Broken Age - 20/20 hours

I replayed all of act one and about half of act two, getting quite a few achievements in the process. It was mostly a matter of going through the game and systematically touching every thing in my inventory to everything in the environment. This is not quite as tedious as it sounds, because there is a lot of unexpected dialogue to be discovered when you put your items together in an illogical way, some of which is quite funny. It's actually pretty impressive that they wrote and recorded so many lines that most people will never see. I like that. It demonstrates an admirable craft.

My main agenda in the replay, aside from collecting achievements, was to pay close attention to Shay's story in act one and see if the reveal about Mom and Dad was fairly foreshadowed. And my conclusion is . . . sort of. There's a lot that seems ill-fitting and bizarre about the set-up, if you assume the parents are human (like the fact that Shay's mom still bathes him and watches him almost constantly), but nothing that directly contradicts the fact, assuming you believe Shay to be deliberately perverse.

I think the dilemma is typified by the following (paraphrased) exchange:

Shay - "I'm sorry they programmed you with someone's sad memories."
Mom - "You know the truth, son."

You could make the argument that they already had the reveal in mind when these lines were written (and Mom's performance, in particular, seemed to fit with the twist), but if so then Shay was either completely delusional, or really, really catty. I think that's what makes it so tough to accept. The Shay we first get to know has a sense of weariness and cynicism that's easy to empathize with, given his apparent circumstances, so it rankles a bit to find out that he's capable of cruelty.

In an article I read about the game, I heard Broken Age can be taken as a metaphor for the problems of growing up, and coming into one's own as an adult, and I can kind of see how you might come to that conclusion, but I think the game works much better on a superficial level than as any kind of deep statement. Mostly it's because if you do assume the game is about growing up, then there's no real payoff or acknowledgement about the main characters undergoing a transformation. They each repair their respective spaceships and then solve an (unbeknownst to them) tandem puzzle when those two ships collide, but there's no real coda to the story. It just kind of ends abruptly.

I don't mind too much, though. Broken Age was a lighthearted adventure with some appealing characters, fantastic locations, and a healthy dollop of whimsy. The humor, and the effortless rapport I had with the people and the world were more than enough to keep me entertained, even into my second playthrough, despite the fact that the gameplay is basically nonexistent once the puzzles are solved. I wouldn't mark it as a classic, or even one that I'll feel particularly compelled to revisit, but it was definitely worth experiencing at least once.