Elaine Marley and the Ghost Ship by Logan Delaney
Playtime: 27 minutes
This made me want to talk about:
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Fair warning that I haven’t played any Monkey Island games. To prepare for this one, I skimmed the wikipedia article, which informed me that “The games follow the adventures of the hapless Guybrush Threepwood as he struggles to become the most notorious pirate in the Caribbean, defeat the plans of the evil undead pirate LeChuck and win the heart of Governor Elaine Marley. The plots often involve the mysterious Monkey Island and its secrets.” Ok!
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I liked the concept of the overall structure (author’s commentary interspersed with puzzle sections), which gave good scope for the author to provide thoughts, and I enjoyed hearing about the author’s enthusiasm for the Monkey Island series even if I didn’t share it
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There were some twine choices with real verve, like hovering over different body parts to reveal descriptions (also too much timed text, womp womp)
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I enjoyed the chance to give the instruction, “Form a geological theory”
Notable line:
My one fervent wish:
After playing “hour one” the first time, I clicked on the wrong link, which compelled me to play the first’s author’s note and hour one again. Since there is no opportunity to load a save, this also happens if you want to replay to see something again / click something different. I also had a technical issue (described more under the final cut) that took me several minutes to progress past.
It would be great to clean up these technical issues–I was *able* to play the game, but the issues felt pretty punishing in a game of this length, which doesn’t serve the creativity on display elsewhere
Overall, a very light (in terms of puzzles) meditation on Monkey Island, made with a lot of love for the source material
Gameplay tips / typos
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On the LeChuck description page, the bottom text is off the bottom of the screen and there’s no way to scroll
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The first time I got to “the door creaks open slowly” page, it kept spawning error messages that were continuously bumping the button to continue down the page so I couldn’t click it. I was trying to click for maybe 2 minutes. (I tried to replicate this later to get a screenshot but it didn’t happen on the next playthrough.)