Broken Age

Broken Age is a point-and-click adventure game, where the player-controlled character can be directed to move about the screen, examine objects, and talk to non-player characters to learn more about the game world. The game features two playable characters, each located in seemingly separate worlds; the player can switch from one character to the other via the game's interface at any time, but otherwise these characters do not interact in any direct way. The game employs context-sensitive actions instead of using verb lists as early adventure games would use, as Schafer stated that in essence, "there really was always one verb, which was 'interact with'" and opted for the more modern approach. Each character has separate item inventories as they collect objects; items can be used by dragging them onto context-sensitive areas on the screen or combined with other inventory items.

Broken Age tells the story of two teenagers with no immediate apparent connection, each "seeking to break the tradition in their lives".

Vella Tartine (voiced by Masasa Moyo) is a young woman living in the Badlands, a land ravaged by the Mogs, giant creatures that come from beyond a wall called the Plague Dam. Appearing every fourteen years, they are appeased by the sacrifice of young girls at a number of Maiden's Feasts held at various villages. Vella is chosen to be sacrificed to Mog Chothra at the feast in her hometown of Sugar Bunting (formerly a town made up of warriors named Steel Bunting) but concludes that if the monster could be killed, the rituals could be ended. She finds a way to escape the beast and ends up in Meriloft, a small colony which rests on a cluster of semisolid clouds.

Double Fine Adventure was announced by way of a Kickstarter project initiated on February 8, 2012. The idea came after Double Fine's Tim Schafer was interviewed for 2 Player Productions' upcoming Kickstarter-funded documentary on the game Minecraft. After the interview, Schafer and 2 Player discussed the idea of the production company filming a documentary about Double Fine as a future project. Double Fine had already had experience as a studio being filmed during development of Psychonauts for an episode of G4 TV's Icons series.

When 2 Player completed the Minecraft project, around November 2011, they wanted to create a more in-depth documentary, recognizing that Double Fine had the right type of environment where such a documentary would be possible. The two studios began to work out the specifics of the project, but Schafer realized that publisher interference would make an honest portrayal of game development impossible. Double Fine lacked the resources to self-fund a game, and 2 Player lacked the ability to fund the film, so the two companies elected to crowd-fund the project on Kickstarter, a method Schafer had seen successfully used to raise much smaller amounts for independent game developers. The creation of a new game was initially considered "kind of as a sidenote" by Schafer to accommodate the documentary filming.

The game's first act was well received by critics, scoring 82/100 on review aggregation website Metacritic. Adam Sessler of Rev3Games gave Broken Age Act 1 a 4/5 calling it a beautiful game with wonderful and funny writing. Justin McElroy, writing at Polygon highlighted the game's characters as "grounded while approaching absurdity and adversity with brave, heartfelt sincerity" giving the game a "kind of depth that's so often lacking in other 'funny' games". Within a month of the first act's release, Schafer confirmed that its sales would be sufficient to cover the remaining development costs for Act 2.

Act 2, released more than a year later, received a similar response overall, with a Metacritic score of 73/100. Despite this, many critics saw the second act as a letdown following the success of the first: John Walker of Rock Paper Shotgun praised the art and voice acting, but criticised Act 2 for its re-use of locations from Act 1 and lackluster ending, following up his review with a lengthy article expanding on his criticism of the story. Other critics had similar complaints, including Justin McElroy, who in an update to his initial Act 1 review, was disappointed by too much puzzling in the second half. He also echoed a common criticism of the frustrating difficulty of the puzzles, which many reviewers felt were much harder than in Act 1, especially if players tried to pick it up without replaying the first half.