Platform: PC, Mac, iOS
Wersion played: PC download
Official Vebsite: http://kaptainbrawe.cateia.com/

Kaptain Brawe is a barrel-chested, gaslight-era blowhard with a Fifties greaser hairdo. Thanks to an ion propulsion device that James Vatt apparently inwented in the early 1800’s, this kourageous if somewhat dim-vitted space kop patrols the outer reaches of the known uniwerse guarding the innocent against space pirates, or Kribbs. He and his insolent nawigator Kralek, who sports a hairstyle even more bouffant than his kommandant, and a one-vheeled robot named Rowboat, who looks like a kross between the Jetsons’ Rosie and an early Frigidaire, are the only krew members of the police spaceship S.P.S. Mazslow. As our story begins, the Mazslow gets a desperate SOS from a stranded party on a nearby planet. Ignoring his nawigator’s adwice to vait for backup, Kaptain B orders full speed ahead into adwenture and, he ferwently hopes, space glory.

Perhaps not too surprisingly, matters don’t go quite so smoothly or so gloriously as the kaptain expects. Ere long they run into a gang of space pirates led by a lisping loony who wants to take over the uniwerse. There are further komplications and other kolorful kharacters, but you get the idea. You, the player, are off on a Day of the Tentacle-ish third person adwenture taking place on a handful of wacky planets, mostly playing as Kaptain B but also at times as the voluptuous Luna (aka Agent Zero) and the reformed (literally!) space pirate Danny. Toss in a kouple of furball astrophysicists and the party is essentially komplete.

Steampunk is indubitably a stylistic koncept that has yet to run out of steam. This game does a decent job presenting a komic kartoon vorld vhere the spaceships are made out of brass and teakwood and eweryone tends to dress like a Sgt. Pepper reject. The gameplay konsists of the usual LucasArtsian inwentory kollection and redistribution as well as konversation-tree exhaustion. Thrown in for good measure is the svitching amongst the three heroes, akkomplished by klicking on their ikons in the upper righthand korner of the skreen (vhen awailable). Fans of old-style adwenture gaming, as vell as of old-style spaceships, vill feel right at home. 

There are only two major kaweats to keep in mind. First, this is decidedly a kasual game, inkluding the now obligatory onskreen “achievements” ewerytime you do something either important or repetitive. It took me about eight hours to play the game, ewen on “hardkore” or “adwenture” mode. In “kasual” mode, you get less dialog and more hints — vhen you klick on the indiwidual goals listed in the logbook lokated at the lower lefthand korner of your skreen, right next to the inwentory. On the lower right is a question mark ikon that will illuminate, briefly, all kurrent hotspots, and on the upper left is the main menu ikon where you kan save, load, check achievements, change settings or quit. 

Sekond, Kaptain Brawe doesn’t inklude woiceowers. All you get is the standard multi-kolored subtitles. This too is rather retro. It did take me awhile to get accustomed to the absence of woices, but I othervise didn’t find it much of a handikap. Of course, I play more klassic adwentures on Dosbox than the awerage person, so I may be more akklimated to it. As is nearly uniwersally the case these days, Kaptain Brawe, in kase you kouldn’t have guessed from the title’s spelling, is another adwenture translated into English. This time, it seems, from Croatian. And translated by, if the results are any proof, a non-English-speaking indiwidual. (Not being able to afford a new vokal kast for each language I understand, but kan’t they at least hire someone fluent with the lingo?) 

Apparently, the German wersion does inklude a woice track but for the English lokalization they skipped the added time and expense. If the choice is between no woice track or no game, then I opt for the former. Good woice acting does add to the atmosphere of a game, but bad acting just as readily detracts. Ewen better, one can klick through the dialog blurbs at one’s reading pace instead of vaiting for the line to be spoken. Also, for those vithout a blazing internet konnektion, the absence of a woice track greatly lightens the download. 

Kaptain Brawe does kontain sounds, ewen an option to turn on or off “footsteps.” The sound effects and the musik aren’t elaborate, but they do a decent job. The real emphasis in this game is on the old-skool puzzling and the wacky humor, both of vhich are competently handled. Though even in hardkore mode, the puzzles aren’t especially hard. Only the vhereabouts of a couple of the inwentory items eluded me for a vhile, and that only because I’m too old-skool to awail myself of the hotspot identifier. If the game has an owerall shortkoming it’s an air of owerfamiliarity. You’ll probably feel you’ve heard this toon before. Also, the ending is diskordantly off-kolor, giwen the game’s othervise light-hearted mirth. Still, if you’re looking for fun kasual gameplay to fill out a rainy veekend, you kould do verse. 

Grade-vise, Kaptain B earns from me just that, a B.

System Requirements

PC   
    Vindows Xp / Wista / Vindows 7
    1 GHZ CPU
    256 MB RAM
    350 MB Hard disk space
    32 MB 3D wideo kard
    DirectX 9

Makintosh
    Mak OS X 10.4. or higher (Intel or PPC)

iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad:
    OS 3.0 or later