![]() The first of these was the ability of Brain&Brain to use writing that emphasized how childlike its story actually was. In fact, most of the game’s redeeming factors rely on its ability to make me want to shrink down to a child again just to enjoy the impeccable writing and amazing storytelling techniques. But what the game brings with this is a presentation and style that makes it feel more akin to a child’s night time book. Yes, you point and press a button to interact with things in the environment, occasionally solve puzzles, and progress using these two methods. I use that term loosely because, in reality, Burly Men at Sea falls into a genre of its own. That’s important, seeing as Burly Men at Sea only falls into one “real” gaming industry genre: point and click adventure. That seemingly small amount of input is used in cool ways throughout the game, and though it took a minute to get used to some of the control designs, there wasn’t a moment during the game where I felt bored with the way I controlled what was happening. Nevertheless, Burly Men at Sea has a way of letting the player interact with it that is both interesting and unique.Ĭontrolling the three sailors means using your controller’s triggers, an on-screen cursor that acts like a computer mouse, and one face button. These beginning moments were (like most of the game) slow and methodical and consisted of learning brief snippets of information before being whisked away into some other situation. After finding an island inhabited by a coffee shoppe owner, the map sends the three on a grand adventure. It all starts when characters Hasty Beard, Steady Beard, and Brave Beard find a crudely drawn map with barely anything on it. The experiences in my little adventure stemmed from three sailors and a world popping with color and imagination. That philosophy of good storytelling in games is bent, challenged, and sometimes ignored in developer Brain&Brain’s newest title, Burly Men at Sea. It has to mirror gameplay and art so perfectly that the entirety of the project feels like the same package instead of tiny parcels of separate mail. The story has to flow with the game at hand. Good writing in a general sense led the way, but today, I noticed that telling a good story in video games is much more than just good writing. The ability to maintain a well written and artistically independent story meant smaller studios could do much more with story than their triple A big brothers. At first, big budget, commercial games were the only ones to offer complex characters and well thought out plots, but through as time passed, indie games acquired the taste as well. From those beginnings to today, stories in games have evolved to mean many different things. Gameplay mechanics, audio, and visuals were always staples of the gaming world, but this fairly new pillar of design meant big things for the industry. You can see a map of the points in between on our website.At some point in the history of video games, story became one of the main features within the medium. We lived in a tiny house community, an old mining town in the Rockies, and more. ![]() The two of us spent eighteen months traveling North America as nomads, starting out as farmhands in Oregon and ending at the old mill in the Ozarks we now call home. ![]() There’s even a mystery, of sorts, waiting at the end of each playthrough, for those curious enough to find it.Īs a game that celebrates adventure, it’s fitting that most of Burly Men at Sea’s development and its original release took place during a weird journey of our own. With its short branching story and discoverable choices, the game is designed to be played multiple times for entirely different voyages (though we do encourage breaks). You’ll play the role of storyteller, shaping the narrative around our ungainly heroes. I’m the creative half of indie duo Brain&Brain: drawer of beards and writer of salty exclamations in folktale adventure Burly Men at Sea, coming to both PS4 and PS Vita on 19th September.īurly Men at Sea tells a branching story of the unlikely adventures of the Brothers Beard as they muddle their way through encounters with creatures from Scandinavian folklore.
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