Broken Age is a point-and-click adventure which was infamously funded via Kickstarter. Double Fine exceeded their goal by a significant margin so increased the scope of the project. However, they then managed to run out of funds so released the game in two parts.
The first thing you notice is the astounding visual design, and the brilliant soundtrack to match. There's some big names to voice the characters, including: Elijah Wood, Jennifer Hale and Jack Black.
The game has two protagonists; Vella and Shay who initially have two different storylines but their stories intertwine. The game doesn't explain that you can switch between the two different storylines whenever you want; you have to discover that yourself. I found it strange there was no basic tutorial. I'm used to single clicking to select, then single click to use, but in this game, you have to drag items from inventory; so there was some initial confusion. Similarly, the opening screen gives you a choice to take control of either character, but it's not actually clear that's what it is. I waited for a while expecting something to happen.
Once you get going into the game, it is intuitive and I barely consulted a walk-though for the entire game. The first half of the game has a stronger emphasis on the story, then after the halfway point, the stories intertwine, and the puzzles increase in frequency and difficulty.
In Vella's story, a monster known as Mog Chothra is destroying villages, so the residents put on a “Maiden's Feast” where they offer three young girls as a sacrifice to appease the beast. Vella has been chosen as a sacrifice, but she plans to put up a fight rather than happily accepting fate like the other girls. Meanwhile, Shay is alone on a spaceship but overseen by an overprotective computer system that poses as his parents. The ship seems to be built as if Shay is a child, but now he has outgrown it and longs for adventure rather than being babysitted.
There's a lot of humour and the surreal situation is well suited to the point-and-click style. I did wonder how the stories are related, and I was incredibly surprised at the reveal. After the reveal, Vella then explores the spaceship and Shay explores Vella's world. You will see the same locales and characters, but the puzzles and situations are different. The second half of the game isn't as interesting as the first, since the characters are fully developed and there's no real plot development; it just relies on puzzles.
I do wonder if the puzzles in the second half of the game were created by a different person though, because the style of them seems noticeably different. For the most part, they were fine, but there's many examples that are tedious rather than fun (especially the final sequence), and a few could have done with a few more hints.
I like the fact you can switch between the stories, because if you get stuck, you can just switch for the time being. Although in the second half, some of the puzzles force you to switch because you need information from the other character. Note: this actually breaks logic, because Vella doesn't pass the knowledge to Shay (or vice-versa); only you as the player have the knowledge.
Overall, Broken Age is a good game, but I was slightly disappointed that the second act didn't live up to the first.