Welcome to Late to the Party, a series in which I discuss video games that I’ve finally gotten around to playing. Today I’m going to talk about Burly Men At Sea, a 2D adventure game. I played Burly Men At Sea on a PlayStation 4 Pro and today’s post will be spoiler free.

I’ll admit, I had never heard of Burly Men At Sea before I added it to my PlayStation 4’s library last November. It was one of the free games available for PlayStation Plus subscribers that month and I just reflexively grabbed it without thinking about if I’d actually play it or not. Last month, after feeling like I was largely done with Injustice 2, I was trying to choose what to play next and Burly Men At Sea came to mind. Normally I do some research on games before playing but this time I decided I’d jump in blind and experience a game without any prior knowledge of it.

Developed by an indie studio called Brain & Brain LLC, Burly Men At Sea is a simple game about three bearded men who set sail on their boat in search of adventure. You guide them through a fairly short branching narrative that can be replayed over and over again to see all the story variations that occur depending on your choices. The tale of these bearded men is like something out of a kid’s storybook and Burly Men At Sea is the sort of game that I could see parents playing with their children.

To guide the three protagonists on their adventure you use the gamepad’s right stick or triggers to adjust your field of view, which in turn moves the characters. The left stick serves as a cursor to select and interact with the environment. It’s a very basic setup and Burly Men At Sea’s gameplay reminds me of those old point-and-click adventure games I played when I was a child in the 1990s.

Matching the elementary nature of the game’s story and gameplay is its simple but colorful pixel art. The graphics aren’t going to blow anyone away but they work within the context of a game like Burly Men At Sea. There’s also some good music to be heard while playing and during my entire time with Burly Men At Sea I didn’t encounter any technical issues or bugs.

To see and do everything in Burly Men At Sea will take about 5 hours and doing so will net you the game’s Platinum Trophy on PlayStation. Because of how simple the gameplay is and the fact that all story dialogue appears as text on the screen this is definitely the sort of game where you can be listening to a podcast or something else while grinding away for the Platinum.

Verdict

Burly Men At Sea is a charming little game and will appeal to those looking for a more relaxed experience or for something easy to play with their children. Having played through all the story permutations and acquired the Platinum Trophy, I’ve decided that I’m going to score Burly Men At Sea at a 7.0 out 10. Burly Men At Sea is a very basic game and there’s no standout feature to it but it performs well in what little it does and for me that’s enough for it to barely earn a 7.