My rating: 7+/10
Based on: two playthroughs (one full and one speedrun)

TL;DR: Double Fine’s Broken Age may have been one of the early success stories for the Kickstarter-backed projects, but it didn’t live up to the expectations of a long-starved fan of the point-and-click adventure games such as myself. Admittedly, that wasn’t entirely its fault: it’s a good game with a great production value for its budget, but it doesn’t exactly stand tall among the all-time greats of the genre, either. Not an instant classic, but very charming, it offers an intriguing coming-of-age story, memorable characters, excellent writing, art and sound design, but the second act is sort of a drag.

Pros:

(+) a heart-warming, disarmingly whimsical but fundamentally mature coming-of-age story divided into two acts and two distinct, seemingly unconnected subplots, each involving the game’s teenage protagonists, the boy Shay and the girl Vella, who try break the cycle and escape their allotted fates in both sci-fi and fantasy worlds
(+) a diverse cast of quirky characters to meet and interact with, including the overprotective ship computer Mom, cult leader and compulsive hoarder Father Lightbeard, cowardly hipster lumberjack Curtis, mysterious Marek, even an over-sensitive living tree and talking cutlery
(+) Tim Schafer’s writing strikes the perfect balance between adolescent humour and mature themes, with many a dirty and puerile quip, joke and gag sprinkled throughout the both intriguing and charming storyline
(+) fully voice-acted, featuring such household names as Elijah Wood (Shay), Jack Black (Father Lightbeard) and Wil Wheaton (Curtis), with Masasa Moyo as Vella, the veteran Jennifer Hale as Mom (who also played Ophelia in Brütal Legend) and some other frequent Double Fine’s collaborators voicing the secondary characters, like Richard Horvitz amd Nicki Rapp (Raz and Lilli in Psychonauts), as well as Nick Jameson (Max in Lucasarts’ classic Sam & Max Hit the Road)
(+) the art direction resembling a 2D animated children’s storybook by the team under Lee Petty, based primarily on the digital water-colour paintings by LucasArts’ alumni Nathan Stapley with some initial concept arts by the masterful Peter Chan and Scott Campbell, brings the fantastical worlds and characters to life with vibrant colours and unique, aesthetically pleasing visual style
(+) the music composed by Peter McConnell, a mainstay of Double Fine’s games, performed by wind and string ensembles and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, evokes a sense of wonder, a thrill of discovery and a high of unchecked tomfoolery
(+) both the sci-fi and fantasy settings are chuck-full of distinct locations to visit, characters to interact with, objects to manipulate and puzzles to solve, which encourages you to probe into every nook and cranny to get the full experience
(+) you can switch back and forth between Shay and Vella at any time, which makes for a welcome change of pace or a breather if you’re stuck on a particularly daunting puzzle with one of them, but isn’t exactly necessary because they can’t interact with each other like e.g. the three playable characters in Day of the Tentacle
(+) the point-and-click controls utilizing primarily the two mouse buttons are simple enough to remember and operate even for a pre-schooler
(+) the clever puzzles require some deductive skills and abstract thinking, though, and a few of them a lot of patience (see the Cons section), especially because the game leaves you pretty much to your own devices to figure out the solutions (which is fine by me)
(+) a hidden retro mode for nostalgia hipsters and blurry pixel art enthusiast alike ;-)
(+) full language support for English and German, with UI and subtitles in French, Italian, Spanish and Russian
(+) an episodic, but very extensive documentary by 2 Player Productions available on DoubleFine’s YouTube channel is a nice bonus and gives a fascinating insight into the nitty-gritty of the entire development process
(+) a very good production value and a good value for money, considering its budget (the over 3,3 mln USD in Kickstarter backers’ pledges plus the revenue invested from the sales of Act 1 on Steam and the studio's own money redirected to finish the project)

Cons:

(−) the second act is somewhat underwhelming: despite delivering an ultimately satisfying conclusion to the story, it basically rethreads the established locations and characters, requires a lot of backtracking and involves a noticeable spike in difficulty in comparison to the previous
(−) the annoying trial-and-error puzzles, especially the ones that involve re-wiring the robots in Act 2
(−) not enough hand holding for novices (many objectives are pretty self-explanatory but there’s no hint system to help you out, no journal nor check-lists to keep track of your progress)
(−) occasional voiceover skipping
(−) the controls and menus have an evident touchscreen feel to them, which I don’t appreciate in my PC games
(−) no concept art gallery, a feature I’ve come to expect in Double Fine’s games
(−) the autosave feature stopped working properly once I loaded the game from a manual save and then an annoying pop-up kept asking me if I wanted to use this or that save spot for an autosave every time I loaded a game

Check out my reviews of other Double Fine’s games:
Brütal Legend
Day of the Tentacle Remastered
Full Throttle Remastered
Grim Fandango Remastered
Psychonauts

[b]My rating:[/b] 7+/10 Based on: two playthroughs (one full and one speedrun) [b]TL;DR:[/b] Double Fine’s Broken Age may have been one of the early success stories for the Kickstarter-backed projects, but it didn’t live up to the expectations of a long-starved fan of the point-and-click adventure games such as myself. Admittedly, that wasn’t entirely its fault: it’s a good game with a great production value for its budget, but it doesn’t exactly stand tall among the all-time greats of the genre, either. Not an instant classic, but very charming, it offers an intriguing coming-of-age story, memorable characters, excellent writing, art and sound design, but the second act is sort of a drag. [b]Pros:[/b] (+) a heart-warming, disarmingly whimsical but fundamentally mature coming-of-age story divided into two acts and two distinct, seemingly unconnected subplots, each involving the game’s teenage protagonists, the boy Shay and the girl Vella, who try break the cycle and escape their allotted fates in both sci-fi and fantasy worlds (+) a diverse cast of quirky characters to meet and interact with, including the overprotective ship computer Mom, cult leader and compulsive hoarder Father Lightbeard, cowardly hipster lumberjack Curtis, mysterious Marek, even an over-sensitive living tree and talking cutlery (+) Tim Schafer’s writing strikes the perfect balance between adolescent humour and mature themes, with many a dirty and puerile quip, joke and gag sprinkled throughout the both intriguing and charming storyline (+) fully voice-acted, featuring such household names as Elijah Wood (Shay), Jack Black (Father Lightbeard) and Wil Wheaton (Curtis), with Masasa Moyo as Vella, the veteran Jennifer Hale as Mom (who also played Ophelia in [i]Brütal Legend[/i]) and some other frequent Double Fine’s collaborators voicing the secondary characters, like Richard Horvitz amd Nicki Rapp (Raz and Lilli in [i]Psychonauts[/i]), as well as Nick Jameson (Max in Lucasarts’ classic [i]Sam & Max Hit the Road[/i]) (+) the art direction resembling a 2D animated children’s storybook by the team under Lee Petty, based primarily on the digital water-colour paintings by LucasArts’ alumni Nathan Stapley with some initial concept arts by the masterful Peter Chan and Scott Campbell, brings the fantastical worlds and characters to life with vibrant colours and unique, aesthetically pleasing visual style (+) the music composed by Peter McConnell, a mainstay of Double Fine’s games, performed by wind and string ensembles and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, evokes a sense of wonder, a thrill of discovery and a high of unchecked tomfoolery (+) both the sci-fi and fantasy settings are chuck-full of distinct locations to visit, characters to interact with, objects to manipulate and puzzles to solve, which encourages you to probe into every nook and cranny to get the full experience (+) you can switch back and forth between Shay and Vella at any time, which makes for a welcome change of pace or a breather if you’re stuck on a particularly daunting puzzle with one of them, but isn’t exactly necessary because they can’t interact with each other like e.g. the three playable characters in [i]Day of the Tentacle[/i] (+) the point-and-click controls utilizing primarily the two mouse buttons are simple enough to remember and operate even for a pre-schooler (+) the clever puzzles require some deductive skills and abstract thinking, though, and a few of them a lot of patience ([i]see the Cons section[/i]), especially because the game leaves you pretty much to your own devices to figure out the solutions (which is fine by me) (+) a hidden retro mode for nostalgia hipsters and blurry pixel art enthusiast alike ;-) (+) full language support for English and German, with UI and subtitles in French, Italian, Spanish and Russian (+) an episodic, but very extensive documentary by 2 Player Productions available on [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdXvZgIV1Q0&list=PLIhLvue17Sd7F6pU2ByRRb0igiI-WKk3D]DoubleFine’s YouTube channel[/url] is a nice bonus and gives a fascinating insight into the nitty-gritty of the entire development process (+) a very good production value and a good value for money, considering its budget (the over 3,3 mln USD in Kickstarter backers’ pledges plus the revenue invested from the sales of Act 1 on Steam and the studio's own money redirected to finish the project) [b]Cons:[/b] (−) the second act is somewhat underwhelming: despite delivering an ultimately satisfying conclusion to the story, it basically rethreads the established locations and characters, requires a lot of backtracking and involves a noticeable spike in difficulty in comparison to the previous (−) the annoying trial-and-error puzzles, [spoiler]especially the ones that involve re-wiring the robots in Act 2[/spoiler] (−) not enough hand holding for novices (many objectives are pretty self-explanatory but there’s no hint system to help you out, no journal nor check-lists to keep track of your progress) (−) occasional voiceover skipping (−) the controls and menus have an evident touchscreen feel to them, which I don’t appreciate in my PC games (−) no concept art gallery, a feature I’ve come to expect in Double Fine’s games (−) the autosave feature stopped working properly once I loaded the game from a manual save and then an annoying pop-up kept asking me if I wanted to use this or that save spot for an autosave every time I loaded a game [u]Check out my reviews of other Double Fine’s games:[/u] [url=steamproxy.net/id/CamAddLess/recommended/225260/]Brütal Legend[/url] [url=steamproxy.net/id/CamAddLess/recommended/388210/]Day of the Tentacle Remastered[/url] [url=steamproxy.net/id/CamAddLess/recommended/228360/]Full Throttle Remastered[/url] [url=steamproxy.net/id/CamAddLess/recommended/316790/]Grim Fandango Remastered[/url] [url=steamproxy.net/id/CamAddLess/recommended/3830/]Psychonauts[/url]