Broken Age: Act 1 ended with a twist, as the maiden-kidnapping monster that Vella aimed to take down and the spaceship on which Shay had lived his entire life were revealed to be one and the same. Act 2 continues in the same vein, playing on player assumptions as the two protagonists are thrown into each other’s worlds.
As Vella explores the mix of advanced technology and coddling cuteness that make up Shay’s home, she disrupts his world as the player knew it. Shay, too, discovers things that the player saw differently through Vella’s eyes. While any twists delivered this way are smaller than that marking the end of Act 1, they’re also less predictable. The straightforward swap does mean players who finished Act 1 not too long before starting Act 2 might feel cheated out of new environments, but the two colourful, hand-drawn worlds have gone through a few changes in the aftermath of Act 1’s conclusion. Some characters have moved, too, with some even coming together who have never met before.
It’s also interesting to see each world through the eyes of the other’s former inhabitant, and meet the quirky characters as if for the second time. Shay is thrilled to see real, non-yarn animals, and while he’s reluctant to reveal too much about himself to Vella’s acquaintances, the player still gets the benefit of seeing them in the next stage of their lives.As for Vella, her inability to decide whether to treat Mog Chothra as a monster or machine provides the kind of gentle humour that Act 1 already established as the tone for the game. She also learns more about Shay, discovering him – as the player well knows – to be a spoilt boy raised to believe he’s the hero, a commentary on male entitlement that reflects her story of overcoming gender-based adversity.
It’s a shame that Vella and Shay are separated once more, but it makes sense mechanically: again, players control one character at a time, able to switch between them at any point. Unlike in Act 1, however, for which you could play one character’s story to completion before starting the other, some of the puzzles in Act 2 actually require you to switch between the two to find a solution, which muddies the waters.
Most of the puzzles in Act 2 are as straightforward as those from Act 1: chains of problems that you just need to solve in the right order, with no need to select a type of interaction, and important objects clearly signified and conveniently disposed of once used. Happily, Act 2 also adds some more interesting kinds of puzzles to the mix, like logic puzzles that’ll make players reach for a pen and paper. But those that require switching between Vella and Shay are messy.
For one, the lack of any need to switch between the two in Act 1 means that players won’t expect it in Act 2, and the game doesn’t make the suggestion nearly clearly enough, sometimes even providing localised red herrings. One puzzle does have Shay wishing aloud that he was back on his ship where he could find the solution, but even that’s misleading since the answer is hidden somewhere that wouldn’t be particularly obvious to him.
These cross-modal puzzles often have too many possible answers to just try things until one works, but some can just be guessed without realising the solution was available to the other character. Perhaps the strangest thing about them is that they introduce the idea that the pair can pass solutions on to each other without actually communicating. The writing tries to laugh it off – “I have a good feeling about this. I don’t know why,” says Shay as he applies knowledge the player has gained through Vella – but it still feels odd.
Generally, the game has an issue with consistency in its communication. Some puzzles make you feel like you were only just smart enough to solve them, but for others the answer is obvious in the dialogue or item description. And when so much of what the characters say is designed to lead you down the right path, it might sound clever to have a puzzle where you instead need to continually ignore what the protagonist is suggesting but it’s really just annoying. These moments stand out all the more because most of the game is good: gently funny, well written, well acted, lovely to look at, engaging and satisfying. Act 2 builds on Act 1 both narratively and mechanically, and, occasional mishaps aside, for most of the way through seems like it’ll be a strong conclusion to the game.
Unfortunately, the conclusion to the conclusion dilutes the mix. After a few hours of puzzle solving in each other’s worlds, Vella and Shay will both reach a point that clearly marks the move into a finale, and once that happens the game seems to lose steam. There are more problems to solve, but the environment is limited, the puzzles less interesting and not so well designed. The solutions require repetitious actions, especially if – as is likely – you don’t pick up on what you’re supposed to do straight away. What should be a fast-paced, exciting scene feels messy, and a little rushed.
That feeling applies to the narrative, too. Some expectations are inevitably met as the game ends, but questions are left unanswered. The overarching plot that provided the basis for the delightful twists doesn’t really go anywhere, and the focus is left on the characters. It’s anticlimactic, but perhaps intentionally so. After all, it’s the journey that counts, and both Vella and Shay have come a long way from where they started. Double Fine has proven its honed and tested skills in this genre again, but we can’t help but feel that there was more it could do.