Recent reviews by Big Meows

This game so badly wants to be a marriage of Gone Home and Firewatch, but it doesn't even come close. Even putting aside the ridiculous story and pointless ending, the gameplay is tedious and uninteresting. The game dialogue only presents a clear goal about half the time, leaving you to wander a barren hotel, turning over combs and sponges and machine-translated books for no reward if you forget to look at your to-do list. There is no incentive to explore on your own, and game-advancing tasks are very straightforward, leaving huge swaths of the hotel untouched.

The devs really thought they had something here. They don't.

Charming and delightful. Simple and not particularly challenging, but this game cares if you have a good time playing it, and it absolutely delivers.

I really wanted to like this game, I really wanted something to scratch the itch for "Space Game that Hurts" in a post-Outer Wilds world, but this wasn't it. The puzzles and controls were unnecessarily convoluted and complicated. One can only spend so much time squinting at 50 different switches and buttons and flipping back and forth from the manual to the environment and back again, trying to intuit what your next move is... Halfway through day 2 I realized I wasn't having fun. Maybe it has a good story, but I can't quite get far enough to determine that.

Maybe I'm not smart enough? Or maybe there's no shame in making a story-rich game easier to enjoy?

The HD ports are getting a little sloppy- this game had typos, missing music, missing CGs, missing or misalighned sprites and a few innapropriately resued HD BGs from the first game. The HD port is novel and overdue but I'm afraid first time players will find the experience lacking due to these clumsy mistakes. Please dont let these (admittedly minor) problems turn you off from the game. The story is just as silly, charming and emotionally destructive as the original! Hato Moa never disapoints, and dont let a few mistakes on behalf of the developer reflect badly on her work! That said the new, snowy BGs are lovely and an improvement over the original, they really set the tone! I was hoping for some additional content, but there's plenty here to do, definitely worth your $10.

(Protip: dont play any of the bonus episodes until you've finished the main story!)

Well, I have good news and I have bad news.

The good news is that Act 1, if you've already played it, is visually stunning, very charming with a lovely soundtrack, very nostalgic and ends with a twist that had me on the edge of my seat for more than a year, waiting for the resolution.

The bad news is that Act 2 is here to ruin that.

Act 2 fails to live up to the hype. The puzzles are irritatingly convoluted and in no way advance the story, there are no new environments to speak of (only two or three new screens per character), and the ominously sinister undercurrent behind Operation Dandelion and the Maiden's Feast hinted at throughout Act 1 collapses into nothingness almost immediately. Shay and Vella learn nothing, they do not grow, and the entire backstory, the entire reason for the plot, is dumped in a few lines of dialogue in a completely missable conversation. At the risk of spoilers, we have the opportunity to infiltrate the enemy base and learn these things first hand for ourself, to engage the people beyond the plague dam and see how their society parallels that of Sugar Bunting/Meriloft/Shellmound, but that chance is missed, as we remain stranded on the Little Tykes space ship at the risk of... what? Rendering a new environment? Writing a few more characters?

This game was so profoundly disapointing, it's haunting me a full 24 hours after finishing it. I have so much respect for DF and Tim's work, even the things I'm not the target audience for (Hey, I even played Once Upon a Monster with some family and found the unique DF flavor charming and nostalgic). I'm not here to demand to know where all the money went (we know where it went, its not a mystery) or ask why it took so long (I'd be happy if it had taken longer to be honest. This felt like a rushed and unloved project.) But there are games made for the simple love of it, with a team of one or two people in their off hours from their day jobs, in RPG maker or similar programs that have significantly more depth than this. Money does not equal a good game. Without a solid story, Broken Age is...well. Broken.

CONSIDER BUYING INSTEAD: Hatoful Boyfriend. NO WAIT come back, I'm serious! The original build of Hatoful Boyfriend was made with royalty-free music and stock graphic assets suplimented by photos taken by the creator herself and it still has a rich, unique cast of characters and tells the story of a truly chilling murder mystery. Its an emotional roller coaster disguised as an otome parody, and a perfect example of a great game made without a big budget.

Maybe Broken Age could have been better if it had been forced to work with a humbler budget. Who knows.

Bottom line: pass and maybe go play Psychonauts again. It's still amazing.