Many games have come through and been backed through Kickstarter, but none of them more famous than Broken Age which was one of the first games on the site that at the time set a record, raising over £2million with the help of 87,000 backers.
This begs the question why? Well Broken Age is a classic point-and-click adventure, a genre that has long been dormant and there was a call for the genre to come back. Then who better to head the project than Tim Schafer, who worked on such classic games as The Secret of Monkey Island and Grim Fandango.
I know these are favourably considered classic games; however, they are not games I have played myself.
So going into Broken Age, I wasn’t sure what to expect considering all I have dabbled within the genre is those made by Telltale Games.
From the very start I found it to be very different, as you can’t just move your character, of which there are two, a Vella Tartine voiced by Masasa Moyo and a Shay Volta voiced by Elijah Wood.
You can select which one you want to play as and switch on the fly between the two.
I started with and stuck with Shay until I couldn’t progress further. You don’t play the game as such; you interact with it by moving the cursors over objects and other characters, which Shay then will go to them. At this point you will have various options, like eat the cereal.
As Shay you are part of Project Dandelion on a spaceship trying to find a new home alongside the help of Mother and Father, the ships on board computer AI’s, and you play out various scenarios with Shay until you meet a character on the ship who wants you to rebel.
I found the story had more puzzles when you played as Vella as compared to Shay, and it seemed to ease you into the game more.
The setting for Vella is the Badlands, which include Sugar Bunting where you are from, that doesn’t sound bad apart from the fact that you are going to be sacrificed to a monster called Mog Chothra, which surprisingly is a great honour.
Vella wants to find another way and end the eating of maidens by killing Mog Chothra, and that’s your goal as Vella. On your way you visit strange places and meet lots of characters compared to Shay, who are voiced by the likes of Jack Black and Wil Wheaton.
That is the draw of this game, the story and the humour that it has.
Act 1 finish’s on a cliffhanger much like this review.
To be continued…