The Double Fine Adventure documentary is now available for everyone to watch for free. Originally filmed as one of the incentives to Kickstarter backers, the documentary series shows the studio’s development process for Broken Age, the crowd-funded adventure game. The first 10 episodes are available now, and the rest of the series will be released every Tuesday and Thursday until the April 28th launch of Broken Age Act 2.
Over $3 million was raised in the original Kickstarter for Broken Age, and the game had to be split into two acts. According to Double Fine’s Tim Schafer, the game’s increased scope exceeded the projected timeline and led to delays which necessitated the game’s division. The extended development time required the first half of the game’s sales to pay for development of the second half. Purchasers of Act 1 will get Act 2 at no additional charge.
Double Fine’s Broken Age will be complete in 2015. Although the first half of the crowd-funded game was released in January 2014, fans have been waiting for a resolution to the cliffhanger ending since then. Producer and brand manager Greg Rice posted a brief summary of the progress so far as well as a projection for the release of the point & click adventure’s second act.
The goal now is to get all the finale work done so we can hit Alpha on all of Act 2 by the end of the year. That means, as you may have guessed based on recent updates and documentary episodes, the Act 2 ship that will deliver the complete adventure is now looking like it will be early next year.
Broken Age wasn’t originally planned to be split into two parts, but the Kickstarter campaign increased the budget from $400k to over $3 million, forcing Double Fine to reassess the development schedule. Broken Age is available on Steam or from Double Fine’s site.
Broken Age, Double Fine’s successfully crowd-funded adventure game, should be rolling out its first episode to beta backers now. In the recent developer post, Double Fine tells backers that they should be receiving a link to a Humble Bundle key allowing them access to the highly anticipated release. While they enjoy the first episode, Double Fine will continue work on the planned second and final episode which will release later this year. People that didn’t back the game can buy the Season Pass on Steam which will let them access to Act 1 on January 28th.
Double Fine is asking all people with early access to the first episode, including the press and Kickstarter backers, to hold off on posting anything about their experience until the official January 28 release date. They’re also asking that people keep spoilers off the internet. Good luck with that.
The same time limit applies to the press as to backers; everyone is in the same boat! We’re trying to be as fair as possible given that backers will have access to the game before everyone else.
No waxing poetic about Elijah Wood’s voice performance in the game until everyone gets it!
Update: Double Fine sends word that they’ve withdrawn their request for an embargo. Go ahead and post your judgments!
