2/20/2023 0 Comments Burly men at sea sales![]() ![]() Other than this, the only real interaction you have with the world is dialogue and clicking on background items that offer charming brief animations (birds flapping, books falling over and that kind of thing). It’s a clever way to add a bit more interactivity beyond a simple movement mechanic and adds a bit more to the mystery of explore what is just beyond your view. They’re both easy to use, but the touchscreen feels more ‘natural’ to me. You’re able to use the touchscreen or standard controls and each has its own advantages. You view the game as if looking through a telescope and to navigate you must pull at the edge of the viewport. For a game that is essentially an interactive story, it is a big bonus. It’s difficult to describe unless you play it, but the language used adds a flourish that gives the game it’s own style. The first time I played it through I wanted to make sure I didn’t complete it in one sitting (for my own benefit really) but when I started it back up again I’d evidently saved just a few minutes before the end.īurly Men at Sea is full of charm and character, and characters that are full of charm. However, it’s so charming that you’re likely to pick it up again in the future and play it once more. The story itself is short and you’d easily be able to complete it in about 30-45 minutes depending on how much you poke at everything and savour the experience. It’s certainly a game that stands out, but beneath the surface (excuse the pun) is an amusing and engaging narrative.Īt the start of the game you come across a blank sea chart and that starts and the Brothers Beard set off on an adventure that takes them across, and under, the sea. The game’s visual style drew me in years ago, and now I have finally played it!īurly Men at Sea stands out because it looks like a stylistic children’s book rather than a game, with minimalist designs and an engaging colour palette. Then it came to the Switch and I jumped at the chance. There is something to be said about its convenience, both as a portable console and not having to worry about specs as I do with my ageing laptop.īurly Men at Sea is the latest title like this, although it was initially released as a mobile game so I have less of an excuse, but it is still one I never got round to actually buying. If the books look half as stylish and vivid as the game, it’ll go down as one of the smarter physical media tie-ins.The Nintendo Switch is fast become home of indie titles I kept meaning to pick up elsewhere and never did. If in the end it feels a bit like rollicking through a children’s book, that’s also intentional: there’s a physical artifact hook, whereby each unique play-through that’s stored by the game in a library of sorts can be referenced to preorder a fully-illustrated hardcover version of the adventure (shipping later this fall, says Brain&Brain). Never mind that you’re also a glorified page-turner, Burly Men at Sea offers stories worth absorbing and sweetly animated absurdities that had me chuckling. It’s as if you’re a distant spy honed in on the action, but with telepathic powers of motivation and conduction. On occasion a sequence asks you to engage in binary ways to for instance slow or speed an object, or shrink or enlarge another. The men are viewed through a movable rondel, like a telescopic sight you can extend parabolically left or right by sliding your finger (on a mobile device) or a mouse (on PC). And in Brain&Brain’s Burly Men at Sea, a folktale mashup out for mobile devices and PC on September 29, it’s the artful interplay of visual minimalism, waggish writing and hilarious but also haunting sound effects generated by gorgeous a cappella voices.Īll of that’s framed by an interface as designer-simple as the game’s visually Scandinavian pastiches. In Virginia, it’s the absence of spoken words and smash cuts that elide otherwise dull peregrination. In Night School Studio’s Oxenfree, it’s the organically overlapping banter of a lively Scooby Gang in lieu of “I go, you go” dialogue. That’s put the burden of invention on audiovisual novelty. In the end, it’s not so different from how you operate a motion comic or a visual novel. ![]() But in all cases they involved me watching some things happen, clicking a button, then watching some more things happen. I have nothing against stories you play, though they’re currently shelved with video games only because we privilege unreliable terms like “interactivity.” I was meh on this year’s Buried and Firewatch, more in accord with Oxenfree, and awed by Virginia. ![]()
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