Broken Age - Double Fine's Kickstarter Adventure Game

[evdk]

I think Vogel is just waiting for someone to write how RPGs are pointless so he can go and retire.

Well, you are writing a book about them, so...

 

[Blackthorne]

So, I needed a 3 million plus adventure game to tell me that AAA games suck? (via an obscure metaphor?) I knew this shit back in 2003, when I started making adventure games because there wasn't much out there! Thanks, DoubleFine! I'm so glad someone FINALLY said it.


Bt

 

[felipepepe]

No no no, we needed a 3 million plus adventure game to tell the world that indie devs are cool.

Signed, indies devs.

 

[RPGMaster]

Double Fine is not an indie developer. Read the credits of Broken Age, there's like 200 people working on that game. Indies do not have CEOs, COOs, VPs and administrators, 25 people working on art, 20 people working on language localizations.

 

[felipepepe]

RED ALERT, RED ALERT!
Requesting immediate ban of RPGMaster, he knows too much.
We must stop him before he mentions the 3M could finance like 300 real indie games.

 

[evdk]

The fuck is a "real indie game"?

 

[otsego]

I've been trying to get around to getting this out of the backlog, but I made the mistake of listening to Tim AGAIN... and started from act 1.

Wow is this an awful adventure game. I feel like I'm in a daycare sliding those plastic cars along those winding wires that throw curves in there to make the child thing they're tracing a complicated path.

I'll have to wait until I've had a few beers and can't sleep before going forward and beginning act 2.

At least it has two things going for it: a few 'decent's from codexers, and a general distaste from mainstream media. Means it must be OK... Yeah?

I guess it was easily predicted, but funny how the one that's begins the kick started craze and gets us some decent RPGs ends up being the huge red flag for putting money down on a dream.

 

[deuxhero]

Double Fine is not an indie developer. Read the credits of Broken Age, there's like 200 people working on that game. Indies do not have CEOs, COOs, VPs and administrators, 25 people working on art, 20 people working on language localizations.

20 people on localizations is actually the most believable one for an indie game because it's one thing a team of less than a dozen simply can't do on their own but can easily and readily be commissioned. Certainly not a pre-release thing like BA got, but post-release translations of successful indie games is common enough (Paper's Please is in 9 languages. If each non-English language has a translator and a localization editor that's 16 people there. I'm pretty there's also some overlap with the other parts of the credits too. The guy credited for programing all the translation in is likely credited as a normal programer as well for example)

 

[Archibald]

The fuck is a "real indie game"?

Something like Telepath Tactics I'd assume.

 

[J_C]

Double Fine is not an indie developer. Read the credits of Broken Age, there's like 200 people working on that game. Indies do not have CEOs, COOs, VPs and administrators, 25 people working on art, 20 people working on language localizations.

So indie is a 2 men studio, developing games in their basement? Or it means INDEPENDENT, which Double Fine totally is.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

Double Fine is not an indie developer. Read the credits of Broken Age, there's like 200 people working on that game. Indies do not have CEOs, COOs, VPs and administrators, 25 people working on art, 20 people working on language localizations.

So indie is a 2 men studio, developing games in their basement? Or it means INDEPENDENT, which Double Fine totally is.

DF was dependent on backer's money.

 

[J_C]

Double Fine is not an indie developer. Read the credits of Broken Age, there's like 200 people working on that game. Indies do not have CEOs, COOs, VPs and administrators, 25 people working on art, 20 people working on language localizations.

So indie is a 2 men studio, developing games in their basement? Or it means INDEPENDENT, which Double Fine totally is.

DF was dependent on backer's money.

Just as Telepath Tactics. Does this make them non-indie?

 

[aratuk]

Loosest definition of "indie" is probably just anything that isn't published by Activision/Blizzard, EA, Nintendo, or some other huge multinational. Could probably add:

• Company's existence is contingent on existence of projects its principals consider worthwhile & want to work on, not self-preservation as a vehicle for employment & long-term life stability for employees. Kind of a tricky qualification, because everyone hopes to make money, but it rules out free-to-play World of Tanks Bejeweled clones. The most seemingly "honest" art can have the most craven profit incentive behind it, which makes it that much better.
• Company wasn't fronted a bunch of money to develop the game by someone hoping to see a return on investment. Puts the "independent" in "indie" — whether developer's motivations are its own or an interpretation of someone else's. Some companies, like Doublefine or Obsidian, have independent projects that coexist with non-independent projects.
• [More bullet points for hipster purity test]

 

[CyberWhale]

Double Fine is not an indie developer. Read the credits of Broken Age, there's like 200 people working on that game. Indies do not have CEOs, COOs, VPs and administrators, 25 people working on art, 20 people working on language localizations.

So indie is a 2 men studio, developing games in their basement? Or it means INDEPENDENT, which Double Fine totally is.

Broken Age is a real over-budgeted and over-produced piece of independent shit.

 

[J_C]

Double Fine is not an indie developer. Read the credits of Broken Age, there's like 200 people working on that game. Indies do not have CEOs, COOs, VPs and administrators, 25 people working on art, 20 people working on language localizations.

So indie is a 2 men studio, developing games in their basement? Or it means INDEPENDENT, which Double Fine totally is.

Broken Age is a real over-budgeted and over-produced piece of independent shit.

Overbudgeted? Yes. Overproduced? Yes. Independent? Yes. Shit? No.

 

[Archibald]

Double Fine is not an indie developer. Read the credits of Broken Age, there's like 200 people working on that game. Indies do not have CEOs, COOs, VPs and administrators, 25 people working on art, 20 people working on language localizations.

So indie is a 2 men studio, developing games in their basement? Or it means INDEPENDENT, which Double Fine totally is.

In recent years (probably close to decade?) terms "indie" and "independent" driffted apart.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Meanwhile, at the fortress of decline:

Ugh.

 

[Duraframe300]

That oldmanmurry article is one of my most hated internet articles ever on account of all the smug assholes it spawned.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Anyone got a backup of the Act 2 save? The link Bubbles provided earlier doesn't work for me for some reason.

EDIT: Nevermind, found it elsewhere. Let's see what the fuss is about.

 

[Lucky]

That was already present in Chains of Satinav with the fairy magic (iirc this is also in the Geron portions of Memoria)

Yes, but Memoria as a whole was the better game and I liked its implementation of the idea better there. Geron makes for a poor main lead.

 

[Duram]

act 2 was way to short.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I finished Act 2 yesterday and I thought it was good. A bit on the short and easy side, but good. It finally felt like a proper adventure game, for one. Also, I thought the pacing was just right (I never felt bored), as well as the writing (for the most part) and also all the little details and comments you could get by using item A on item/person B - something that iirc was lacking in the first act. The way you had to switch between the characters to solve some of the puzzles wasn't always well designed (sometimes it felt too artifical to have a hint for one character's puzzle in the other character's timeline), but it did help with the pacing so whatever.

The puzzle(s) to re-wire the little robots were pretty entertaining. The only puzzle that felt like a waste of time to me was the knot puzzle, because I thought I really did need to describe the knot properly to get the right schematic, which led me to spending more time on it than necessary.

Based on Act 2, I would even say I'm looking forward to Broken Age 2 (especially since the ending clearly did have a sequel in mind) - something I never would've imagined saying based on Act 1 alone - if not for the fact they're going to dumb it down again due to all the negative reviews Act 2 got.

tl;dr Kill all reviewers.

 

[Zarniwoop]

The puzzle(s) to re-wire the little robots were pretty entertaining. The only puzzle that felt like a waste of time to me was the knot puzzle, because I thought I really did need to describe the knot properly to get the right schematic, which led me to spending more time on it than necessary.

That rope thing is total bullshit. Mmm, is this a crocodile wrestling a pretzel or 2 snakes fighting?

I also only discovered you can insta-travel back to Carol far too late, I spent hours walking back and forth. All in all not a bad game but yeah really short. Especially for something released half a game at a time. The whole thing is maybe as long as 2 Telltale episodes, especially the GoT ones.

 

[Bubbles]

Based on Act 2, I would even say I'm looking forward to Broken Age 2 (especially since the ending clearly did have a sequel in mind)

We've briefly discussed this earlier in the thread, but all the loose ends left over from the ending are wrapped up with still images during the credits. I imagine the sequel (or at least a sequel based on this story) was scrapped after Act 1.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Based on Act 2, I would even say I'm looking forward to Broken Age 2 (especially since the ending clearly did have a sequel in mind)

We've briefly discussed this earlier in the thread, but all the loose ends left over from the ending are wrapped up with still images during the credits. I imagine the sequel (or at least a sequel based on this story) was scrapped after Act 1.

Oh well, I wasn't aware of that since I didn't watch the credits. Makes sense though, given their financial situation.