Broken Age

Developer/publisher Double Fine Productions Format Android, iOS, PC, PS4, Switch, Vita, Xbox One Release 2014

Judged purely on its merits as a game, Broken Age seems the unlikeliest of trailblazers. It is, and was – eventually – a fairly modest contemporary point-and-click adventure. Witty, likeable and well-acted, sure, but hardly wheel-reinventing stuff. Then again, that was always the plan. The game formerly known as Double Fine Adventure – a name that seems to have stuck longer than its actual title – became the catalyst for the crowdfunding boom, precisely because it was more of the same. If Kickstarter was established with a more general aim of “bringing creative projects to life”, it was tailor-made for creators with pre-existing fanbases, who could put the kind of games that would no longer get publisher funding in front of those fans and ask them to dip into their pockets to get it made.

Tim Schafer was, in other words, the perfect test subject. Here was a beloved game-maker looking to revisit the genre in which he’d made his name. And the promise of a new Schafer-scripted point-and-click adventure was enough to lift Double Fine Adventure well over its original $400,000 goal. Seven times over, in fact; $3 million worth of pledges later, and things seemed to be well on track. But its estimated delivery date of just seven months after the end of the campaign proved wildly optimistic; Broken Age ended up releasing in two parts, with the first half sold on Steam to raise extra funds for the second – which didn’t arrive until more than a year later. By then, it was April 2015. Needless to say, not everyone was happy. Indeed, if Broken Age’s success attracted plenty of smaller developers to the platform (its record tally was beaten by Pillars Of Eternity, coincidentally around the time of its original due date) it also encouraged some to dream a little too big. Long delays to Kickstarter launches became the norm rather than the exception. Stretch goals became ever more troublesome as studios, fuelled by fan expectations, bit off more than they could chew. Still, it wasn’t Broken Age alone that led to increasing skepticism surrounding the platform, and crowdfunding in general – the disastrous fallout from the Mighty No 9 campaign (not to mention the mediocre end result) was surely far more damaging. And it hasn’t stopped investors and fans from chucking $250 million and counting at Chris Roberts’ still-in-development Star Citizen. Its influence, then, has undoubtedly been a net positive. Before it encountered any problems, Broken Age sparked a crowdfunding gold rush – without it proving a viable alternative for niche games and small studios, we might well have missed out on the likes of Shovel Knight, Broken Sword 5, Torment: Tides Of Numenera and Hyper Light Drifter. And if that seems a slight stretch, consider this: we’ve spoken to dozens of developers who’ve used Kickstarter in the seven years since Double Fine Adventure, and it’s quicker to name the ones who haven’t mentioned Tim Schafer as their inspiration to give it a shot. Even if some of them have struggled to recall the game’s name, few have forgotten its game-changing impact.