Hello and welcome to Art Examination, a video series that explores video games as an art form. Today, we will be focusing on Double Fine Production’s Broken Age.
Video games have grown into this spectacle of grandeur, high definition and action packed. But they are not just a platform for gamers to play on but an experience a group of artists want to share with the world. Their visual form is just as important as the story it’s trying to tell.
Broken Age has captured the look and feel of a fairy tale in video game form. The hand painted textures compliment the layout of each set piece beautifully. Whether the player chooses Shay’s childlike spaceship or Vella’s colourful villages, each have the feeling of a picture book laid out to play in. The entire story is there for the player to read and explore.
It’s not only the layout of each scene that brings this story to life but the colours, textures and imagination. Shay’s spacecraft resembles something that a young boy would play with. The interior and the contents of each room definitely support that, especially the room full of ice cream. Even the inhabitants of the ship are childish since they are made of yarn. The world of Shay is painted in such a way that wouldn’t be associated with space travel, unless it was in the imagination of a child. It has a charmful feel to it.
Vella’s many villages on the other hand are more fantastical in scale. She ventures from her humble baking town to walking on clouds then to a fishy beach. Each location is more beautiful and imaginative than the next. The pink clouds and its inhabitants represent how people could live on clouds though it wouldn’t really happen that way. The design and execution is creative and very childish. The fishing village adds to the creativity with maidens dressed as fish and wanting to resemble them as well.
Broken Age is a picture book come to life through the medium of video games. It has taken the charm of hand painted textures, the simplicity of the two dimensional layout and added layer upon layer of imagination and creativity.
If you agree with my observations or would like to share your own or would like to make a suggestion for future videos, please leave a comment down below and once again, thank you all for watching and see you next time.