With the grandfather of Monkey Island, Ron Gilbert off doing his DeathSpank thing, and Telltale Games churning out updated simian adventures for Guybrush Threepwood, it falls to long-time point-and-click adventure fan Andrew Goulding and Brawsome to bring some old-school anthropomorphic buckling of your swash to the PC.
Gaius James Rover is a young naive pup on a sea-faring adventure, with a glint in his eyes and the wind behind his large floppy ears. He is a little embarrassed about his name, and more than a little peeved when taken prisoner by pirates during his maiden rum delivery run.
Yep! The beginning to Jolly Rover, and indeed a large proportion of what is to follow is unashamedly similar to the adventures of Threepwood in the Monkey Island series of games. Developer Brawsome indeed thanks Ron Gilbert, amongst others, during the games final credits, some six or seven hours later.
Rather than employing the SCUMM adventure system of the older games, Jolly Rover utilises a more basic yet logical contextual system of point and click pixel hunting. The term ‘pixel hunting’ in this case should not be off putting however, during my first run through the game, only a handful of times did was I caught out, missing an on-screen clickable item, and of these, only once did I feel the game was being a little unfair with object positioning.
The game also utilises a handy system on top of the contextual clicking, if an object has already been thoroughly explored its identifying text will change from blue to white. It is worth searching objects several times, as not only does the comical dialogue progress, but there might be a collectable piece-o-eight, crackers (more on these soon) or flag scrap lying within. These collectables unlock concept artwork or commentary on the games musical score.
There are plenty of other links to the great series from Lucas Arts, the Caribbean setting, the hand painted backdrops, ghostly pirates, voodoo, a level of corruption in island politics and of course, the odd monkey or two.
The humour in the game is also a throw-back to the games inspiration, there is plenty of double entendres, and breaking of the fourth wall, such as when Gaius approaches a rusty blunderbuss abandoned on a beach and says “well that would change the whole dynamic of the game if I was able to use that.”
Humour is further explored with the canine theme that runs through the game; this is especially well handled with the inevitable arrival of a female touch to the plot. The initially baulking of introducing the term ‘bitches’ into the script is laugh out loud funny and nicely thought out.
One breakaway from Monkey Island is the hint system; Gaius will team up with a snarky parrot companion Juan early in the game. Juan seems to have a handle on what is going on and at anytime can provide guidance to Gaius for the way forward. Early in the game, it is a little annoying having the parrot information service screen jump up uninvited, but over the course of play, Juan will become invaluable as some of the puzzles get a little obtuse.
Juan will provide semi cryptic guidance for free, but anything further will cost Gaius a cracker or two. Using a cracker lowers the overall game score (which is constantly ticking over as progression is made). On one or two occasions Juan gave useless advice, hints to Gaius for work already completed, usually however, the parrot’s prompting will get confused adventurers back on track.
Generally speaking - and this is one of the most important statements that need to be made about this genre of game – the games puzzles are well thought out and implemented, progression is satisfying, there is little backtracking and clever touches such as finding your way through the haunted caves and utilising a ‘compass’ when treasure hunting are memorable adventuring moments.
The other touch brought in is the voodoo system, here you will need to write notes, or have a good observational memory as Gaius utilises the Caribbean magic at any time, over and above the utilisation of inventory manipulation or screen exploration to achieve the solutions to puzzles. In fact, the voodoo system can provide alternate paths to success.
My initial reaction to the game was a little guarded, first impressions were that we were dealing with a cheap Monkey Island rip-off, but over the course of the title it becomes apparent there is a significant amount of homage in its copying. And it is hard to fault the unashamedly utilisation of classic game inspiration when it is so much fun to play more of the source materials ilk.
Posted 05:01pm 07/7/10
Posted 08:39am 08/7/10
Any indie developer should be on Steam.
Posted 08:46am 08/7/10
http://store.steampowered.com/search/?term=jolly+rover
Posted 08:53am 08/7/10
Posted 01:23pm 08/7/10
Posted 01:23pm 08/7/10
aussie publishers need love too, you know.
Posted 01:48pm 08/7/10
So maybe drop the price and you might move more units. It wouldve been an instant purchase for $10.
Posted 02:15pm 16/7/10