Although you don’t have direct control over the brothers-Brave, Hasty, and Steady Beard respectively-you do guide them on the paths they will travel. What happens next is up to you, the player-storyteller. The bearded heroes set out from the island in search of the “adventurous deeds and heroic feats” promised by the mapmaker and are promptly swallowed by a whale. Curious and thirsty for adventure, the brothers seek out the owner of the map, who claims there is more to its empty waters than may appear. The map’s strangeness is borne of its seeming uselessness: it plots only the location of their own island and nothing else. That story follows the Brothers Beard, three robust fishermen who discover a strange map in their nets one morning. It is a game that rewards both storytellers and storylisteners, as you are both: the guiding hand that keeps the tale going and the delighted reader who is surprised by the turn your story has taken. Its progress is not from solving puzzles but in adding to your ever-growing collection of tall tales about your endless adventures. It features none of these devices, feeling much more like a choose your own adventure storybook than a classic point-and-click game. While Doggins could easily be called a point-and-click adventure thanks to its item collection, inventory management, and puzzle-solving, Burly Men at Sea does not fit so easily into the genre mold. Players who felt Doggins’ adventure ended too abruptly will be pleased to know Burly Men has a lot more meat on its bones, but it’s still focused on short bites of something very special. This love of the fantastical is revisited in Burly Men at Sea’s oceanic voyages inside the belly of a whale past a talking mountain and even to the very bottom of the watery depths, where mystical talking sea creatures reside.

Their first, Doggins, was a short but sweet hop into a terrier’s dreams of space flight, time travel, and villainous squirrel shindigs.

Some interactions and options are a bit unclear.īurly Men at Sea is the second “quiet adventure” from two-person development house Brain&Brain. Would have liked more variety in the first and final events of each playthrough.

Burly men at sea seals swim