Shay’s ship is full of small details that reveal more about the boy’s plight.
You can take control of either Shay or Vella at any time, and the worlds they inhabit couldn’t be more different from each other. With Act 2, it would be nice to see more difficulty and variation in the puzzles, but just picking up after one hell of a cliffhanger should be enough to please those who played Act 1.Playing Broken Age feels like stepping into an interactive painting - sometimes, you can even see the brush strokes within the 2D backgrounds. Between the inventive storytelling and gorgeous worlds, it’s hard to pick a favorite part. Finals ThoughtsĪll in all, the first act of Double Fine's Broken Age is a pleasure to play. The game took me a little over four hours because I wanted to experience every aspect, but it would be easy to breeze through in under three. Find item, talk to character, solve puzzle, repeat. The flow of the game is predetermined, which I don’t necessarily find to be a bad thing but can sometimes feel a bit repetitive. Interactive parts of the world glow when you hover over them, which is helpful when trying to find the next piece of your puzzle. Characters move in response to where you click, and thankfully they walk at a rather quick pace.
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The point-and-click mechanics of the game are nothing revolutionary and while the world is free for you to explore, that’s about as much freedom as you get. Sure, they’re not the most challenging problems ever, but it’s certainly rewarding when you figure them out. The puzzles fit right in with the rest of the game’s quirkiness, making usually bizarre situations seem completely logical. Solving them is not inherently difficult and if you get stuck, a quick trial-and-error with the items in your inventory will trigger clever dialogue that can help point you in the right direction. The puzzles require the use of items - ranging from cupcakes to inflatable rafts - which you'll collect as you explore the game.
The melodic, whimsical score heard in Vella’s world is drastically different from the mechanical pings we hear in Shay’s but equally as beautiful.īroken Age’s puzzle design is as fun as its story. The story’s various locations are only enhanced by Peter McConnell’s brilliant soundtrack. Vella gets the better end of the deal, getting to explore much more outside of her quiet town, although the interior of Shay’s spaceship can be just a breathtaking. I felt like I'd stumbled into a living storybook, complete with talking trees and a village among the clouds. Unsatisfied with either of their potential outcomes, Shay and Vella embark on two exciting adventures to take control of their own destinies and find what it really means to grow up.īroken Age’s illustrative, 2-dimensional style brings life to the worlds in which Shay and Vella live. Vella, meanwhile, lives in the quaint town of Sugar Bunting and is destined to be her town’s next sacrifice to the monster Mog Chothra. Shay, a boy bored with his life alone on a Fisher-Price-esque spaceship, yearns for adventure but is discouraged by the ship’s overly protective computer named Mom. Broken Age’s unique dual narrative tells the coming-of-age stories of its two protagonists - Shay and Vella.