The story goes that developer Alasdair Beckett-King decided to make a game for his girlfriend. He used the open source Adventure Game Studio to essentially make a gift for his girlfriend in the form of an epic pirate point and click adventure. Beckett decided to release the game in 2007 as Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! The game had some success and there where talks of a sequel brewing in 2008. Releasing Spoonbeaks Ahoy! as a free game meant, Beckett didn’t earn any money from his labor. For the sequel a Kickstarter was set up to fund the in 2016 released Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet. Now it’s time for Nintendo Switch owners to enjoy this old-timey point and click adventure.
For the love of birds
Nelly Cootalot is the pirate heroine with a fondness for all things birdy. As Nelly finds out about Baron Widebeard’s attempt at destroying a whole fleet full of birds, she goes out on a mission to stop him. In classic point and click adventure style, nothing goes as smoothly as hoped for. Going from Port Rubicund to the island of Gloomholm while traversing the treacherous sea will take you along an epic adventure. The pirate backdrop is an obvious homage (and inspiration) to the monkey island games. The many quirky characters offer some great comedic lines along the way.
Handheld all the way
Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet has been modified slightly to be playable with a controller. The option to highlight interactive things helps out a lot. The right joystick is used to point at stuff and the buttons are used to interact with the environment. I had some finicky moment while playing like this which made me switch to handheld mode. I was happily surprised to find out this game was ported with added touchscreen controls. As somewhat of a point-and-click enthusiast I always find ports lacking touch controls on the Nintendo Switch a strange choice. To me, it seems like touch screen controls and point-and-click adventures should go together hand in hand.
Whacky puzzles
Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet is the sort of adventure game in which you’ll meet a lot of characters. These characters all play a major role in solving most of your puzzles. These puzzles are kind of means to get you to talk to everybody and advance the story. Integrating this seamlessly is quite a nice accomplishment for the developer. Not every puzzle presented will have a straight-forward answer. Some solutions are quite wacky while in some way still logical. Once you’re in the mindset of thinking like a silly pirate you’ll get to the solution much quicker. There were some puzzles which were arguably harder than others. These offer some challenges which could only be overcome by perseverance.
Classic look
The game has a certain classic look to it. While the theme might lend itself to being a rip-off to the monkey island games, the artwork does stand out. The distinctive style makes it feel like a different world than the one Guybrush Threepwood lived in. Although the background looks good, the characters are what makes this game great. The models all look quirky and funny. The voice-acting is excellent which is off course needed for a heavily dialogue based adventure. Among the cast, you’ll even find Tom Baker who’s probably known as the fourth doctor from Doctor Who.
Conclusion
Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet is a good fit for the Nintendo Switch. The point-and-click adventure will offer fans of the genre a nice new trip into pirate land. Do play this game with the use of the touch screen for optimal enjoyment.
