Broken Age (formerly Double Fine Adventure) (Finally complete!)

[Frogacuda]

So Act 1 hits tomorrow for backers. I'm still pretty excited, the latest trailer really looked great.

[YellerDog]

They got millions of dollars and made up a cheaper-looking Machinarium? Haha nice show, Double Fine.

[Frogacuda]

It's got a lot more going on than the static backgrounds of Machinarium, which also had not much in the way of cut scenes, special case animation, lighting, and a fairly small total number of screens.

That said, Machinarium was fucking gorgeous for what it was and the best adventure game of the last 5 years.

[Toupee]

Without saying too much, ... HOW IS THIS?!? I should have backed this.

[Will]

This seems like a nice looking adventure game and I like Double Fine but I don't really get all the hype for it and considering how weirdly managed their Kickstarter was that additionally casts a dark cloud over it.

[James]

I don't get how it was weirdly managed. They collected money for a game, had too much money to make the thing they planned on, got over-ambitious, trimmed things into shape, and tomorrow the first half comes out. Then later on the second half comes out. Everyone gets what they paid for, and all is good. The game isn't even Early Access any more, but just Broken Age Part 1. The Kickstarter was managed as it should, with backers educated on the process every step of the way.

Just watched the Vella trailer (can't link it, locked to backers) and I love the way the game looks. I really can't wait to dig into this.

James

[Frogacuda]

It was really just a strange experiment in the first place, because they intentionally put the cart before the horse in order to film the creative process from the very beginning.

I don't know if it's a case of "mismanagement" or if trying to design a game exactly for a certain budget (rather than coming up with a design doc, budgeting the game, and raising that budget) is just an insane thing to do. When they started out they had no engine, hadn't worked out the art process, and hadn't done any writing. Of course they didn't know exactly what it would cost.

[James]

Yeah, and they were also only planning on 7 months development. Do a quick adventure game with a full gaming studio's resources and film the process. Then things got out of hand due to sheer fan enthusiasm blowing the scope out of the water, and seeing as the nature of the project is it's all on film we got to see things that would normally be behind closed doors. The only difference between Broken Age and any other game was we got to see the project wobble its way to completion. Feature creep and scope management are normal problems on most games.

James

[Frogacuda]

It's out. Assuming your KS and Humble Bundle accounts are the same email, you can redeem it in your HB account, and then activate it on Steam. Downloading now!

[cigsthecat]

Same. I've been watching the excellent documentary series all night and getting ramped up. The game concept sounds very interesting.