The latter, especially, is considered a masterpiece of the genre (despite not actually using the mouse for its controls).
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In contrast to Sierra’s games, these LucasArts adventures were characterized by a lighthearted tone and lots of humor, and Tim Schafer became known for his funny writing and imaginative settings as he assumed lead development duties for later Lucasarts titles like Full Throttle and Grim Fandango. Tim Schafer got his start in the industry at LucasArts, and he worked on classic adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle. Sierra was a huge player in adventure games, developing and publishing not only the famous King’s Quest series, but also the Space Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Quest For Glory, and Gabriel Knight series.
This type of game became known as the point-and-click adventure, and was one of the most common game genres in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Soon adventure games were moving away from text-based input and were instead asking the player to use the mouse cursor to click on various objects in the environment or the protagonist’s inventory to navigate and solve puzzles.
That is, until the advent and increasing popularity of the computer mouse. Interaction with the world, however, was still handled by typing in commands through a parser. In the early entries of Sierra’s King’s Quest series, for example, the player could see the protagonist on the screen and move him or her around with the keyboard. In some cases, these were simply illustrations to go along with the standard text descriptions that were already common in the genre, but in others, the graphics played a more significant role. Over time, designers started adding graphics to their adventure games. I totally just grabbed this screenshot from Wikipedia. I really should write about some of those at some point too. Today, there is still a thriving independent development scene for these types of text-based games, now termed interactive fiction, with many interesting titles that move far beyond the simple navigation and puzzling of the classics.
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This type of game became quite popular, spawning classics like the Zork series and The Hitchhiker’s Cuide To the Galaxy (based, of course, on the famous novel by Douglas Adams). Some even introduced role-playing-like combat systems, time limits, or other mechanics to spice things up. The games usually involved a series of difficult puzzles, which required finding the correct items and using them in imaginative ways, as well as clever use of text commands. These games consisted of many different locations or rooms, each with a text description, and the player would type in commands such as “go north” or “get rope” to interact with the game. Starting way back in 1976 with Colossal Cave Adventure, the earliest adventure games were presented entirely as text. It’s a shame that I haven’t yet written about an adventure game as part of my History Lessons series, since they constitute the oldest genre of computer games. So, much like Broken Age itself, I’ve split this post into two parts: the first covers the history behind the genre and the development of Broken Age, and the second discusses the actual game. It’s undeniably exciting, and certainly worth discussing, but I think Broken Age deserves to be judged on its own merits. From other industry veterans to untested indie teams, the influx of games on Kickstarter and other crowdfunding sites can be more or less pinned on Tim Schafer, and everyone wants to see how Broken Age, as the poster child for the movement, is going to turn out. Tim Schafer, the industry veteran and fan-favorite developer who heads Double Fine, pitched the game (or, more accurately, proposed making an adventure game in general) on Kickstarter roughly two years ago, and the overwhelming response opened the doors for countless other game projects seeking crowdfunding.
Long before Act 1 went on sale, Broken Age was already famous for the circumstances of its creation. But the release of Broken Age is especially notable. Act 1 of Double Fine’s point and click adventure game Broken Age was released a mere week ago usually, months or years elapse between a game’s release and my posts about it. This is as timely as my posts are ever likely to get.
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