Today’s work soundtrack - Broken Age!

I am nuclear right now after finishing **Broken Age (2014 Xbox)** . Convoluted, overambitious and tedious, add this to the pile why old adventure games died. In this genre, it is not about the difficulty but telling a story and mechanics that enhance the setting. Most of all it is lacking a third act making this an unfinished tragedy although that itself may be a mercy. IDK, perhaps the celebrity voices were too much?

Trailer: https://youtu.be/BWM4R5JsakE

Such a great game and this was a fun read about it. I only recently played it on Switch

"Broken Age at 10: A milestone for gaming | Adventure Gamers"

https://adventuregamers.com/articles/view/broken-age-at-10-a-milestone-for-gaming

TFW you discover what Mog Chothra was all along. #brokenage

Today’s library shelf pull

If you love @doublefine (and their amazing team) then you need to track down a copy of this book️

20 Double Fine Years explores the people, ideas and inspirations that have resulted in #Pyschonauts #CostumeQuest #GrimFandango #BrokenAge #BrutalLegend #TheCave #FullThrottle and more!

Been revisiting #DoubleFineAdventure aka #BrokenAge this weekend on GamePass and it had me wondering where the extra video content sat from the Kickstarter pledge. Turns out 112 of these are it's content and most of my videos on Steam.

My favorite day of the week! #brokenage

This reminds me of Thimbleweed Park. Designing adventure games well is REALLY hard + this one is very well-designed so far, though it's not difficult. How it uses 2D + 3D, not to mention camera work, is worth looking at for future adventure games. I love #ReturnToMonkeyIsland + this is managing to outshine it at times while years older. I was studying one of the early environments to figure out how they managed to create such good looking "2D" backgrounds w/ changing perspective as you walk through them. I think it looks better than #BrokenAge in motion.

They used billboards + then rotated some toward the horizon + built 3D pieces out of flat ones, with other elements being only flat. They built environments out of tiles + reused art assets, but it looks great. I do like Return's background art more. I think backgrounds that are like Return plus the 2D + 3D mix here can be done, still made up of less recurring parts but cleverly used unique billboards.

#JennyLeClue
#AdventureGame