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Daily iPhone App: Scurvy Scallywags is great fun for landlubbers or first mates
Ron Gilbert is the great game designer mind behind popular series like Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, and the recent Deathspank games. His latest project is called Scurvy Scallywags, and arrived on iOS last week. The game is great -- it's a match-3 title that makes use of some excellent RPG and combat mechanics. While it's not the most polished thing on the App Store, there's a whole lot of piratey fun to be had. Gilbert (and his fellow developers) are obviously big pirate fans -- you may remember the great shanty scene from Monkey Island -- and this game has no lack of nice piratey touches, including hats, faces, and clothing to unlock, ships to build through a crafting system, and a whole lot of great music. The main goal of your match three adventures is to re-discover a lost pirate shanty. Whenever you come across a new verse, the gang of scabby buccaneers will happily sing it for you. There's also a fun twist in moving your pirate around the board. Whenever you match pieces, new ones will come in from the direction that you moved to match. Your pirate and enemy pirates are all in tile spots on the board, which means that with some nimble matching, you can keep your pirate away from the bad guys until you're ready to throw down in each stage. Scurvy Scallywags is great fun. I do wish the game was a little more full-featured -- most of the pieces you'll be matching are actually meaningless garbage pieces, and it would have been nice to give those some kind of function. But otherwise, the design is great, and the game has an excellent "just one more stage" feeling to keep you playing for a long time. Scurvy Scallywags is available on the App Store now for just 99 cents.
Ron Gilbert's Scurvy Scallywags sings a salty sea shanty
This is Portabliss, a column about downloadable games that can be played on the go. Ron Gilbert's Beep Games has a new game out on iOS called Scurvy Scallywags (subtitle: In the Voyage to Discover the Ultimate Sea Shanty), and it's a match-three puzzle game with light RPG elements and plenty of pirate humor. It's only 99 cents in the App Store right now, and that's probably all of the inspiration you need to go and download it, right matey? Oh all right, ye lousy landlubbers, I can put an X on yer treasure maps for ye. Scallywags is a bit of pirate-infused joy. It's a simple game with mechanics that don't always light the cannon fuse, but it's got enough charm, depth, and solid fun to justify the very cheap cost of admission. Plus, there are real sea shanties included.%Gallery-188719%
Ron Gilbert's Scurvy Scallywags plots course to iOS today
Ron Gilbert's latest, Scurvy Scallywags in The Voyage to Discover the Ultimate Sea Shanty, launches on iOS today as a universal app for $.99. Scurvy Scallywags is a pirate-themed match-three game with RPG elements. Players explore themed islands, match symbols and collect treasure. Oh, the life of a pirate! Iconic game designer Ron Gilbert is best known for his time at LucasArts back in the '90s, where he helped to create Maniac Mansion and the first two Monkey Island games. This year, Ron Gilbert completed a stint at Double Fine Productions working on co-op adventure game The Cave. %Gallery-188719%
Ron Gilbert's Scurvy Scallywags gets trailer, screens
Scurvy Scallywags, the upcoming game from Ron Gilbert and DeathSpank co-creator Clayton Kauzlaric, is a little different from most match-three puzzlers. As we learned in March, players can influence the direction in which the board collapses after making a match. This, in turn, can move their character around the board and allow them to engage in combat with other characters. The concept is a bit difficult to put down on paper, so thankfully there's a new trailer! Take note of the end of the video, as we're fairly certain this is the first sea shanty in history to feature a theremin.%Gallery-188719%
Ron Gilbert's next game, Scurvy Scallywags, is a pirate match-3 RPG
Ron Gilbert left Double Fine earlier this month with intentions to delve into all those games "left to be designed," but first he's working on a mobile game with Deathspank co-creator Clayton Kauzlaric. It's called Scurvy Scallywags in The Voyage to Discover the Ultimate Sea Shanty: A Musical Match-3 Pirate RPG.Scurvy Scallywags is, in its simplest terms, a match-three game. But it has a twist: After a match, rather than the pieces falling straight down, the board collapses in the direction you swipe. It's an intuitive way to play, Gilbert writes on his blog."An odd side effect of doing this was you could move pieces around the board," he says. "So unlike Puzzle Quest – and just about every other match-three RPG that sprang up after it – in Scurvy Scallywags you actually move your hero/pirate around the board and position her/him next to enemies to do battle. It creates this new layer to the matching that is a lot of fun."Gilbert hopes to have Scurvy Scallywags out on iOS in the "next month or so," with plans to port it to Android later on. After that, he'll probably start working on every other game that hasn't yet been designed.
Ron Gilbert leaves Double Fine Productions
Veteran designer and The Cave creator Ron Gilbert announced his departure from Double Fine Productions to "plot his next move" in the industry. In a post on his blog, Gilbert profusely thanked his former colleagues and studio founder Tim Schafer, saying it was a "true pleasure to work with every one of them," and simply that it was time to move on.Schafer and Gilbert, who co-wrote The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2, reprised their working relationship in 2010 when Gilbert joined Double Fine Productions. After two years of toil, Gilbert released the literally full-of-junk The Cave earlier this year.Gilbert's short-term plan is to continue working with DeathSpank co-creator Clayton Kauzlaric on an iOS game, which he revealed has the catchy moniker of Scurvy Scallywags in The Voyage to Discover the Ultimate Sea Shanty: A Musical Match-3 Pirate RPG - the man does like his pirates. But clearly Gilbert has intentions beyond that, with the 49-year-old arbiter of adventure pointedly noting there are "so many games left to be designed."
