 hours the project exceeded its goal and after the first month the project raised $3.45million with 87,000 backers making it one of kickstarters most successful projects.

So already I had pretty high expectations.. Unfortunately I got married… and completely lost focus on the game.. It wasn’t until Deano a fellow GameOverMan mentioned the game to me… I quickly found the game on steam and downloaded it..

Without reading any reviews or watching any trailers I jumped into the Broken Age Universe..

The first thing that got me was the lack of an intro. Once I picked the male character (Shay Volta ) I was thrown straight into his boring life aboard The Bossa Nostra. Without giving away too much, the start of the game is fun, with bright colours and a fantastic sound track. You can tell when you change from screen to screen the amount of care and attention to detail that has been put into each background. The art style is very crisp and clear which really helps make the universe come to life.  It was refreshing to have all the design kept very simple, nothing is over complicated.  

The humour of the game is spot on and you can really feel a massive influence from Tim previous works, which was helped by the awesome voice acting, with the likes of Elijah Wood and Jack Black popping up.  The controls are pretty classic to the genre, very simple with barely any sub screens and very quick to pick up.  All this mixed with an awesome soundtrack really sucked me into this game.

After planning as Shay for a while I noticed a picture of the female character in the inventory. Once I clicked the picture I was taken to a whole new area of the game. Where I could swap between the two characters at will (Much like Day of the Tentacle).

The only problem I found with the game is that I have to wait until later in the year for part two.i

So If you’re looking for a new game to play or if you’re a big point and clicker then this is the game for you, I love it and I will be praising it to everyone I know

- Loz

@Laurencehead1