Broken Age: Act One Review

Standard disclaimer: yep, I backed the Double Fine Adventure, now called Broken Age. I don’t feel that fact matters since I would’ve bought the game anyway, but I want you dear reader to be fully aware of this fact. Another fact is that I have high standards when it comes to adventure games (as Daedalic will attest to in-between cursing my name) because I grew up playing LucasArts’ classic adventures. The idea of Tim Schafer, the lead writer or creator of my top three best adventure games of all time (Monkey Island 2, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Fandango) making a new one was irresistible to me. So when it comes to Broken Age my standards are pretty damn stratospheric. Insurmountable? Perhaps.

This is where I usually give an introduction to the game’s story. Which would you prefer? The plot of Broken Age or the way a great but slightly struggling developer turned to Kickstarter to fund an adventure game, the type they used to make when they were part of LucasArts and knocking out all-time classics of the genre every year, and made it through a few controversies to finally get the game out the door but in two halves? Double Fine may have blew past the $3.3 million they made on Kickstarter and have been eating into their own cash ever since, but the end result is that it was worth it. Broken Age is a lovely, beautiful game, and while it has a few unfortunate flaws we’ll get to I don’t think anyone could be truly unhappy with the final product (especially with half the game left to go).

Vella and Wil Wheaton’s lumberjack Curtis, who thinks the trees are out to get him

Actual in-game story then. Two teenagers named Vella and Shay, while different in many ways, share one thing in common: they’re both trapped in their circumstances. Vella is from a baking town in a far away world and is due to be fed to the monstrous Mog Chothra in the annual ‘Maiden’s Feast’ to stop the beast from destroying the town, a “great honour” according to her family. Shay’s situation is less perilous but just as confining, he’s on a starship where he’s treated like a baby by the computer Mom. Neither should be able to escape but are going to try their damnedest to do so, no matter the consequences.



The story is clearly a parallel for being a teenager, but there are a number of things surprising about it. Firstly, and I don’t know why this surprised me given that Tim Schafer’s last two adventures were Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, it’s quite low on the gag rate. There are some truly hysterical moments, funny characters like the talking tree that regularly insults woodsman Curtis, and some excellent jokes, but on the whole it’s a lot more restrained than Monkey Island or Sam & Max. This restraint is probably because of the fact that the ‘Maiden’s Feast’ is such a terrifying concept. Based on the classic tales of sacrificing young maidens to a dragon, in Broken Age it’s scarier because it’s so celebrated and dressed-up – only when we see Mog Chothra brutally taking a maiden does the shock really set in. This is mostly a light game, but Double Fine does not pull any punches in the serious moments. Remember Lola, Schaferites?

The final thing that pleasantly surprised me was the ending. I’m going to avoid spoilers of course, but when Double Fine announced they were going to split the game in two I didn’t expect much of an ending. For similarly halved Kickstarter stablemate Broken Sword 5 the first part felt like half a game with an arbitrary stopping point, all build-up and no pay-off. Broken Age Act 1 on the other hand has an excellent ending, with a wonderful cliffhanger that’ll keep you thinking long after the credits roll. Furthermore Act 1 actually feels like a game in its own right rather than half of one. A short one perhaps, but I was satisfied.

Ah yes, short. While I did mean that Act 1 is short in that it’s only half the finished game, it’s also over very quickly too. The reason for this, sadly, is probably the main and rather big flaw of the game: that the puzzles are incredibly easy. Any LucasArts adventure fan, which I suspect is at least 90% of the backers (and going off the behind-the-scenes videos, also most of the cast, crew and even the orchestra as well), is going to blow through the game in 2-3 hours. And that’s if they look at and try everything. I was going to criticise the game for not having a hint system at first, but it’s all pretty damn obvious.

Merak, who clearly knows more than he’s letting on

For example, there’s one section where Vella gets attacked by a snake. Remember in Curse of Monkey Island where Guybrush gets eaten by a snake and has to mix together a purgative to escape? Here you can only do two things: look at a sign that says ‘blow horn to calm snake’ and blow the horn next to it. Done, escaped. Most puzzles are harder than that of course, but why was that bit even in there? There are some good ones, like plotting a course to a star system by knitting a scarf (it makes sense at the time) or solving the Riddle of Vorn, but there was never a single moment where I was stuck. Everything clicked into place the moment I stepped in a room.

Which is probably down to Broken Age’s other big flaw, there’s not really enough to do in any area. In most places there will only be two or three things to click on so even if you don’t get a puzzle solution immediately there’ll only be a limited amount of things you can try anyway. Shay’s ship is the biggest area, with many connected rooms and teleporters to get around quickly, but most rooms only have one thing of relevant interest in it. This is also made a problem by the disappointingly basic interface which only allows one button to do everything (apart from the inventory which can also be assigned a key), either look at or use, and is clearly designed with a touchscreen in mind. Anyone who ever attempted to “Pick Up Velasco” in Grim Fandango will be sorely crushed by this.

Fortunately everything else in Broken Age is of the highest quality. The animation for example is astounding, it’s truly like a high-quality cartoon. You know how in many games characters stand around for the most part and only occasionally move? In Broken Age characters are constantly in motion. If you leave Vella or Shay alone they’ll scratch, look around, fold their arms, and look generally like they’re waiting on you. If Double Fine revealed that most of the $3 million went on animation I’d believe them. I can’t gush about it enough, but you really have to play Broken Age to understand how good it is. Just trust me or watch some gameplay videos until then.

Double Fine (and previously LucasArts) have been always known for the quality of the sound design in their games and Broken Age doesn’t break that tradition. Long-time Tim Schafer composer Peter McConnell, teamed with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, have created a lovely score that builds the atmosphere wonderfully, but it’s designed to be in the background whereas the voice acting is front and centre. Thankfully it’s excellent, with well-known screen actors like Elijah Wood, Wil Wheaton, and Jack Black alongside professional voice actors like Jennifer Hale, Masasa Moyo and Pendleton Ward, and frankly all doing such a great job I didn’t recognise some familiar voices. Wil Wheaton’s Curtis the tree-fearing lumberjack is particularly hilarious, and I didn’t realise it was him until I saw the end credits (and I knew he was in it somewhere). If I have one complaint it’s that both Wil Wheaton and Jack Black (as cult leader Harm’ny Lightbeard) are a little underused with only a few lines between them. Hopefully they’ll turn up more in Act 2.

Finally the biggest triumph of Broken Age is something I alluded to earlier but I want to underline: the writing, both in terms of characters and dialogue, is as good as Schafer’s best. It’s incredibly funny, crackling with wit, and yet can be both moving and scary too. You really feel for both Shay and Vella, and the mystery of how these two are connected despite living in seemingly completely different worlds keeps you guessing until the startling end – or should I say, mid-point. Then there are the characters, like the family of vowel-dropping cultists living in the clouds or the Hitchhiker’s Guide-style population of Shay’s ship (personal favourite: the spoon that gives you facts about your food while you’re eating it). It’s the little touches that truly make the experience however, like trying a stupid new item with a character you met ages ago and being shocked when you get a fresh response.

A tree who’s out to get Curtis

There’s a lot of gushing here but not, if you’ve already peeked, a particularly huge score (although definitely a Very Good one). The trouble with Broken Age: Act 1 is that while writing, characters, music, animation, voice acting, dialogue, graphics and story are all superb, the puzzles are just too easy and there’s just not much to do in each area – in other words, the actual game part of the package. Fans of Schafer’s other adventures will be done in a couple of hours with barely a pause to think up a solution, and even non-adventurers won’t take long. There are no red herring puzzle items and if you can’t do something you probably simply haven’t been in the right room yet, and classic adventures should not rely on player exploration to be an obstacle. Fully exploring the environments is the start, identifying a goal and thinking of a way to get to it comes next. Often I wasn’t thinking playing Broken Age, I would just have a single thought and it’d be correct.

Apart from the ending of course, which I’m thinking about a lot. Broken Age: Act 1 is a wonderful piece of work, well worth the time and money put into it, an excellent piece of videogame fiction, but it just needs some work being an actual videogame. Let’s hope Act 2 maintains the quality but ups the difficulty.

The talking tree. “Please leave before I vomit, you foul ruthless stump!” Best insult ever.