Elaine Marley and the Ghost Ship By Logan Delaney
This is a Monkey Island spinoff/tribute game, exploring the question “What was Governor Elaine Marley really doing when she was stuck on the Ghost Ship?” In a textual choice-based format.
It was interesting running this on a low-res screen (1024x665 pixel size equivalent). I use a low-res screen on my laptop as standard to get larger text to read. But in this game even though strictly speaking I was running in full screen mode it meant that I had too little game area, and had to zoom out some times in the web browser to see some things I needed to interact with. Which meant the font was too small for me to read comfortably (I got the same effect switching my Mac temporarily to 1800x1169 equivalent resolution, full screen again).
I can barely remember the first Monkey Island game. Thankfully this does a recap. Including some meta elements. Then it launches into a series of chapter-like “hour” segments - note they do not take an hour of real time to play, thankfully! These segments are choice based, though often not so much about choosing, as going through a series of options to examine the world around you. But there are some nice choices re how you handle dialogue. And I think occasionally some critical choices re what order you do things in.
There are puzzles, but the game guides you to the solutions. It is generally not difficult.
The writing is amusing, on point for a Monkey Island tribute.
On the downside you have to read every unlocked author’s note to unlock the next “hour” portion of the game. And then when you complete that next hour portion there’s another author’s note to read before you can play the next hour segment. The author notes are amusing but not very interactive, and playing them got a bit tiresome after a while. And woe betide if you accidentally click again on “hour one” when you meant to click on “hour two”. You can save the game during the game, but I couldn’t find any way to undo my mistake of stepping back bar full replaying.
Although I think this aspect has been toned down, there is still quite a lot of timed text in the game. Which I’m rather allergic to. I was particularly exasperated as a reader by
The door creaks open
slowly,
where the word “slowly” appeared incredibly slowly, and repeatedly if I am remember correctly. I’m afraid that I wasn’t in the right receptive mood for it!
In the end I made it through part of “hour three”, and possibly got near to an ending. But then I ran out of time. I’m assuming there was a better ending to get. I hope so!
I did enjoy this, and it should work even if you haven’t played Monkey Island. At least to an extent. Though it is probably more successful for players who know that franchise.
I did find the load/save game and my muddle repeating hour one frustrating. I couldn’t find a way to access the saved game once you’d clicked into an hour segment. Including when I clicked on the wrong one. Replaying was annoying.
It’s also why I haven’t had another go at “hour three”, because I’d need to replay all of the earlier portions.
But I was laughing a lot throughout. So that’s good.