Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet (Android) Review

Pirates compete at the top levels for being pop-culture's go-to adventurer career, but Nelly's not the average pirate. Rather than stake her claim as captain of a ship, she's a bit more, humanitarian in her efforts. Not to say that she doesn't bend and break the rules now and then, but on the whole, she's in it for the adventure, not the plunder.

The experience is very reminiscent of LucasArt's old Monkey Island games, in that it's a very laid-back adventure set to the backdrop of a high-seas tale. The stakes never feel earthshattering, and there's no way to become locked out of any puzzles or quests. The puzzles themselves can definitely require some thought to solve, but they definitely have a more logical element to them rather than the tired adventure game mantra of "bash two items together and hope they solve this puzzle."

Controls are the biggest thing hampering this adventure. The touchscreen interface is extremely picky, often requiring multiple taps to select the object Nelly needs to look at, or instead, sending her off to stand next to the object instead. It's makes the gameplay completely unsuited to a mobile phone, and better with a Bluetooth mouse on a tablet, but still playable aside from that.

The real treat is the writing and voice overs, which are honestly both extremely endearing. The lines just flirt with being culturally savvy, but not in a way that totally takes you out of the storytelling. The voice-acting offers some great delivery to the lines, which there's a veritable mountain of. It does get annoying to hear the same lines over and over while trying to solve a puzzle, but that's more of an edge case than anything.

Stylistically, though, everything ties together. The character models are all full of life, and the animations are impressively fluid for an Android title. The soundtrack offers a nice background to the puzzles, and it all makes for a very pleasant, if not sometimes frustrating experience.