Our Fearsome Heroine!
Nelly Cootalot is a point-and-click adventure game series in the vein of Monkey Island. The first game, called Spoonbeaks Ahoy! and released as Freeware, was created by one Alasdair Beckett from the Adventure Game Studio in 2007 for his girlfriend who also goes by the name of Nelly Cootalot.
In the first game, our heroine is in the midst of a rough sea bat—er, woken up from her sleep by the ghost of the great pirate Bloodbeard, feared by many a pirate but loved by all cute critters, who gives her the task of investigating the disappearance of spoonbeaks from the Barony of Meeth. When she gets her bearings and goes searching around the island, however, things stop being what they seem. Can our Pirate Girl clear up the mystery and save the birds?
Following a Kickstarter, a commercial sequel, The Fowl Fleet!
, was released with 3D characters on 2D backgrounds and voice acting.
An HD version of "Spoonbeaks Ahoy!", complete with full voice acting, came out shortly later.
The free version of Spoonbeaks is available for download here.
Tropes ahoy!
- Alternate Character Interpretation: In-Universe example: Although Bloodbeard was one of the most feared pirates and a scourge of the Seven Seas before he danced the hempen jig, cute creatures far and wide hailed him as their hero, as he was a friend to all of them.
- Aristocrats Are Evil: Baron Widebeard, who enslaved the spoonbeaks to mine the gold of Saul Mine and imprisoned the Leprechauns there, even going so far as to call it a "leper colony".
- Beard of Evil: Widebeard, natch.
- Bizarrchitecture: The Barnacle bar, whose construction takes a page from the "Structurally Unsound" school of architecture.
- …But He Sounds Handsome: "Damn that gorgeous liar!"
- Cipher Language: Piraglypihics, created by John Morton Franklin (actually Bloodbeard when he checks into hotels).
- Deadpan Snarker: Nelly can be this at times.
- Do Well, But Not Perfect: The hook-a-duck minigame, when you actually have the right tools for it. You have to net seven of eight ducks to get one of the ingredients for the Leprechauns' flag. Netting all eight of them gets you Widebeard's hate rant on a CD, which obviously is not what you're looking for.
- A Dog Named "Dog": El Mono, whose name is Spanish for "monkey".
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: Played for Laughs with Widebeard Tower, a dark, grimy tower on the outside, but very garishly colored on the inside, and with some sophisticatedly crazy ladies on the rooftop.
- Failed a Spot Check: After Nelly and Bosun Nethers confess to each other that they are going AWOL, Nelly jumps over the side of the ship.Nelly: See you on the dinghy!
Nethers: (just as Nelly jumps overboard) What dinghy?
(Splash!) - Faux Action Girl: An interesting variant in that while Nelly is simply too nice (and cautious) to be the fearsome pirate she claims to be, she does have the spirit to brave the wild seas and can work herself out of any problems she might encounter.
- Gargle Blaster: Anything that the Barnacle offers for sale.
- Hartman Hips: And beyond. Baron Widebeard's wife is skinnier than Nelly from the waist up, but her ass is as big as her entire husband.
- Horny Vikings: Bjorn and Olafssen, though they have settled down and opened a pirate technology shop.
- Incredibly Lame Puns
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Widebeard is Bloodbeard's evil brother!
- Meaningful Name: Baron Ironfeet Widebeard, natch.
- Moon Logic Puzzle: A jarring example: When you have to go undercover as Angelo Lightfoot, pilot extraordinaire, you have to pretend to enter the cockpit of the junky rocket. Sure, you can try the ladder, but Nelly knows better than to head into such a death trap. Instead, you have to use a rock from someplace else to bang on the pipe near the latter to break it apart. Then you have to use the talk command on the pipe to get the Dignified Ladies to think you're in the rocket by talking through it. Also, the final puzzle. The rocket puzzle does help set up another puzzle later on though that uses the same material to do the same thing.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Subverted on two occasions. Bloodbeard is actually a nice guy. And the Leper Colony of Saul Island? Actually a leprechaun colony.
- No True Scotsman: Averted in the case of the real Gull Latterday, who is the only vegetarian in his entire viking village.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Apparently, Nelly Cootalot is one moustache away from becoming Angelo Lightfoot, pilot extraordinaire.
- People's Republic of Tyranny: Spoofed with a poster for voting Widebeard for Baron: "He's literally the only choice!"
- Phrase Catcher: "Dancing the hempen jig" is always met with the phrase "..so 'tis the fate of us all."
- Pirate Girl: Nelly, though she doesn't have the usual subtropes of Action Girl and Little Miss Badass attached.
- Punny Name: Several. For starters, there's Captain Rehab and Barman Friday.
- Sequel Hook: After the events of the first game, Widebeard reveals, after decoding the piraglyphics on a random stone in the final area, that he now knows where his brother Bloodbeard's treasure is. Surely this means nothing.
- Shout-Out:
- The DaVinci Cod
- The iHook(TM), which references the iSeries of Apple devices.
- Trilby the cat burglar. Only here he's literally a cat.
- "Forget it, Nelly. It's Chinatown."
- Lucas, the salesman extra in the second game, provides two shout-outs to old LucasArts adventure games. Or at least he attempts to before Nelly cuts him off. "That's the second biggest..."
- Slapstick: Nelly falls victim to at least two pratfalls during the events of The Fowl Fleet, first tripping backwards into an open skylight, and later leaping over the side of a ship into the ocean.
- Spot the Imposter: One of the puzzles on the Gloomhold island is to deduce who is the real Latterday's heir and who is the imposter.
- Sweet Polly Oliver: Nelly briefly dresses up as a cabin boy. According to Nethers, it's an old naval tradition: Lord Nelson, for example, actually was a girl from Halifax. Oh, and captain Hardy was a girl, too.
- Those Two Guys: Bjorn and Olafssen. Their broken English speech patterns don't make it easy to distinguish which one is which.Bjorn: I am being Bjorn.
Olafssen: And he is being Olafssen! - Weaksauce Weakness: El Mono, the guardian of the mine where the spoonbeaks are being held prisoner, falls easily to oranges.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Who was the man trying to impersonate Gull Latterday in the second game, and what happened to him afterwards?
