The full Broken Age, now with trickier, disheartening puzzles

At Tim Schafer’s urging, I restarted Broken Age entirely once “Act 2” was released last month. I hadn’t touched the game since I burned through “Act 1” in 2014, so it made sense to refresh myself on the minor story beats, seeing as Act 1’s doozy of a cliffhanger closing has stayed bouncing around in my mind all this time. Magically, I remembered the majority of solutions to puzzles and dialogue navigation, so the first chunk of the game didn’t take too long to get through once again. Plus, the full game now comes stocked with Achievements to pop, many of which are rewarded for exploring all options, something I do often in adventure games.

Look, here’s the thing. I’m a backer of Broken Age. I did not contribute much to the Kickstarter–in fact, I got in on the action after Double Fine already met its goal–but I was still one of many that helped bring this adventuring air bubble to the surface. I feel a closeness to it, a connection, certainly reinforced by watching the documentary as each unfiltered episode was released, seeing the problems and answers to game development unfold. It’s a special game, and while I loved the story from beginning to end, especially the vibrant, unique characters, I just found myself depressed over the spike in puzzle difficulty for the second half.

Because I hold the story in such high regards, I will spoil very little of it here. For those that don’t know what the four-one-one is, let me steal some words from Broken Age‘s official website:

Broken Age is a timeless coming-of-age story of barfing trees and talking spoons. Vella Tartine and Shay Volta are two teenagers in strangely similar situations, but radically different worlds. The player can freely switch between the characters and their individual stories, helping them take control of their own lives, and dealing with the unexpected adventures that follow.

Right. Let’s talk about puzzles. In the first half of Broken Age–and yes, it is hard to think of the game as a single entity after it was cut in half to get it out to the public even though now one can play it and never realize that there ever was a cliffhanger to hang on to for months–the majority of the puzzles involved using an item on something. Pretty typical point-and-click adventuring stuff, and occasionally you’d have to navigate through some specific dialogue lines or combine items with one another. The number of screens and people to interact with for both Shay and Vella were severely limited or doled out in small chunks to not overwhelm players.

Once Broken Half‘s second half starts, the puzzles raise the difficulty up to eleven. That’s a Spinal Tap reference, I think. I’m not even kidding when I reveal that I couldn’t get past Vella’s first screen, eventually having to look up an answer. It turns out that this puzzle required you clicking on a specific part of the rope, whereas all previous puzzles never asked for such specificity. I figured just highlighting the rope would’ve been enough, but nope. Later on, there’s another rope puzzle that I’ve seen many on the Interwebz complain about, but I actually got through it just fine, as well as found it amusing. The puzzles I really struggled with involved wiring Hexipals for various purposes, as well as tricking someone into believing Vella was somebody else. Both involved a lot of remembering numerous, highly specific details and backtracking. They are also randomized and tiresome, and it is extremely frustrating when you know what you need to do, but can’t do it because you can’t remember if the boy in that faded family picture is wearing red or green shoes.

That all said, I do think Broken Age is a good game, if not the most fun to play during the later parts. Go to it for the characters and dialogue and the jokes you get to tell a barfing tree. Don’t be afraid to try those chatty utensils are everything and everyone, as some of the best writing is hidden in their responses. I urge you to look up puzzle solutions for the later section of the game, if only to remain in the world and see how everything ends. I do have to wonder if this made any non-fans of point-and-click adventure games into fans or if it was just a one-off for them. Time will tell, and you never know…maybe in twenty years–y’know, after adventure games are claimed dead and done once again–we’ll get another crowd-funded game from Schafer & Company. I’ll play it, but no more wire-based puzzles please.

2015 Game Review Haiku, #33 – Broken Age

Two young kids, destined
To shake their worlds up, those late
Game puzzles–not fun

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From 2012 all through 2013, I wrote little haikus here at Grinding Down about every game I beat or completed, totaling 104 in the end. I took a break from this format last year in an attempt to get more artsy, only to realize that I missed doing it dearly. So, we’re back. Or rather, I am. Hope you enjoy my continued take on videogame-inspired Japanese poetry in three phases of 5, 7, and 5, respectively.

My five favorite games in 2014

Hello, end of 2014. Boy am I looking forward to seeing you come to a close. To help with that process, here’s my five favorite games from the past three hundred and sixty-five days. I know such a list is a strange thing to see this time of year and that I’m the only one doing it, but please, stick with me. If you wanna know what topped my list in 2013–and really now, why wouldn’t you–clicky click here.

If you take a look at my actual list of games played and beaten this year, you’ll notice there are not many current releases within it. That’s just how I roll, often getting to the big, new games much later in life–mine and theirs–and so I don’t have too fine of a list to pick from, but I’ll make the effort nonetheless and try to come up with some good arguments why I picked X over Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, which, if you’re a good little follower, you’ll already know I haven’t touched yet.

Let me mention some of the 2014 releases that don’t get the full thumbs up below. Transistor…man. I really, really wanted to love this game, especially after how Bastion mesmerized me. In the end, I just liked it, favoring the complex and constantly changing combat way more over the muddled story, though I loved elements of how the story was told, such as the terminals and polls Red participated in. And there’s also episodes two through five for season two of Telltale’s The Walking Dead, which did not end up delivering well on the promise of following your Clem, y’know, the one you meticulously constructed via Lee in the previous season, through her next set of struggles. Plus, it stopped being an adventure game early on in the season and turned into a dialogue wheel selector. Boo to that. For season three, I will instead wait to see how it all pans out. As for Dragon Age: Inquisition, just insert a bunch of wet farts here.

All right, here they are, my five favorite videogames from 2014…

Luftrausers

I’ve played Luftrausers on both Steam and the PlayStation 3, ending up stuck at the same spot for each version. I can’t get the blimp to spawn. Here’s the rub; I don’t care. I keep playing, keep dying, keep respawning and trying out new ship builds and listening in fascination as the soundtrack mutates this way and that, and I expect to keep playing Luftrausers deep into 2015. I don’t know if I’ll ever beat it or do well enough to get that blimp to spawn, which would then unlock a bunch of new missions to go after, but it doesn’t matter. The retro look, the killer soundtrack, the feel of launching up off the sub and into the sky, primo target #1 for every object loaded with a gun…it’s pure exhilaration. I’m not great, but it’s great.

Broken Age (Act One)

Ahh. Old-school point-and-click adventure games with a modern look might be my new hot jam. Broken Age (Act One) is a whirlwind of imagination, bright colors, and, alas, pretty simple puzzles. On the surface, its story is cute and fuzzy, but quickly turns dark and upsetting once you begin to see how Shay and Vella are really living their lives. There’s also a fantastic cliffhanger that, if you didn’t know this game was divided into two acts due to financial, timing, and work issues, you’d believe it was planned. While I wish we could’ve seen the conclusion to these two kids’ journeys this year, I expect it to unfold early in 2015. Hopefully the next documentary video will shed some light on that. Oh, and Double Fine was kind enough to include a comic of mine in their weekly gathering of fanart. Obviously, I’m biased.

Diablo III: Reaper of Souls

My history with the Diablo franchise has been like so: played the first one on my ol’ PlayStation one, using a controller to manipulate a mouse cursor, got into Diablo II a bit on PC during my college days for all the wrong reasons, and then never touched Diablo III. But then the news hit it was coming to consoles and being re-designed for controllers. I was jazzed. However, by the time I got around to thinking of it, an even newer version of the console was released, offering more content than you can shake a stick at, if you’re the shady type that carries sticks around. Anyways, I ran through the campaign once so far with Whisper, my bow-wielding, backflipping assassin, and enjoyed the heck out of slaughtering monsters, picking up loot, and upgrading her skills. I’m not even close to the level cap, and there’s a bunch of new content to try out still. Really worth the then $40 price tag.

Jazzpunk

Here’s a wish I wish: I want to erase all memories of playing Jazzpunk. That way, in a few months, next week, or even after I’m done posting this blog entry, I can play Jazzpunk and experience everything it offers once again, with innocent eyes. The game is only a couple hours long, but it is non-stop gags and goofiness along the way; if you’re a fan of Airplane! you’ll absolutely understand what its going for. I don’t want a Jazzpunk 2, just a chance to eat it all up again, especially the Wedding Qake section.

Disney Magical World

I was hoping to, at this point, already have written a blog post about what Disney Magical World meant to me this year. Still means to me. Unfortunately, I haven’t found the words for that yet, but let’s just say this little Nintendo 3DS title out from left field provided comfort, control, something to focus on when everything else was chaotic and spinning away. Its arrival was timely. I played it every night for a few hours for months straight over the summer and fall, putting it behind Dragon Quest IX and Animal Crossing: New Leaf in terms of hours played. It’s special, an unexpected mix of item collecting and difficult dungeon grinding, of saving up a single ingredient to make a specific recipe to give you that perfect café theme to get a new Disney character to show up and give you special collectible cards or gems to make new wands. It’s full of cycles and things to check in on, and it was a go-to when I needed a distraction. Truthfully, I could still be playing it now, today, but had to put it aside to give some other handheld games their due.

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And there you go. My five favorites, with words to boot, and I expect to play Luftrausers, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, and the conclusion of Broken Age in 2015, so that makes these games even stronger cases for me.

Here’s the real question though–did you play any of my five favs this year, and, if you did, are we on the same page? Let me know in the comments below.

Broken Age’s first act clicks it big, but cliffhangs

Many moons ago, I got in on the hot Kickstarter action that Double Fine snowballed with their plans to make an old-school point-and-click adventure game. Well, a modern one of those, I mean. And since then, I’ve been following along dutifully with the game’s progression–codenamed Reds, truly named Broken Age–via the roughly monthly 2 Player Productions documentary videos, which do a fantastic job of showing how all the pieces ultimately come together to be a final product. Some of it is more interesting than other aspects, but regardless, it’s a rare glimpse into a process generally kept to the shadows. Kudos to Double Fine for being so open, as honest as allowed.

Let’s see, let’s see. Broken Age is, more or less, about death. Some people want it, some won’t ever get it, and some are brought up believing it is their destiny to die. To be more specific, it is about two young teenagers “seeking to break the tradition with their lives.” Vella Tartine is one of the lucky girls to be chosen as a human sacrifice for Mog Chothra, a monstrous, tentacle-tossing beast that eats up people at celebrated events called Maiden’s Feasts. Smartly, she has decided this is not how her life should go. On the flip side, or more like the space side, we have Shay Volta, a young boy living a very cushioned and solitude existence on a spaceship. That is until he meets Marek the wolf, who is probably just a man in wolf’s clothing. With Marek’s prodding, Shay begins to shake things up on the spaceship, which leads to a number of problems. The connection between Vella and Shay, other than thematic, is still not known, though Act 2 will most likely delve into this area of interest.

And so Double Fine set out to create a modern point-and-click adventure game harkening back to the kind Tim Schafer worked on many years ago. Alas, I’ve never played any of those: Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Maniac Mansion, Grim Fandango, and so on. I know, I know. They are all on my germinating to-do list. However, ever since I chipped in on the Kickstarter, I’ve begun playing a lot more adventure games, each of varying degrees of difficulty, and so I kind of know what they aiming for. That said, Broken Age is pretty easy. The puzzles are never overwhelming and obtuse–absolutely zero pixel hunting–and you only end up with a few items in your inventory and so many screens to explore at a single time. When you run out of ideas, just try every item on everything, and you’ll move forward. Also, ladders are vital. I got through Act 1 just fine, and that’s honestly okay, but I’d love to see more of a challenge in Act 2.

Obviously, Broken Age looks nothing like the games that came out twenty years ago. Though there is a way to unlock retro mode for the fuzzy-loving purists. It’s gorgeous, an absolute treat for the eyes, paintings come to life. The cute, colorful art style comes mainly from Nathan “Bagel” Stapley, and it really enforces the carrot-on-a-string trick of adventure games, where you often just want to see what the next area will look like. I enjoyed Vella’s locations more than Shay’s, but there’s a fantastic amount of detail here, and everything really does look like they exist in a singular world; the documentary vids reveal that, while Stapley did a majority of the art assets, others did work on repainting parts of some scenes, as well as probably other things. Don’t worry about any of that though, just lose yourself in the fluffy, floaty clouds.

Initially, I was put off with the announcement that Broken Age was being split into two separate acts, for financial and deadline-related reasons, all explained in the documentary vids. I mean, I think we can all agree that The Hobbit has suffered greatly from being sliced and diced, though it does work for episodic games like The Walking Dead, but only when it is clearly designed to be episodic. This was not the case, and for now, it’s a bit of a bummer that Broken Age‘s first act ends just as the plot comes together and really gets interesting. I’m sure once act two comes out and you can skip from one to the other in a single breath, it’ll be a much more solid experience. Until then, we’re left alone on a beach, jaws in the sand, waiting and wondering.

2014 Game Completed Comics, #14 – Broken Age (Act 1)

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Every videogame that I complete in 2014 will now get its very own wee comic here on Grinding Down. It’s about time I fused my art with my unprofessional games journalism. I can’t guarantee that these comics will be funny or even attempt to be funny. Or look the same from one to another. Some might even aim for thoughtfulness. Comics are a versatile form, so expect the unexpected.

Five things make a post, and I quit thee from my thoughts

Well, it’s that time again. No, not filing your taxes, though that is coming up in a few months. Sneaky bastard, always creeping up on people like that. But I digress–it’s another roundup post so I can touch on a couple of things real fast without having to devote an entire post to each topic separately, especially since some are less than interesting to analyze. That might not seem like much to you, but for me, I can only string together words so many times in a week without my creativity and passion melting away, and this is the best solution I have.

All right, here we go. Five things.

No more Knytt

I tried. I really did. I probably put in around four to five hours for Knytt Underground‘s chapter three alone, which is, more or less, the main meat of the game, and I literally got nowhere. The point of the final third act is for Mi Sprocket to ring a number of bells–I think it’s five or six–to stop the apocalpyse from happening, and this time, the map is your ocean. You are no longer limited to where you can go, especially now that you also have the bouncy ball powers of Bob at your side. Except that’s not true at all. I constantly hit wall after wall, sometimes literally and other times in the form of locked doors or NPCs requesting specific items to let me pass. Look, I totally understand the point of a Metroidvania game, but for some reason, this one really irked me. It never felt rewarding, and I was never rewarded for anything I did. Quests fizzle out, and you can do a crazy series of bounces and magic power jumps only to pick up some description-less item for your hard work.

All of that said, dang. Dang, dang, dang. I really loved the look of the game, and getting to a new screen was a pure joy, until it just became one new frustrating roadblock after the other. According to the Trophies list, you can beat the game without ringing a single bell, but I’m sure that’s even more difficult than the mainline goal, and so my saved progress will remain underground for good, never to be seen again.

Gears of Insanity

I uninstalled Gears of War from my Xbox 360 this weekend. Before I did that, however, I completed its first act again on its most difficult of difficulty settings, the properly named Insanity difficulty. Usually, I never try the high-end difficulties, as the challenge always seems too brutal, too unfair, but I was curious what it’d be like and whether or not I could do it; turns out, I could, but at the cost of constantly reloading checkpoints, grumbling about useless AI-controlled comrades, and dying in flashes of uncontrolled chaos. Knowing what the remainder of the campaign looked like, I was not interested in finishing it a second time on a much more savage level. Oh well. At least now I made room for Sleeping Dogs and whatever else Gold members get for free this month.

The Fishiest Grind Yet

Some bugs and fish are simply better than others in the world of Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and a lot of that determination depends on what season we’re in. For summer, you want to catch emperor butterflies and all kinds of palm tree-clinging beetles. For the fall, um…I don’t know. Mushrooms, I guess. And for the winter, you want to keep your eyes glued to large shadows in the river at night, because if you’re lucky you can snag a stringfish, which sells at Re-Tail for a whopping 15,000 Bells. In the mighty words of George Takei, “Oh my.” Or should that be OH MY GOSH?!

So yeah, I wouldn’t say I’ve been actively trying to grind out stringfish, but I do walk the river-line back and forth a few times each night before I let the Sandman take over. Still upgrading my house, planning to upgrade town hall, and Bells come and go, but will always be desired.

The Purpose of Art

This is the year that art and my unprofessional game journalism come together, as y’all can probably already see with the comics I’m doing for all my completed games in 2014. I also plan to re-tinker the look of Grinding Down from top to bottom, so expect some new pieces of art to pop up periodically over the next few weeks, as well as some other elements to disappear. Did anyone notice that I got rid of my large list of Achievements? No, didn’t think so. Anyways, I’m still trying to figure out what I want here art-wise, as well as working on other comic projects, but I eventually want this blog to really stand out as something unique, even more than just silly words on images as post headers.

Broken Age Breaks Out

Here’s something crazy: Double Fine’s Kickstarter-funded Broken Age releases today. Well, Part 1 (of 2), that is. Double well, only for backers, which Tara and I are, meaning we will get to play what I can only describe as a visually astounding old-school point-and-click adventure game. I’m excited to finally see the thing in playable, watchable form, as I’ve been following the documentary videos closely now for two years, seeing its creators struggling to produce something both small and grand, something beautiful and instantly recognizable. Hopefully all my adventure game playing will aid me in solving puzzles high up in the sky, as well as in space. You never know what Tim Schafer will throw at you next.

Takes two to solve puzzles in Two of a Kind

Chances are high that I would probably enjoy being an archaeologist, digging deep and surveying, excavating, and analyzing collected data to learn more about the past. As a kid, I had more than just rocks in my rock collection, occasionally finding some broken piece of clay or a weirdly shaped hunk of metal, and a small part of me always believed I had stumbled upon greatness. Now, the true purpose of archaeology is to learn more about past societies and the development of the human race, but I think we can also apply the science to videogames. However, I’ll pass on all the constant danger that Indiana Jones finds nipping at his heels, like rolling boulders, pits of snakes, and Nazis.

Which leads us to Two of a Kind by Dave Gilbert, the man who has given us numerous adventure games over the years from his small, but growing Wadget Eye Games. If you’ve not been paying attention to the most recent activity on Grinding Down, I’ve been on a point-and-click kick as of late, finishing up Machinarium, Deponia, and a number of smaller, shorter adventure games. Plus some Ben Chandler joints that I’ve yet to talk about, but will be doing so next week. Truthfully, this is all in preparation for two forthcoming titles: The Blackwell Epiphany from Wadget Eye Games and Broken Age from Double Fine, which I both expect to have some tricky, dastardly puzzles, and I plan to play them as soon as they release, with no chance of an online walkthrough handy. Gotta brush up on my pixel-hunting and inventory management skills.

Anyways, Two of a Kind is a small adventure game released for free at Adventure Game Studio in November 2004. It’s about an unusual town called Bluff City, which is full of people with unusual abilities. For instance, Tim and Tiffany Walters, fraternal twins operating a struggling independent private investigation business. Tim has the power to float off the ground, and Tiffany can communicate with animals. Other townspeople you’ll bump into also have powers, and it’s kind of like X-Men, but without all the smoke and rubble and misshapen limbs. The Walters siblings are very close to each other after experiencing a traumatic childhood, which they no longer discuss. Bills have been tough to pay as of late, but a new case offers a great financial opportunity. A priceless crystal was stolen from the local museum, and it’s up to them to find out the who, the how, and the why before the press gets wind.

Now, in all my years of gaming, I’ve not actually played many old-school adventure titles, the kind controlled by means of text icons like “look,” “open,” “use,” and so on. Think LucasArts started this trend. When I played Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge back in 2011, it was an enhanced version, updated to be more convenient for a controller. Basically, I came into the genre really late, and so my experience in using these text-based commands is quite limited, rusty. This was more than evident when I struggled to have Tim leave his apartment building; first I tried using “use” on the door, but that did nothing. Turns out, I had to use “open/close” on the door, and then “use” to walk through it. Oi. Like I said before: archaeology. Playing a text command-heavy game in 2013 was a slow process for me, as I found myself trying everything on everything. Can’t “use” that trash can? Well, let’s try “talking” to it and “opening” it and “giving” it to Tiffany. Been coddled for too long with just a right and left mouse button clicks.

After getting used to have to do things the archaic way, puzzles in Two of a Kind are fairly easy to deduce, especially if you’ve played some of the Blackwell games. Because just like in those, you control both Tim and Tiffany independently, just like Rosangela and Joey had their own things to do. I got stuck in a few spots, but only because I missed picking up an item earlier, and there is actually a walkthrough out there still for the game. Otherwise, so long as you keep trying items and different combinations, the solutions will come. Every item gets used; yes, even the ones Tiffany holds in her pockets from the very beginning of the game. Ironically enough, I was not aware that the final puzzle was being timed, and actually got a GAME OVER screen after failing to solve fast enough.

There’s no voice acting, which is all right, as there is a lot of text to digest, and I just can’t imagine anyone reading for the part of Tiffany doing it any kind of bearable justice. She’s a teenager that acts like a child–probably because of that previously mentioned traumatic childhood–and is constantly talking in kiddy gibberish to animals and being overexcited about literally everything. At one point, inside a mansion, I had her examine the most mundane items like a toaster or sink, and she responded to each with genuine excitement, a being of pure innocence. That aside, Gilbert’s writing is fun and personable, and his characters do come alive from it, especially the quiet bartender, the soaps-loving Oracle, and the drunk bum with the funny hat. The plot, which revolves around open sleuthing and chatting with animals and using magical powers, moves forward at a reasonably logical pace, but kind of jumps the (acid water) gun at the very end and fizzles out with a Candy-Land joke. I was hoping for more resolution, maybe a trip back to the museum to see Tim and Tiffany explain all the crazy antics to the concerned curator.

Overall, I think Two of the Kind is still a solid experience some nine years later, definitely worth playing for the solid writing and killer soundtrack, and I think Wadget Eye Games should re-release it like they did recently with The Shivah and get Ben Chandler to do all new art for it. C’mon, think about it. I know you’re reading this.