#Burly men at sea review full#

The inputs just never really clicked for me – scrolling the screen was cumbersome and felt weird and it often wasn’t obvious what a choice would do. You use these inputs to shape the story you see – for example, you come up against a sea monster and you can press x on his tentacles to get the burly men to hold them down, whilst earlier in the adventure you can hold L or R to swim left or right after ending up in the sea. There are non-essential interactive elements in the backgrounds too, but otherwise you’ll simply be letting things play out then going around all over again from the beginning. Your only other input is pressing the shoulder buttons which scrolls the screen left and right (something it took me a good while to figure out due to the lack of explanation, meaning I used the imprecise touch screen inputs for a while instead), which usually makes the burly men walk in that direction. You act as an omnipotent guide for the bearded travellers, not unlike in a god game, where you click on certain items in the environment with x to make the trio interact with them.

This is the kind of title that definitely doesn’t need voice acting, which would undoubtedly spoil the atmosphere the developers are going for here.Įffectively an interactive storybook, Burly Men at Sea offers a branching narrative adventure that is fairly well thought out, but some frustrating design choices and just a general lack of excitement made it one I could never get invested in.

Sound is provided primarily through two sources – a capella music that captures the nautical theme well and sound effects that fill in the gaps. Indeed, there’s little details in a number of the environments like puffins on cliff sides, swordfish in the sea or chickens in the barn – it makes the game world feel like a lively, believable place even with its heightened sense of reality and silly story elements. The area you’ll start in is a typical fishing village and gets this feel across, with little houses and seagulls flying overhead. Yet it works somehow – there’s a definite charm here and it’s easy to figure out what everything is meant to be, whether this is the burly men with their pot bellies and huge beards or a gigantic sea monster who talks to you near the end of certain routes. Opting for a stylish, minimalist presentation, Burly Men at Sea certainly stands out from the crowd, although there were times I was wishing for a little more detail.Įverything here is drawn with basic shapes and block colours, like the whole thing has been made by dragging circles and lines in Microsoft Paint. There’s certainly an interesting experiment here, but I’m not sure it’s been executed as well as it could have been. The structure of Burly Men at Sea is going to be something that similarly divides players. The story branches at various points meaning there are up to 12 different routes, but each only takes around 10 to 15 minutes and there’s a lot of repetition between them. You’re meant to keep replaying to see everything but with the way the plot blasts through each scenario with many of them simply being a selection of quirky situations, it’s difficult to sustain any interest beyond the first few trips around. It’s the kind of thing you’ll either love or hate – when I was just starting out I thought the game was trying far too hard with its writing (not helped by its storybook style of having things narrated in the third person), but I’d warmed to it by the end thanks to a solid sense of humour and a few amusing scenarios (my favourite being a polite golem who offers you flowers).

#Burly men at sea review full#

The world here is full of whimsy and charm, a place filled with whale-worshipping nymphs, music-loving wizards and storytelling bartenders.

After each journey, they return to a mysterious man who catalogues their journey, then the trio head out to do it all over again. Burly Men at Sea follows a trio of bearded adventures (with simple names like ‘Brave Beard’ and ‘Hasty Beard’) who stumble open a blank map of their island, using it as a basis to go on adventures and discover what’s around them and fill out the missing parts of the map.