Double Fine's Broken Age available tonight

Overnight, Double Fine's Kickstarter-funded Broken Age will become available to play for backers, with public release dates to be announced at the same time.

The first act of Broken Age will be available for Kickstarter backers as of 14 January (PST, which will be overnight for Australians), Tim Schafer tweeted over the weekend.

The game, which had been originally projected to be finished and shipped in August 2012, was hit with significant delays when Double Fine realised that it wanted to make a much bigger game than it had anticipated — and needed to come up with more funds to do so.

To compromise, the team decided to split the game into two "acts" and release them separately so that gamers could get their hands on the first half while Double Fine finished up the second, as well as pay for ongoing development out of their own pockets.

As Schafer promised in July of last year, the first half of the game will be arriving in January. If all goes according to plan, the second half of the game should be ready by April or May, free of charge to anyone who has already paid thanks to Steam Early Access.

When the game is available to Kickstarter backers, a date will also be announced for public release.

Initially, the game will be playable via Steam, Windows, Mac and Linux. The iOS version will be available upon release of the full game later this year.