The latest thing I’m playing:  Jolly Rover, by Andrew Goulding of Brawsome.  It’s totally bringing me back to the glory days of LucasArts and Sierra point-and-click adventures.  I was initially a bit doubtful about the whole “pirate dogs” setting, but I’d completely accepted it by about five minutes into the game.  As much as I love the guys over at Telltale, their “Tales of Monkey Island” games never really felt like they lived up to the Monkey Island lineage.  Jolly Rover, on the other hand, stands up beautifully even against romanticised memories of those classic old games.

As a developer, I’m totally blown away that this game has basically been pulled together by a single guy who designed, wrote, and programmed the whole thing across both platforms, and even wrangled voice acting and everything.  A stunningly awesome effort for a solo developer.

There are free demos available.  If you grew up with point-and-click adventures, or just wonder what you missed, then you really owe it to yourself to download and play one of those demos;  they’re easily long enough for you to decide whether or not you want to buy the full game and continue playing.

For those who like to use Steam, the link to the free demo download is here:  Mac/PC Steam Demo.

For those who prefer to avoid Steam, you can grab the demo for Windows, or the demo for Mac, either from those links or from any of the other online stores which carry Jolly Rover, including Greenhouse, Direct2Drive, and many others.  So if you have a particular favourite online store, it’s worth checking to see whether it’s available there as well.

I’ll post a development update on what I’m up to, tomorrow.  But until then, enjoy some piratey adventuring. :)