Broken Age will win you over with mystery and loads of twists and turns
Broken Age was supposed to be the poster boy for Kickstarter, one which proved that not every project was doomed from the beginning. After over a year’s wait, Act 2 was released for PC alongside the launch of the complete game for the PS4 and PS Vita.
It’s a fairly standard point and click adventure game from designer Tim Schafer. Broken Age tells the story of a boy and a girl — Shay and Vella, and how their seemingly separate tales are interconnected. There is an air of mystery around Shay’s situation as he lives in a spaceship, but appears to be held captive by “Mom”, a computer that monitors his every move. Vella lives in a small village, in a land where young girls are sacrificed to keep a monster, Mog Chothra from destroying their home town.
While one story is set in space and one on land, both follow the central theme of escaping from ones current predicament. You examine, pick up and combine objects from the environment to solve puzzles; that range from interesting to tedious. All puzzles require backtracking, which feels like a chore; especially on the console version. I found that I was far more intrigued by Shay’s story as the puzzles had some sort of direction, whereas Vella’s version felt like pointless sections existing to join key story moments. Act 2 starts off right after the events of the first one, but it is filled with several design flaws.