14 DAY TRIAL // What we know:
Broken Age is an upcoming point-and-click adventure developed by Double Fine Productions, a studio led by famous designer Tim Schafer, best known for his work on the wildly popular Grim Fandango.
The game is a point-and-click adventure revolving around two characters, a young boy and girl, each of them trying to become the master of their destiny.
The boy lives alone on a spacecraft and is struggling with his wish to get out and explore the world, and the girl wants to escape being sacrificed to a monster by her village.
Players will alternate between the two characters, and the game will make use of the modern approach of context-sensitive actions, as opposed to the classical approach of using an action list interface.
Why it matters:
Broken Age initially started life under the name Double Fine Adventure and quickly became one of the most successful Kickstarter projects of 2012, managing to raise a total of $3.5 / €2.5 million within the month.
The campaign met its initial goal only 9 hours after it went live, and by the end Schafer mentioned that it had reached the budget he had for Grim Fandango.
The success of Double Fine Adventure marked the beginning of an era of crowd-funded big productions as well as the rebirth of the under-serviced adventure genre.
This will be the first adventure game Tim Schafer has released since Grim Fandango, a title that garnered a cult following with its immersive gameplay and unique visual style, and it will be most interesting to see if it will provide the high-quality experience everyone expects.
Point-and-click adventure games are usually small indie projects, but this one is a big production with a large budget and its success may well see the return of high-quality, large scope adventure titles to the gaming stage.
Softpedia is hosting an entire series of Incoming 2014 articles, covering the most anticipated games of 2014.