Kaptain Brawe: A Brawe New World

Gaming Genres: Graphical Adventure
Story Genres: Science Fiction, Comedic
Graphical Styles: 2D, Cartoon, Hand-Drawn, Punk
Platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, iOS
Pricing Model: Pay $
Developer(s): Cateia Games
Publisher(s): Cateia Games
Initial Release Date: January 20, 2011
Website(s): Homepage
Description:
Set in a beautiful, hand drawn, alternative 19th century world, Kaptain Brawe has a cartoon appearance and is filled with humorous storyline and challenging puzzles. In the Kaptain Brawe universe, James Watt's invents a an incredibly powerful engine, the Polar Ion Drive, that allows mankind to colonize and explore space as early as 1812.

Step into the world of interstellar travel, where Space Pirates lurk at every corner. Kaptain Brawe, a Space Police officer will embark on a journey filled with quests, conspiracies and general chaos, as he follows the lead of two kidnapped alien scientists. Reveal the greatest conspiracy in the Space Age. Play with three different characters: Kaptain Brawe (who's character is based on Captain Kirk), Luna (a model/secret agent), and Danny (a space pirate).

Opinion:
A great little adventure.

The graphics are nice and really good but I would not go so far as to call them great. The puzzles similarly are good, there are a few problems, a few good parts, and few sections that show a lot of promise, but overall it is just good/decent. Probably the most interesting part of the entire thing is the setting, which is a steampunk Victorian, scifi, alternative past. But by far the most well done part is the dialogue. For the most part I find games that try to be funny, just corny and forced sounding; Which is not at all how Kaptain Brawe turned out, it is quite funny and more then worth not skipping.

But everything is not rosy. The game is a little buggy and way too short. It has around three hours of gameplay and not really worth the original selling price of $20 (you can find it for less now). Also at some points the dialoge is just filled with mistakes and the ending seemed really inconsistent to the rest of the game; The entire game seemed to be trying (quite hard at some points) to keep the adventure G rated and then at the end the villain gets sodomized by two inmates, which just seemed out of character.

Overall it is a great game and I liked it a lot. I hope that they produce sequels and I will play them, but there are two things that would really benefit from some polish. In the game you control a total of three different characters, by switching between them, and Rowboat the robot, who is used like an item. And it works great, they have very different personalities and often they must be used in tandem to get past a obstacle. But the characters are so diametrically different that I would of loved puzzles that could be solved in different ways depending on which character you are currently controlling and puzzles that are only solvable using a specific person because it requires a specific mental or physical trait. As it stands now the puzzles and their solutions are just too generic, Kaptain Brawe is supposed to be a overly brave stupid action obsessed hero type and yet he solves normal mental puzzles like everyone else and shows a complete lack of interest in just charging in and solving a puzzle disregarding of the dangers. The second thing I would love to see improved is the setting, it is supposed to be the 1800's but in space with one major invention and conceivably a bunch of others that it inspired. But the technology level is just far to high in all areas. Sure Kaptain Brawe's ship is made of wood but it still is absolutely filled with technological marvel after technological marvel and some places actually look like a futuristic normal scifi location, with metal domes and force fields. In some areas the technology should be extremely lacking and far more Victoria era steampunk architectural really should of been used (even the oldest looking, least technically advanced, things looked at least one hundred years too new).

Images (+):

Related Media (+):

• Trailer

Hints/Tips/Walkthrough (+):

• GameZebo Walkthrough

Indieness: Indie
Play/Watch?: Should Play