"The Booze of Monkey Island": If you let the fans do it
The "Monkey Island" series has enchanted its fans for 34 years. And sometimes these fans simply enchant back with games like "The Booze of Monkey Island"!
(Image: "The Booze of Monkey Island")
There are a few universal words of wisdom in life: Dogs are man's best friend. What goes around comes around. And there will never be a better point-and-click adventure game than "The Secret of Monkey Island". Okay, Sierra fans may disagree loudly, but they've never had much to laugh about anyway.
But well, so be it. Nobody will seriously want to deny that the series created by Lucasfilm Games veteran Ron Gilbert with the first game released in 1990 has absolute cult status. Over the decades that followed, the series experienced more ups and downs than a sailboat in the middle of a typhoon, only returning in September 2022 with the content-wise excellent but graphically controversial"Return to Monkey Island", once again with Ron Gilbert at the helm.
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Will it ever continue? We don't know. But who needs official continuations of the monkey saga when fans are able to deliver little masterpieces like"The Booze of Monkey Island"?
The monkey snack
The Booze of Monkey Island was developed by a five-person Italian team called theBean Adventure Agency from the northern Italian town of Lucca, whose members have been working on it in their spare time since 2018. They are currently working on their first point-and-click adventure"The Adventures of Tango Rio", which is about to secure funding on Kickstarter.
Of course, the amateur nature of the game is obvious. For example, although there are four languages to choose from (German, English, Italian and Spanish), there is no voice output. And the German texts, which were also translated by a volunteer fan, are basically okay in terms of craftsmanship, but still full of bumpy wording, occasional typos and constant switching between "Sie" and "Du" within conversations –, i.e. the typical teething troubles that come with a limited team size and the associated lack of fine-tuning.
"The Booze of Monkey Island" (10 Bilder)
The Booze of Monkey Island
)However, "The Booze of Monkey Island" is not a complete game, but rather an adventure snack. The developers themselves call it "A mini pirate adventure" on the website. But honestly: "A declaration of love to the point-n-click genre in general and the Monkey Island series in particular" is more like it.
Where is LeChuck?
As an unofficial work from the hands of enthusiastic fans, the adventure is of course not part of the Monkey Island canon. The whole thing takes place at an undefined point in time on the Booty Island known from "Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge", where hero Guybrush Threepwood involuntarily drops anchor. His main task there is to lure three unruly customers into a grog bar in the game's handful of screens so that its owner (Ignatius Käse, known from the fourth part "Escape from Monkey Island") can repair Guybrush's ship.
Ignatius is not the only familiar character from the Monkeyverse with whom you have to deal: Captain Kate Capsize (disguised beyond recognition with a hair tie) and cartographer/up-and-coming pirate Wally B. Feed also play important roles. However, at this point you can clearly see that "The Booze of Monkey Island" is just an adventure movie: no Elaine Marley, no second largest monkey head in the world, no vegetarian cannibals far and wide – and above all no ghost captain LeChuck!
But there's plenty of humor, which captures the typically wacky style of the series in an amazingly authentic way. It's not exactly haha-thigh-threatening, and it definitely lacks the slightly surreal Ron Gilbert touch, but for a non-official Monkey Island it's more than okay, sometimes really funny and peppered with lots of inside jokes. Anyone who can still relate to names such as "Alain Trottier" will probably grin a lot during the two or three hours of gameplay.
Everything well under control
In terms of content, "The Booze of Monkey Island" remains true to the series traditions: the puzzles are not particularly difficult, but do require you to think around the odd corner here and there. The inventory, which can be accessed by right-clicking with the mouse, is very clearly laid out, making it very convenient to use the items in it to solve some puzzles. There are also a number of multiple-choice dialogs, some of which are crucial for the progress of the game, while the vast majority, as is tradition, are just a bit of drivel.
The controls are also kept very simple: It is not based on the classic "twelve verbs plus inventory" view of the first two games in the series, but goes more in the direction of the third installment "The Curse of Monkey Island": a simple click in the landscape sends Guybrush along at a brisk pace. If you hold down the left mouse button on an interesting object, a context menu opens from which you can interact with the object or character, use it or talk to it.
As a nod to the convenience of modern point-and-click adventures, you are also free to press the space bar at any time, whereupon all interaction points ("hotspots") currently in the picture are clearly marked. This also contributes to the rather low level of difficulty.
Ah, the Caribbean...
If the "Monkey Island" series has been notorious for one thing since the turn of the millennium, it is for its graphic experiments: whether "Escape from Monkey Island" (2000), "Tales of Monkey Island" (2009 to 2010), the two "Special Editions" of the first two games (2009 and 2010) or "Return to Monkey Island" (2022) – they all presented themselves in very different looks, sometimes 2D, sometimes 3D, which reliably managed to divide the fan community.
"The Booze of Monkey Island" should be spared this fate, as it is clearly based on the universally revered third part and presents a Guybrush to fall in love with! What beautifully designed characters! What lovely animations! What imaginative backgrounds! Of course, you can tell that enthusiastic amateurs were at work here and not full-blooded professionals. But that shouldn't matter in the slightest: The game looks just as great as it sounds!
The soundtrack by Andrea Boscarino is of course based on the original compositions by Michael Land, Peter McConnell and Clint Bajakian, and enchants right from the first "Deep in the Caribbean" fade-in. Just like the game, it is available in its entirety free of charge.
Off to Booty Island!
The question is, of course: how long will it stay that way? The "Monkey Island" rights have been with Disney for a while now, and their lawyers are known to be snappier than a pack of ravenous piranha poodles. So it really can't hurt to quickly fire up the download before this project disappears without a trace like so many other fan remakes before it.
The almost 650 megabytes for the PC version are an excellent investment in any case: as a pure adventure game, "The Booze of Monkey Island" is honestly only average, and the puzzles won't win any innovation awards. However, the development team has not tried to reinvent the point-and-click wheel, but has simply written a wonderful love letter to a legendary game series, with a consistency worthy of applause that no fan should miss.
A final tip: As with most parts of the series, it's worth sticking with it until the very end of the credits...
(mack)
