Broken Age - 2/20 hours

I don't think much of Broken Age as a game. You basically just click on things, and if that thing is relevant to the story at the time, the plot will advance, and if it's not, it won't. There is some thinking involved when it comes to picking up and using items, but if you use an item wrong, the game will usually give you a pretty clear hint about what you're supposed to be doing. It's not much of a challenge.

That doesn't mean that it's not entertaining, though. The art design is amazing, the voice acting is excellent, and a lot of the cutscenes are both funny and delightfully weird. I'd say it's like watching a smart children's cartoon with interactive elements.

At the beginning of the game, you're given a choice between two characters, but you can switch back and forth between them, presumably if you get stuck. More recently, I was automatically switched upon reaching a break in the story, so I'm guessing the two characters have related plots which must advance before you can complete either story. They're both pretty interesting.

Shay is a boy living onboard a spaceship. He's constantly being watched by "Mom" a friendly, but overprotective AI. At the start of the game, his whole environment is designed to be cuddly and safe. The parts of the ship he's allowed to enter look like a baby's toy, and every day he goes out on "missions" that are ludicrously infantile, like "rescuing" a yarn creature from a "hug attack." The AI doesn't seem to realize that he's getting too old for these activities, and is, in fact, colossally bored. The first part of his story is about how he begins to break free of his routine in order to do something real, although the wolf-man (or perhaps "man in wolf costume") who aids him has begun to act suspiciously.

Vella, on the other hand, starts with a certain degree of independence - due to being chosen as a human sacrifice. The monster MOG Chathra comes by her town every fourteen years, and the villagers hold for it a "Maidens Feast," where young girls pose for, and are devoured by, the creature. It has a weird beauty pageant vibe, and the villagers seem to have turned it into a kin of celebratory festival. Naturally, Vella escapes the sacrifice and forges her own path (foreshadowed by the fact that she wants to fight the monster instead of appeasing it), but I actually just started this story, so I don't know what happens next.

Broken Age marks my fourth beautiful game in a row, and I worry I might start to get spoiled by this sort of thing. Everything is done up in bold, bright colors that make the game look like a storybook, and the world itself is designed with a lot of idiosyncratic character. Shay's starship is powered by a "space-weaver" who creates a "nav-scarf," and you can see the wooly texture. Vella and her fellow sacrifices wear dresses that seem half Miss Universe costumes and half confectionery. As trivial as the actual gameplay is, I'm nonetheless eager to see what happens next.