#BROKEN AGE JACK BLACK UPDATE#

Most of the puzzles, which involve trial-and-error clicking on objects, are simple and easily explained, although a few reduced me to guesswork. The player can switch freely between the two stories, which otherwise unfold in a relatively linear fashion. Each is trapped by circumstance and tradition, cloistered by a culture that thinks it knows their wants and needs better than they know themselves. The writing is funny, tender and first rate.īroken Age tells parallel coming-of-age stories, one about a boy named Shay who lives on a spaceship and the other about a girl named Vella from a small village. The voice cast includes Elijah Wood and, once again, Mr.

The art is lush and gorgeous, with the feel of an interactive children’s storybook. Although the project was financed by 87,000 people over the Internet, Broken Age doesn’t feel lo-fi. Two years later, the game is finally here - or at least the first half of it is.

Schafer and Double Fine had collected more than $3.3 million. By the end of the fund-raising drive, Mr. Schafer found himself love-bombed by fans, who handed over more than $1 million in a single day. Schafer says in the documentary of the moment in February 2012 when the company turned to Kickstarter.Ī mere 24 hours later, instead of fighting for his studio’s life, Mr. “It had been a long time since we had an experience where it felt like we were the winners,” Mr. After that blow, Double Fine pivoted to smaller projects but was apparently struggling to stay afloat. In the preceding couple of years, the sequel to Brütal Legend, a paean to heavy metal that starred Jack Black and was well-received by critics but underperformed in the marketplace, had been canceled. When Tim Schafer, the founder of Double Fine, went to Kickstarter a couple of years ago to ask video game players to give his company $400,000 to make an adventure in the tradition of the games he made at LucasArts in the 1990s, he was considering laying off some of his employees if he couldn’t raise the money, according to the web documentary about the making of the game that was released to backers of the project.

#BROKEN AGE JACK BLACK UPDATE#

Its release - the first act of the game went on sale this week, with the rest promised as a free update later in the year - cements Double Fine’s pioneering status as a studio that has made the transition from Triple-A publisher (industry lingo for the producers of big-budget blockbuster games) to indie developer, instead of the other way around. Double Fine will use the income generated from the first half to sustain funds to make the rest of the game.Perhaps the most impressive thing about Broken Age, an enchanting, imaginative fable from Double Fine Productions, is that its makers have created a video game that is at least as interesting as the story of how it was made. The first half is due in January, available via Early Access. If you have a minute, it's worth going through her game-ography and just gaping in awe at her career.Īfter proving to be be more expensive than anticipated, Broken Age will arrive in halves. Hale has appeared in all video games ever made, but she's probably best known for her role as Commander Shepard in the Mass Effect games. The other big-name returnee to Double Fine's recording booth is Jennifer Hale, gaming's equivalent of Hollywood talent as far as voice acting goes. Remember when Double Fine got Hollywood superstar Jack Black to star in a video game? Well, it's happening again with Broken Age, the studio's Kickstarter-funded point-and-click adventure in which Black plays the excellently named Harm'ny Lightbeard, apparently the 'lifter of clouds.' If you've not heard of Jack Black, that means you've not seen School of Rock, and that in turn means we can't be friends - sorry. Update your settings here, then reload the page to see it. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences.

Broken age jack black