3 Oct, 2011
While I had not heard much about the Captain Morgane character or the series, I did know of the series creator, Steve Ince. Steve is the man behind some of the best adventure game stories of all time, including the Broken Sword series. While the games seem to head in different directions, the trademark art and character renderings are similar in both. I had a chance to kick around an early preview build of Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle and I was impressed with what Steve has created, but there are still some technical issues to buff out before the game is ready for release.
Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle sticks close to the vest of its progeny, as it is a standard point and click adventure title, set in the 17th Century. You start off as young Morgane Castillo, a girl who is enamored with her father who happens to be a pirate. She idolizes both him and his lifestyle, but her mother always tells her that there is no place for a woman at sea. She soon grows up and due to circumstances, is finally brought aboard a ship and starts to learn the way of the sea from her father.
All of this is played out against lovingly, hand-drawn characters and backgrounds. Each area that I entered showed off high resolution, animated backgrounds and characters. Backgrounds hold subtle movement queues to make them feel a little more dynamic, while characters are loaded with animation frames. Characters never felt stilted or jerky when it came to navigating the environment. I did run into some collision issues here and there, but overall, the animation is very fluid and reminiscent of a Steve Ince game.
As this is an adventure title, Captain Morgane will also sport a ton of puzzles. In this early build, I noticed that the starter puzzles are not very taxing, but that could be just to introduce new players into the mechanics of the game. Puzzles at the beginning included fixing a water pump or finding materials to clean the house. As you move forward, puzzles do get far more challenging, but nothing that will tax your brain.
While Captain Morgane is technically sound, I did have issues with the audio in this early build. Dialog was very unbalanced, and music continuously drowned out the voice work. While I was able to work with the music volume to get it to a comfortable level, the character audio was still problematic. Side characters were okay when the volume was turned up to max, but the main character was still very quiet and muffled. Again, this is an early build, but with a month until release, they will need to fix this soon. Of course, post production work does come last, so this may get balanced near the launch.
As it stands, I did enjoy my time with Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle. It was a fun adventure title that tells the coming of age of this young heroine. Sure, it is not as difficult as some of the previous titles from Steve Ince, but it is an interesting adventure title, and it is coming at the perfect time as there is a renaissance for the genre. Look for Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle in early November 2011.
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