I've also hassled tiny puffins, prodded at campfires and waggled the books on a bookshelf.īut some of the interactions themselves seek to augment the action with changes of animation, switching to a different viewpoint or changing the parameters for your own interaction just enough that they come in line with the spirit of the action.

A bakers lets you quish the air out of loaves on a shelf and they gradually re-inflate. In a barn clicking chickens causes them to lay eggs which you can then hatch. They all contribute to the various senses of place and character.īeyond that, when you're encountering a scene or an event there are often little Easter eggs to find. Hopefully this conveys a little of what I'm talking about - the unexpected surprise encounters, the sparse, clean animation style and there's also a really pleasurable use of language appropriate to the tale - womenfolk, maelstrom, mournful. I don't want to spoil what's out there if I don't have to because finding the little adventure snippets is such a big part of the delight the game can evoke, but I will say that I sent this screenshot to Alice immediately: An early encounter suggests that you get back into your boat and set about filling said chart in with what you find. What is game? Burly Men At Sea has you direct the exploits of the Brothers Beard a trio of bearded blokes who have discovered a blank sea chart stuffed in a bottle. With that out of the way, let's go back a bit.

As such it works in harmony with the stylised Scandi-loveliness of the artwork which reminds me so much of some of the books on my own (and now my niece's) childhood bookshelf. Each playthrough is brief - maybe 40 minutes if you savour and poke at everything, maybe a fair bit less in subsequent adventures? - but it suits the game's scope, letting you head out and collect a few individual experiences to form an adventure tale of around the length you'd find in a children's storybook. So without faffing around, it's a lovely game. Can the experience of heading out to sea with the hopes of filling the empty-at-first chart match the strength of the aesthetic? With that in mind, I set sail for adventure! Here's Wot I Think: The books shipped in January 2017.We talked about Burly Men At Sea's absolutely charming art and animation at length yesterday, but I wanted to make sure we also covered how the game is to play. It contains 50 full-colour pages and costs $30. The adventure can then be bought as a physical book, based on the four encounters the player chose. The combination of encounters that form a single adventure is also summarized through a code that can be entered on the developer's website. Each completed adventure is represented through a book at the old man's coffee shop, based on four icons on the map, corresponding with four encounters. The men can get eaten by a whale, meet nymphs and mermaids, race Death, experience the hospitality of a living mountain, meet a snake, get locked up, and more. There are also many interactive elements in the background that can be clicked for a short animation, but they serve no further purpose. Certain characters return with different conversations and story elements based on previous adventures or encounters. At certain locations the men can be moved around and there are different choices to make, sometimes with small puzzle-solving elements, leading to different, branching paths in the story. The story is told through images and text, with limited interaction by the player.

It is largely played as a visual novel and is described by the developers as 'a quiet adventure'. The game is meant to be played multiple times, each time starting again at the village, as there are different paths and encounters to discover. Eventually an old man reveals the map is there for them to complete with their own adventures, so they set sail and explore. They return to their village to find out if some of the folks there know more. One day, they find a map inside a bottle at sea, but it only contains their own island.

Burly Men at Sea is a game about the adventures of three fishermen, the brothers Beard: Brave Beard, Hasty Beard and Steady Beard.

Hltb burly men at sea