Double Fine's "Double Fine Adventure" Kickstarter campaign was a revelation for video game companies. Asking for a mere 400k and receiving well over 3 million bucks for their efforts, Double Fine showed that crowd funding is a legitimate way for video game developers to get smaller games created- at least, well-known developers making the kinds of games they used to be famous for. Now, the newly dubbed Broken Age: Act One has a release date set for tomorrow- January 14th. This is a beta of the game and is going out to kickstarter backers only, but the public at large will have their hands on it soon enough.
Full disclosure- I'm a backer of this project, as should all of you have been. Because honestly, Tim Schafer's first point and click adventure game in 16 years since Grim Fandango, inarguably one of the greatest games ever made? Who wouldn't want to see that made?
Thanks to the extra money they got they were able to do things like get incredible artists and musicians to work on the game. They also managed to snag the voice talents of Elijah Wood, who they were excited to work with because he was a self-professed fan of the genre. He's going to play the male lead of the game, Shay.
The story revolves around two different based on two characters, a boy and a girl, who live in two very different worlds. The boy lives a lonely pampered life on a spaceship while the girl lives in a village and is trying to avoid being sacrificed to a monster. You will apparently be able to swap between both stories and presumably they will intertwine at some point but how that happens is still unknown.
There's been a bunch of twists and turns along development, all documented by 2 Player Productions, who is creating a pretty remarkable documentary about the process of game creation. But 3 million dollars really isn't a lot of money to fund a game, especially once that's been in development for two years, and the reason this is Broken Age: Act One is because Schafer thought too big. According to his press release he has an idea of how big adventure games should be and was hesitant to have to cut down on the game in order to come in on budget, especially when it was revealed that he would have to cut the game down by 75%. They will be releasing the first half of the game on Steam Early Access, which they are using to fund the second part of the game via a free update closer to April and May.
Well tomorrow the backers will see for themselves. Expect the game to hit Steam Early Access a little bit later and much more Broken Age coverage on Game & Guide soon!
