Ahoy, Matey!  Gather round to hear the tales of Nelly Cootalot, a whimsical pirate maiden. Baron Widebeard is out to plunder treasure; treasure that rightfully belongs to Nelly’s mentor, William Bloodbeard. Since Bloodbeard is sleeping with the fishes, it’s up to Nelly to chase down Widebeard and prevent the plunder of Bloodbeard’s legacy. Can you help Nelly, or will you end up walking the plank yourself?

Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet is a point-and-click adventure game. You’ll play as the title character, pirate Nelly Cootalot. Explore the land as you attempt to chase down Widebeard and unravel the secret of Bloodbeard’s final treasure hunt. Nelly is joined by Bloodbeard’s familiar, Sebastian. Sebastian is a bird who offers Nelly advice. He is voiced by Tom Baker, the fourth Doctor Who. That was the hook that made me want to try this game. He does a wonderful job, as does the full voice cast. I’m not used to seeing such exceptional voice-acting experience in a point-and-click adventure game.

The gameplay for Nelly is similar to what you’re used to in other adventure games. Move the mouse around the screen.Click to have Nelly walk to a new location. Click on an item to interact with it, such as picking up everything you can or talking to other characters.

Nelly is a character-driven story, so you’ll be talking to a lot of characters. Aside from Tom Baker, the game supports a cast of professional actors. The sound quality impressed me; and the expressiveness of our cast is what makes this game shine.

The first part of the game involves Nelly finding out where Widebeard is traveling to and then finding a way to follow him. The second part of the game furthers your search. The final part of the game is a treasure hunt for Bloodbeard’s treasure and the final showdown.

The puzzles are fairly straightforward, although I got stuck a few times. The answers were easy enough, but included just the right amount of trickery to make me think. Twice I spent hours pointing-and-clicking everything I could find with no end in sight. I stumbled onto the solution and started kicking myself for missing it .

The graphic style is whimsical and light. It’s suitable for a modern adventure, but not overly detailed. I prefer this approach over pixel graphics often used in modern adventures. However, the game world is not as detailed as something like Deponia.

The game system had some minor issues in the press build. Some hotspots didn’t highlight properly, but I could still interact with them. This didn’t hinder my ability to solve the puzzles, so I just accidentally found some interactions.

The approach to conversation was rough at times. Dialog options would not disappear when they lost relevance. Sometimes dialog options would appear in the middle of a list instead of at the end; making it easy to miss something if I wasn’t paying close attention. I easily added a few hours to my playing time strictly because I didn’t see a new dialog option that showed up at the top of the conversation list instead of at the bottom.

Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet is a good game that borders on being a great game! The voice acting is top notch, and I enjoyed the light-hearted nature of the character conversations. The puzzles are as perfect as possible. They may make you pause, but they won’t roadblock you for too long. If you like point-and-click adventure games, you’ll find a lot to like here.

+ Whimsical Characters + Great Voice Acting – Some hidden Hotspots – Clunky Dialog System