Despite recent news that Double Fine had scaled back its workforce in response to an unexpected cancellation of one of their projects, work on Broken Age has picked up speed. In an update to their Kickstarter backers, and also posted in their forum, Double Fine states that staffing levels for the game have risen, and just last week they hit Alpha on both Shay and Vella’s halves of Act 2, leaving just the big finale section to complete before the full game is in Alpha. 

• Shays half of Act 2 could be in Beta next week.
• Goal is to have full game in Alpha by the end of the year.

Most of Act 2 in Alpha

“This has unlocked the ability to playtest Act 2 from the start all the way up to the finale, allowing people to switch characters throughout. We kicked that off in full last week and it has been super informative. So far we’re seeing exactly what we were hoping! Playtimes of just Act 2 have ranged from 8-12 hours, the puzzles seem to be providing a good level of challenge, nothing is really standing out as needing to be heavily re-worked, and most importantly people are laughing a lot and seem really pleased with where the story goes. YAY!”

“In parallel to all this Alpha development, the animators at both Double Fine and SuperGenius, as well as the audio team, have been charging forward on Beta work for the scenes that have professional VO already recorded. This has put Shay’s half of Act 2 well on it’s way towards Beta! Next week Tim is headed down to LA for the final major recording session with Vella, and at that point we’ll have pro VO for all of the remaining cutscenes ready so that animators can start taking them to final!”

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. The game is looking really good and the team is working super fast, but we just gotta give the game the time it needs to really deliver on everything we’re hoping it will be.”

“Now that we have all the writing and design finalized and VO recorded, the remainder of development is much easier to estimate, so the production team is currently working to nail down a new schedule for finaling the game that we can use as a goal for the team and also share with you all.”

Broken Age was nominated for Best Indie Game at this year’s Video Game Awards and Double Fine will be heading out to Vegas next week to attend the show.