Broken Age

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Broken Age
Studio Double Fine Productions
Publisher Double Fine Productions
Senior Developer Tim Schafer
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 January 28, 2014
platform Android , iOS , Linux , Mac OS X , Microsoft Windows , Nintendo Switch , PlayStation 4 , PlayStation Vita , Xbox One
Game engine Moai
genre Point-and-click adventure
Game mode Single player
medium Download , DVD-ROM
language German, English, French, Italian, Spanish
Age rating
USK released from 6
PEGI recommended for ages 12 and up

Broken Age , in the preliminary reporting under the working title Double Fine Adventure called, is a point-and-click adventure computer game from Tim Schafer and his company Double Fine Productions , which via the internet platform Kickstarter via crowdfunding was financed.

The first chapter, Act I , was published on January 28, 2014 via the Steam distribution platform for Windows , Mac OS X and Ubuntu - Linux , as well as for iOS and Android in English, with English, French, Italian, Spanish and German subtitles. Kickstarter backers were given access to a pre-release version of the game on January 14, 2014, and backers who contributed $ 100 or more were also given a DVD version.

The game was also ported to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita, as well as Xbox One . It was last released on Nintendo Switch in September 2018 .

Already at the beginning of the project it received a lot of media attention due to the financing method and triggered a crowdfunding boom in computer games.

action

Broken Age puts the player in the shoes of two teenagers, Shay and Veloria, known as Vella. Both experience what many young people experience at their age: They feel patronized by their environment and want to finally take their lives into their own hands. Their respective living conditions could hardly be more different: after his homeworld was destroyed, Shay lives under the care of an obsessive-caring computer on board a spaceship. Day in and day out he is fed, pampered and can experience the same, completely harmless “adventures” with his three cuddly toy friends. Instead of repeatedly spooning away ice cream avalanches and surviving cuddling attacks, he would much rather see the world and face real challenges.

Vella, however, is actually in mortal danger. Her family lives in a village that is regularly haunted by a gigantic monster named Mog Chothra. In order to appease the nasty creature, the cowardly villagers have developed the tradition of the maiden's feast, in which the beast is thrown the most beautiful girls in the village to eat every few years - including Vella. Unlike her competitors, who are vying for the supposed honor of being allowed to end up as a monster snack, the tough fourteen-year-old has only one thing on her mind: to break the terrible custom and kill Mog Chothra.

The player experiences both stories completely separately from each other, not even knowing whether they take place at the same time or in the same world. This also means that interactions between the two heroes are not possible. You can switch between the two heroes at any time by clicking on the respective portrait.

Game principle and technology

Broken Age is a point-and-click adventure . From Sprites composite characters act before hand-drawn, some animated scenes. The player can use the mouse to move his character through the locations and use the mouse buttons to initiate actions that allow the character to interact with his environment. You can find objects and apply them to the environment or other objects and communicate with non-player characters . As the story progresses, more locations will be unlocked.

Production notes

Since Tim Schafer could not find a publisher who would have been willing to take over the financing for a classic point-and-click adventure, he decided to try the financing for an adventure game under the working title Double Fine Adventure via the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter . From an amount of 15 US dollars he guaranteed all supporters a DRM-free copy of the planned game as a pre-order; for higher contributions he offered additional extras or sending limited collector's items. Just eight hours after the start of the campaign on February 9, 2012, the Kickstarter project reached the 400,000 US dollar requested by Schafer through contributions from adventure fans and new interested parties; after one day it was over a million US dollars.

The Kickstarter campaign ended after 33 days, on March 14, 2012, with a sum of 3.3 million US dollars and 87,142 supporters. In addition, there was about $ 110,000 through alternative payment providers. The budget of the Double Fine Adventure thus corresponded to Schafer's earlier project Grim Fandango . It was the largest financing campaign ever handled by Kickstarter. According to the platform operator, the project had an enormous impact on the financing of other game projects. In the two years since the platform was founded, a total of US $ 1,776,372 had been received for game projects. Six weeks after signing up for Double Fine Adventure, an additional $ 2,890,704 was invested in other game projects. 61,692 of the Double Fine supporters, 71% of the total supporters, had signed up for the project on Kickstarter.

According to his own statements, the former LucasArts translator Boris Schneider-Johne offered a free translation into German.

Due to its financial success, the game received widespread media attention even beyond video game magazines after a few days. In Germany, for example, an article about financing appeared in the Handelsblatt .

The game engine used was Moai , an engine from the US game development studio Zipline Games, which allows the parallel development of games for PCs and mobile devices and which was not even running at the time Schafer started his Kickstarter campaign the market was.

The success of the Kickstarter campaign prompted other well-known game developers and companies to try to finance their projects in the same way. Brian Fargo , founder and former president of Interplay Productions , which developed very successful computer role-playing games in the 1980s and 1990s and had a decisive influence on the type of game, reached the estimated minimum sum of 900,000 US dollars for a new edition of his within 48 hours post-apocalyptic role-playing game Wasteland . His project Wasteland 2 received over 400,000 US dollars by the end of March alone from supporters who had signed up for Double Fine at kickstarter.com. A total of over three million US dollars was raised. Jordan Weisman , a co-founder of the FASA Corporation , raised $ 1.8 million for a new implementation of the Shadowrun game system as the Shadowrun Returns computer game . Al Lowe , a former developer at Sierra On-Line , famous for its Adventures series Leisure Suit Larry , courted US $ 500,000 support for another remake of Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards and promised if successful, in the future also create new adventures this way. It eventually raised over $ 655,000. Jane Jensen , also a former Sierra On-Line developer best known for her Gabriel Knight adventure games , successfully raised $ 300,000 to finance her new adventure development studio, Pinkerton Road Studios , with a concept called Community Supported Gaming .

reception

reviews
publication Rating
PS4 Windows
Adventure meeting k. A. 81%
Meta-ratings
Metacritic 81 76

Broken Age received mostly positive reviews. The Metacritic review database aggregates 19 reviews of the Windows version to an average of 76; For the PlayStation 4 version, 21 reviews were combined with an average of 81.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Colin Stevens: 17 Games Were Released For the Switch Today, More Are Coming Soon. In: IGN. September 13, 2018. Retrieved September 13, 2018 (American English).
  2. ↑ The Year of the Game , Kickstarter Blog, September 6, 2012.
  3. ^ Project page at kickstarter.com , accessed on February 19, 2012
  4. ↑ a b Die Millionsmacher: Kickstarter makes creative minds rich ; handelsblatt.de, February 10, 2012. Accessed February 19, 2012
  5. ↑ Kirk Hamilton: Double Fine Kickstarter Closes After Raising 3.4 Million Dollars ( English ) In: Kotaku . March 13, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2012.
  6. ↑ Tim Schafer: Twitter message from May 9, 2011 ( English ) In: Twitter account of the Double Fine Chef . Twitter . March 11, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2012: “ $ 2.7MM!?! And it looks like our hourly rate is going up! Um, people ... three million dollars ... that was the budget of Grim Fandango! "
  7. ↑ Konrad Lischka : Crowdfunding: "Monkey Island" makers take in 3.3 million US dollars . In: Spiegel Online . SPIEGEL publishing house . March 14, 2012. Retrieved March 15, 2012.
  8. ↑ a b Kickstarter.com : Blockbuster Effects ( English ) In: Official company blog . March 29, 2012. Retrieved March 30, 2012.
  9. ↑ James Brightman: Kickstarter sees massive uptick in pledges following Double Fine's success ( English ) In: Gamesindustry.biz . EuroGamer Network. March 29, 2012. Retrieved March 30, 2012.
  10. ↑ Game Veterans Podcast 37 . Recorded February 17, 2012. Retrieved February 19, 2012
  11. ↑ MCVUK.com: Video: Double Fine Adventure built with Moai. Retrieved May 21, 2019 .
  12. ↑ Shawn Schuster: Kickstarting the future of game publishing: An interview with Brian Fargo ( English ) In: Joystiq . AOL . March 15, 2012. Archived from the original on April 3, 2013. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 15, 2012. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / massively.joystiq.com
  13. ↑ Pit Trautner: Wasteland 2: Kickstarter project earns almost 3 million US dollars. In: PC Games Hardware . April 21, 2012. Retrieved May 17, 2012 .
  14. ↑ http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613260297/shadowrun-returns
  15. ↑ Kickstarter project: Make Leisure Suit Larry come again! . Retrieved May 7, 2012
  16. ↑ Kickstarter Project: Jane Jensen's Moebius and Pinkerton Road Studio . Retrieved May 17, 2012
  17. ↑ Adventure-Treff.de: Broken Age. Retrieved May 21, 2019 .
  18. ↑ a b Metacritic.com: Broken Age (PlayStation 4). Retrieved May 21, 2019 .
  19. ↑ a b Metacritic.com: Broken Age (PC). Retrieved May 21, 2019 .