Simple Review - Burly Men at Sea

Will these Burly Men at Sea deliver me all the fun of a lumberjack dance party? I hope there are fewer chainsaws...or do I?

Why don’t more games have sea shanties? There’s no better evidence of completely bored, half-insane people that need a break from one another. Imagine a world where we are all cooped up for months at a time and would see our mental state decay to such a degree. Blasphemy.

Burly Men at Sea is a game about brothers. A tale of three brothers - no, tales of tres. Excuse my french. These gentleman sailors swallow their spit and substitute curse words for helping old ladies across the street. These men are truly the butter beer of sailing. 

Fantastical stories await the three burly brothers as they weave through their own storybook. You will meet the weird. You will meet the dangerous. You will be unable to shake hands nor experience danger. Your interaction is limited to pointing in a direction.​

So. Many. C*cks.

​Burly Men at Sea is a storybook game with our monkey-minds slapping and hollering only when the full story unfolds. You can do a single branch within about 20 minutes. Overall, there are about 12 branches you can ultimately take. No open worlds. No secret, hidden, super-encoded collectible.

Just a sandwich and a story.

This...is nice. 

Your involvement mostly just revolves around directing these brothers using mostly binary choices. This can mean the difference between island-hopping and seducing some underwater creatures. Or being the master of all crows. Or saving the Royal Family from tearing itself apart.

Burly Men at Sea tries nothing out of a small comfort zone, but still ends up pretty entertaining at the end of the salty journey. Three sea shanties out of seven.

There once was a man from Nantucket. Instead of a head, he had a bucket. When strangers queried him why his head was a bucket, to them, he replied…

Fuck it.

You...are welcome.