Broken Age - Double Fine's Kickstarter Adventure Game

[Metro]

It is a good adventure game with poor puzzles.

This is a paradox. When is an adventure game not an adventure game? When it has puzzles so awful they might as well not even be there.

 

[J_C]

That's not what you have written.

I made a mistake. Corrected it.

 

[Redlands]

J_C , I pray that when Stasis comes out I have a fan like you.

Be careful what you wish for.

If I were to make anything of the kind that might garner fans, I'd really hope both they could provide and I could at least accept (if not agree with) their (reasonably-articulated, even if not constructive) criticism. I really, really wouldn't want to be Tim Schafer, with J_C clones telling me my clothes were great and stylish and modern, with anyone who mentioned that I was actually buck naked being told to shush and ding dong bannu'd.

 

[mindx2]

What with Roguey and J_C ....

RPGCodex: THE place for game designer stalkers, fanboys, pseudo-intillectuals to come and sperg!

Don't worry Pyke you'll get yours

Spoiler

Just kidding J_C you're a bro... now Roguey...eh...

 

[suejak]

Very observant of you! Yes, there was once a tram puzzle and it in fact was cut.

Around the time in the documentary where we are talking about our scoping problem with the game (not having enough money for the design at hand) and we were talking about the various solutions, I started hacking into the design and cut a lot out of it. And that's just to fit it into the already late schedule. That's the amazing thing about making games. Even when you hack out what feels like 50% of your game, that's just to fit it into a schedule that's still 200% too long. Sigh.

Adventure games are time consuming and expensive. Nothing is leveraged. Every single puzzle and joke and story moment is hand crafted and experienced usually once by the player.

Anyway, there was a tram that you took from Meriloft to Shellmound. But it was cut and we made it so you could walk from Curtis' cabin all the way to the beach. Also, Alex's pyramid wasn't connected to Shellmound. You had to ride Jessie to get there!

That may still sound fun, and you may be disappointed that we cut it, but if we hadn't you might not be playing act 1 until 2015!

Tradeoffs. Hopefully people watching the doc will see how many tradeoffs you have to make to get a game out the door. That's how every game goes! Unless you have infinite money or zero expenses.

But don't be sad. The tram was really a jerk and I'm glad we cut him. He would always spoil the end of movies, and also never put in enough money when we split the bill at lunch. Smell you later, Tram!

Turns out, even with the dumbass two-part release, they also had to butcher the design even after production had begun. So much for the final product being "Tim's Vision"...

 

[DeepOcean]

That's not what you have written.

I made a mistake. Corrected it.

That mistake was your subconscious talking J_C, hear your soul.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

So glad I was vindicated and that the game is another abhorrent Flash hipster zany abomination.

 

[Jaesun]

It doesn't use flash.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Just finished playing about an hour of this and it's pretty fucking terrible so far. From the gigantic tablet-tailored cursor to the one-click interface, to the lack of interactive elements just about everywhere, there's nothing but decline. I'm not a fan of the art style either, so nothing's really working for me. For them to have funded this project on an old-school adventure game premise is actually hysterical, in hindsight.

 

[felipepepe]

People in the DF forums noticed that one of the big puzzles from the game they saw Ron Gilbert playing on the documentary was missing. They asked about it, and Tim himself came to reply:

Very observant of you! Yes, there was once a tram puzzle and it in fact was cut.

Around the time in the documentary where we are talking about our scoping problem with the game (not having enough money for the design at hand) and we were talking about the various solutions, I started hacking into the design and cut a lot out of it. And that’s just to fit it into the already late schedule. That’s the amazing thing about making games. Even when you hack out what feels like 50% of your game, that’s just to fit it into a schedule that’s still 200% too long. Sigh.

Adventure games are time consuming and expensive. Nothing is leveraged. Every single puzzle and joke and story moment is hand crafted and experienced usually once by the player.

Anyway, there was a tram that you took from Meriloft to Shellmound. But it was cut and we made it so you could walk from Curtis’ cabin all the way to the beach. Also, Alex’s pyramid wasn’t connected to Shellmound. You had to ride Jessie to get there!

That may still sound fun, and you may be disappointed that we cut it, but if we hadn’t you might not be playing act 1 until 2015!

Tradeoffs. Hopefully people watching the doc will see how many tradeoffs you have to make to get a game out the door. That’s how every game goes! Unless you have infinite money or zero expenses.

But don’t be sad. The tram was really a jerk and I’m glad we cut him. He would always spoil the end of movies, and also never put in enough money when we split the bill at lunch. Smell you later, Tram!

No wonder the game feels empty and disconnected... even with a huge budget and splitting the game in two Acts, they still removed a lot of content and crammed things together... hard to believe that Double Fine is a estabilished company that made various games before, they seems to have no idea of how to manage a project.

 

[Metro]

If I have to read about that unshaven whale babble about how 'adventure games are expensive' again… I'll call him a fucking unshaven whale again! Sorry, Timbo, most of us know you can make good adventure games for less than the $5+ million you garnered (and subsequently squandered) from multiple sources. Pro tip: move the fuck out of San Francisco where the cost of living (and doing business) is retardedly high… as are your employees salaries, no doubt. This has got to be one of the most poorly managed developers out there but the amazing thing is they'll keeping pumping out shit because un-gamers are willing to pay for it.

 

[Ravel myluv]

What amazes me the most is how they actually had no work done at all coming to Kickstarter.

I understand it's a bit hard to work a lot on a project that might not even be funded, but still...
After they funded, they seem to have lost a lot of time figuring out what the game actually would be.

 

[felipepepe]

Adventure games are time consuming and expensive.

Meanwhile, 5 people can make Heroine's Quest for free, and bro Pyke will make Stasis on a 100k budget. Tim because just another faded-out developer, like Molyneaux and Ken Levine.

 

[J_C]

People in the DF forums noticed that one of the big puzzles from the game they saw Ron Gilbert playing on the documentary was missing. They asked about it, and Tim himself came to reply:

Very observant of you! Yes, there was once a tram puzzle and it in fact was cut.

Around the time in the documentary where we are talking about our scoping problem with the game (not having enough money for the design at hand) and we were talking about the various solutions, I started hacking into the design and cut a lot out of it. And that’s just to fit it into the already late schedule. That’s the amazing thing about making games. Even when you hack out what feels like 50% of your game, that’s just to fit it into a schedule that’s still 200% too long. Sigh.

Adventure games are time consuming and expensive. Nothing is leveraged. Every single puzzle and joke and story moment is hand crafted and experienced usually once by the player.

Anyway, there was a tram that you took from Meriloft to Shellmound. But it was cut and we made it so you could walk from Curtis’ cabin all the way to the beach. Also, Alex’s pyramid wasn’t connected to Shellmound. You had to ride Jessie to get there!

That may still sound fun, and you may be disappointed that we cut it, but if we hadn’t you might not be playing act 1 until 2015!

Tradeoffs. Hopefully people watching the doc will see how many tradeoffs you have to make to get a game out the door. That’s how every game goes! Unless you have infinite money or zero expenses.

But don’t be sad. The tram was really a jerk and I’m glad we cut him. He would always spoil the end of movies, and also never put in enough money when we split the bill at lunch. Smell you later, Tram!

No wonder the game feels empty and disconnected... even with a huge budget and splitting the game in two Acts, they still removed a lot of content and crammed things together... hard to believe that Double Fine is a estabilished company that made various games before, they seems to have no idea of how to manage a project.

This explains why the game is not long, despite Tim saying that he wrote too long of a game.

This happenes to every game tough, you have to cut some parts if you have time/money problems.

 

[buzz]

Oh, publishers are EVUL!! They make us cut stuff and release the games on a tight time-schedule and force us to do some dumbing-down!

Anyone who still believe that after various kickstarter/indie blunders should fucking kill themselves already.

 

[J_C]

Adventure games are time consuming and expensive.

Meanwhile, 5 people can make Heroine's Quest for free, and bro Pyke will make Stasis on a 100k budget.

And lets conveniently forget that DF is a company, where people work for a living. Tim can't just pay 20k a year for one people, and than ask them to work on the project for 2 years.

If I had game development skills, and got 100K dollars, of course I could make a project on my own for that much money. That money is my 15 year salary (!), I could work on a project for that long. But if several people works on a project, and each have a fix salary (like 60-70K a year), that 100K wouldn't be enought for shit.

 

[Roguey]

RPGCodex: THE place for game designer stalkers, fanboys, pseudo-intillectuals to come and sperg!

Pseudo-intellectual describes most of the posters on this forum who aren't me. I'm a contrarian who applies critical thinking to concepts.

 

[buzz]

J_C let's conveniently forget that Double Fine is always working on multiple projects at the same time and they didn't have to hire all those fancy artists and voice actors.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

RPGCodex: THE place for game designer stalkers, fanboys, pseudo-intillectuals to come and sperg!

Pseudo-intellectual describes most of the posters on this forum. I'm Josh Sawyer's Anthony Davis' alt.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Adventure games are time consuming and expensive.

Meanwhile, 5 people can make Heroine's Quest for free, and bro Pyke will make Stasis on a 100k budget.

And lets conveniently forget that DF is a company, where people work for a living. Tim can't just pay 20k a year for one people, and than ask them to work on the project for 2 years.

If I had game development skills, and got 100K dollars, of course I could make a project on my own for that much money. That money is my 15 year salary (!), I could work on a project for that long. But if several people works on a project, and each have a fix salary (like 60-70K a year), that 100K wouldn't be enought for shit.

The budget of a typical Daedalic adventure game is around 500k, according to their founder. And you can't really complain about the length or production values of those games (well, maybe about english VA, but I don't think that's a budgeting problem).

 

[Aeschylus]

The budget of a typical Daedalic adventure game is around 500k, according to their founder. And you can't really complain about the length or production values of those games (well, maybe about english VA, but I don't think that's a budgeting problem).

That's because the great majority of the work in their games is done by interns.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

The budget of a typical Daedalic adventure game is around 500k, according to their founder. And you can't really complain about the length or production values of those games (well, maybe about english VA, but I don't think that's a budgeting problem).

That's because the great majority of the work in their games is done by interns.

And midgets as well, hard to make a good adventure game without a midget.

 

[evdk]

The budget of a typical Daedalic adventure game is around 500k, according to their founder. And you can't really complain about the length or production values of those games (well, maybe about english VA, but I don't think that's a budgeting problem).

Whispered World 2 looks a lot pricier than that, what with the fancy 3D made to look like 2D and all that.

(Also Memoria facial animations sucked, not that it mattered)

 

[Cowboy Moment]

The budget of a typical Daedalic adventure game is around 500k, according to their founder. And you can't really complain about the length or production values of those games (well, maybe about english VA, but I don't think that's a budgeting problem).

Whispered World 2 looks a lot pricier than that, what with the fancy 3D made to look like 2D and all that.

(Also Memoria facial animations sucked, not that it mattered)

Maybe, I think the figure referred to the likes of Deponia more than anything. TWW2 wasn't even announced at the time of his post.

 

[Dexter]

The budget of a typical Daedalic adventure game is around 500k, according to their founder. And you can't really complain about the length or production values of those games (well, maybe about english VA, but I don't think that's a budgeting problem).

That's because the great majority of the work in their games is done by interns.

And midgets as well, hard to make a good adventure game without a midget.

Breaking news, Daedalic has caught a band of programming midgets and forces them to make Adventure video games against their will while dressed in ridiculous garments, video has leaked from the premises:


Up next, is KING Art really relying on the tears of tortured kittens to fuel their puzzle design and has Wadjet Eye Games sacrificed children to appease the dark lords in order to keep their budget down? Stay tuned to find out more.