They're the ones that integrate the writing into the solution, like forcing a talking tree to throw up his sap at the sight of a wooden stool.
The best puzzles aren't the ones that have you scratching your head. 'Broken Age,' supported so well by its artistic design and clever writing, gets by with very little in the way of challenge or complexity.
Like any point-and-click adventure, you're guiding your character through sets of interconnected spaces, finding items and speaking to NPCs, eventually using the information you've found or a combination of items to advance the narrative. The game doesn't so much falter as it does hold ground on the gameplay/puzzling side of things. These are jokes on top of jokes on top of slyly conveyed thematic underpinnings a certain rarity in an industry of macho dudes, guns and needless exposition. On Shay's side of things, who interacts more with machine than man, it's a talking, endlessly eager-to-feed spoon or a simulation requiring that he eat a mountain of ice cream in order to save the adorable stuffed animals within. The playful tone manifests when Vella encounters Harm'ny Lightbeard, voiced by none other than Jack Black, a cloud-surfing cult leader spewing comedic platitudes as often as he strokes his impressive facial hair (read:ego). And it's this lighter tone that enable's 'Broken Age' to brightly shine in stark contrast to last year's darkly shaded 'The Walking Dead,' the art style and exaggerated characters guiding you through a story with impressive literary ambitions. Schafer's deft comedic touch is splattered all over the place, in a good way, ripening a world that might've been somber or grotesque from the mind of someone who confuses seriousness with depth. Shay's story reflects a young person's potential for aimlessness in a similar period of self-growth.īut it's not all so serious. It's a representation of a young person's confusion at her place in life when everybody else seems to buy into their given roles so freely. She, on the other hand, would rather live and aims to fight back, even when every other 'maiden' hopes for the exact opposite. Her family is very proud of her impending sacrifice. The ritual is dedicated to a horrible and massive monster named Mog Chothra and is required it as an alternative to the obliteration of Vella's town. She is to be sacrificed as part of a yearly ritual called the maiden's feast. Vella, on the other hand, is an unwilling object of consequence. He's been doing this his whole life, resigned more to boredom than impatience, until, of course, machinations¬ of plot intercede. Despite his age he's treated as a toddler, spoon-fed by an AI that calls itself his mother and surrounded by toys and simulations he might've been fooled by ten years ago. Shay, a lone human aboard an AI-run spaceship, does very little of consequence, skates through his days without interruption from the outside world, unknowing to his true purpose. But while the story does soar, the gameplay feels a bit empty.īoth of the titles' teenager characters are victims to their predetermined fate. The story leaves off at quite the compounded cliffhanger with remaining questions both semantic and emotional serving as an affirmation of the game's story. I didn't come away with newfound appreciation for point-and-click adventures, rather it was Shay and Vella's connected tales that lingered in my mind. Instead, with Schafer at the helm, 'Broken Age' is more about utilizing the well-worn framing to expose the famed storyteller's natural gifts. Endearing in its charm and artistic design, fulfilling in its narrative themes, this point-and-click adventure actually does very little to innovate on the age-old genre's actual pointing and clicking. Strip away all the expectation and all of the development back-story, and Double Fine's latest is still an anomaly.