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All Articles: Broken Age
Valkyria Chronicles 4, Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna, Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition, more coming to Nintendo eShop this week
It’s a big week for RPG fans as Nintendo (and their third-party partners) will be adding several to the Nintendo eShop over the next few days.
Square Enix starts things off with Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition HD, an enhanced and updated new edition of Final Fantasy XV’s mobile port. The RPG is now available to download for the Switch. Switch owners will also get the chance to tackle Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country, a standalone prequel to the action RPG, this weekend when it launches for the Switch on September 21.
Beginning next week, Sega will bring Valkyria Chronicles 4 to the Switch, and Ubisoft will do likewise with South Park: The Stick of Truth .
Elsewhere on the Switch’s online storefront, gamers are now able to purchase Colossal Order’s city simulator, Cities: Skylines – Nintendo Switch Edition; as well as Double Fine’s narrative adventure, Broken Age; and Capcom’s seven-game beat ’em up bundle, the Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle.
You can learn more about the rest of this week’s additions to the Nintendo eShop (including The Gardens Between, Hover, Reigns: Kings & Queens, and more) after the break. (more…)
Double Fine will bring Grim Fandango and Broken Age to the Nintendo Switch
During a live reading of Grim Fandango in celebration of the game’s 20th anniversary at the E3 Coliseum, Double Fine’s Tim Schafer announced that Grim Fandango Remastered and Broken Age will be released for the Nintendo Switch “in the next few months.”
Grim Fandango is one of the most acclaimed adventure games of all time, with unforgettable characters and a unique combination of film noir and Mexican folklore. Players jump in as Manny Calavera, travel agent at the Department of Death to help untangle him from a conspiracy that threatens his very salvation. The story has been remastered to look, sound, and control even better.
Broken Age is a timeless coming-of-age story of barfing trees and talking spoons. Vella Tartine and Shay Volta are two teenagers in strangely similar situations, but radically different worlds. Players can freely switch between the characters and their individual stories, helping them take control of their own lives, and dealing with the unexpected adventures that follow. The game also features an original orchestral soundtrack plus an all-star vocal cast, including Elijah Wood, Jennifer Hale, and Jack Black.
In case you missed it, the live reading of Grim Fandango (with a special appearance by Jack Black) has been embedded above.
Posted in News, Switch
Tagged Broken Age, E3 2018, Grim Fandango
Xbox Store Today: Broken Age, Get Even, Art of Fighting 2, more
We’re closing out the work part of this week with another Xbox Games Store update, and Microsoft has finally added one of Kickstarter’s biggest successes to its digital storefront.
That’s because Double Fine’s return to the adventure genre, Broken Age, was finally added to the Xbox Games Store for the Xbox One today. If you’ve never played it before, or maybe even if you have, players will follow the lives of two teenagers that become gradually more entwined… even though they live in “radically different worlds.”
Another adventure game will be available to download for the Xbox One today from Bandai Namco and The Farm 51. Get Even is a first-person puzzler that isn’t afraid to get weird. Players will travel inside the mind of an amnesiac named Cole to figure out how an abandoned asylum and a teenage girl with a bomb strapped to her chest are connected.
Finally today, Hamster Corporation has brought Art of Fighting 2, a NeoGeo classic from 1994, to the Xbox One. The fighting game is one of the first entries in the King of Fighters mega-franchise, and features 12 fighters and a “Rage Gauge.”
You can learn more about all of these games (and the rest of today’s new releases) after the break. (more…)
Posted in News, Xbox One
Tagged Broken Age, Get Even
It’s 2017 and Adventure Games Are Mainstream Again
“What kind of video games do you play?” It’s a broad question that I often find myself faced with, to which I’d respond “adventure games.” That answer is then followed with an exhausting amount of game name dropping, that, in most cases, have nothing to do with the type of games I’m talking about. “You mean, like Zelda?” Not quite.
The easiest way to reiterate what I’m talking about is by calling them “point-and-click” adventure games, which is a genre and style of game most notable on the PC in the mid- to early 90s. It’s a genre that was also declared dead after the commercial failure of the critically acclaimed Grim Fandango; a genre that, over the past few years, has slowly but surely been coming back into the mainstream. (more…)
Posted in Opinions, PC, PS4, Top Story, Xbox One
Tagged Broken Age, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Thimbleweed Park
Pulling Back the Curtain: The Importance of the Double Fine Adventure Documentary
Recently, 2 Player Productions wrapped production on Double Fine Adventure, a documentary series that followed the development of Broken Age. It was revolutionary in the gaming scene, being the only documentary to ever follow a studio developing a game from its conceptualization through its release and aftermath. Before it, the average game player had only ever seen brief snippets of development from single-person games or small indie teams. Double Fine was the first developer to pull back that curtain on game development, a feat arguably more important than its rocketing of Kickstarter into the mainstream, and unquestionably having a bigger impact on the industry and the community than Broken Age itself. If we’re being honest, Double Fine completely mismanaged their Kickstarter funds, and Broken Age isn’t great. But by “showing how the sausage gets made,” as studio founder Tim Schafer put it, Double Fine made their campaign more than worth it, and left a long-lasting contribution to the industry.
Until DFA came out, game development was a mystical secret that no one outside the industry could begin to comprehend. So much of it was mysterious that many who wanted to be in the industry viewed it with rose-tinted glasses: a dream job where they could play all day. All we knew about game development beforehand were the two extremes. There were the developers that talked in interviews about how great it was, coming to work and hanging out with cool people, getting to create great games that everybody loves. We also read the headlines about developers losing their jobs, and studios being shut down. That or it was about developers going mad in “crunch time” having to work 80 hour weeks. In fact, Double Fine gives us a good example with the Tim Schafter episode of G4’s Icons, when he took us briefly behind the scenes of production on Psychonauts.
We never knew what it was really like, not until Double Fine showed us. (more…)
Double Fine’s documentary chronicling Broken Age’s development has reached its last episode
In early 2012, Double Fine nearly broke the game industry when they introduced the words “Crowdfunding” and “Kickstarter” to many gamers for the first time. The crowdfunding model has become a fixture of the gaming landscape in the years since, and while Double Fine’s campaign may not have been the first, they certainly made it a viable option that developers such as Brian Fargo and Keiji Inafune would eventually use.
Along with the game that would eventually become Broken Age, Double Fine also produced a behind-the-scenes documentary series with 2 Player Productions known as Double Fine Adventure. In Schafer’s words, he wanted to “show us how the sausage was made.”
After more than three years of filming, and twenty main episodes (along with countless extra “Sidequest” episodes), the documentary reached it’s grand conclusion over the weekend. Originally, the series was an exclusive for Kickstarter backers, but as the game neared completion, Schafer decided to unleash the series to the public early.
Regardless of what you thought of the game, the documentary series has made the whole ordeal more than worth it. As someone who backed the Kickstarter campaign all those years ago, I can’t tell you how inspiring and informative these episodes are. Before this, the world of game development always happened behind closed doors, but no longer.
This series has been different. It’s showcased game development from the very start of the creative process to the release of the game, and it’s aftermath, and it did it with a relatively large studio as well. We like to think game development is all sunshine and lollipops and that everything is all fun all the time, but this series goes to show that isn’t the case. I heartily recommend it, even if you’re not interested in game development because it’s so much more than a behind the scenes, how-to documentary, it’s a captivating look into the creative process.
2 Player Productions recently began work on a Blu-ray release for Double Fine Adventure and you can pre-order it at adventure.DoubleFine.com.
Broken Age, Project Root, Omega Quintet, more added to PS Store
Sony has delivered another update to the PlayStation Store and it came packed with a dozen new games. Here’s what you can download on your PS3, PS4, and PS Vita today…
- Double Fine has released Broken Age for the PS4 and PS Vita as a Cross-Buy title. PlayStation players won’t have to do any waiting as both halves of the adventure game are now available on the PlayStation Store.
- Project Root is this week’s other PS4/PS Vita Cross-Buy release. It’s a retro-styled shoot ’em up developed by the Argentina-based OPQAM.
- Omega Quintet is a PS4 RPG that stars a five-piece girl group who battle “the dark forces of the world” with their music.
- And speaking of dark forces, a quartet of Star Wars games from the PS2 era are now available to download just in time for “May the Fourth Be With You.” The PS3 section of the store is now home to Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars: Starfighter, Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, and Star Wars: Racer Revenge.
- Finally, El Presidente dictates that he’s available on the PS4 for the first time in Tropico 5.
More information on all of these games (and a few others) can be found after the break. And a complete rundown of this week’s new game add-ons and discounts can be found at the PlayStation Blog. (more…)
Posted in News, PS3, PS4, Vita
Tagged Broken Age, Project Root, Tropico 5
New Releases: State of Decay Year-One Edition, Omega Quintet, Broken Age, More
Welcome to another week of new video game releases. The game publishers have supplied us a gaggle of eclectic titles to close out the month of April. Let’s look closer…
- State of Decay: Year-One Survival Edition brings Undead Labs’ zombie game to the Xbox One with enhanced graphics and both downloadable expansions.
- Omega Quintet is a PS4 RPG that puts the fate of the world in the hands of a girl group who has learned to weaponize their singing.
- A boxed edition of Broken Age completes the story of Double Fine’s point-and-click adventure game.
- El Presidente reigns supreme on the PS4 in Tropico 5.
- The Golf Club: Collector’s Edition packages a golf simulation that has been available as a downloadable game since last year for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
- Shadowrun Chronicles: Boston Lockdown is another turn-based strategy game set in the Shadowrun universe for the PC.
- The Weaponographist is a top-down roguelike for the PC that drops an adventurer into an arena full of monsters and the weapons to defeat them.
- Finally, Dungeons II is an evil overlord simulator for the PC where players must conquer the world as “The Dungeon Lord.”
That’s it for this week’s look at gaming’s new retail releases, but we’re sure to get several new downloadable titles on the PlayStation Store, the Xbox Games Store, the Nintendo eShop, and Steam later this week.
Posted in News, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tagged Broken Age, State of Decay, Tropico 5