I’ve spent the past few days sinking my canines into Jolly Rover, a traditional point-and-click adventure from Australian developer Brawsome. In a genre sometimes considered inaccessible, if not deliberately obscure, Jolly Rover impresses with its subtle comedy, logical puzzles and mercifully understated voice-acting. We spoke to Brawsome’s Andrew Goulding shortly after Jolly Rover received the 2010 Freeplay Award for Best Australian Game.
Jolly Rover’s most assured feature is its script. I’m therefore surprised when Goulding identifies it as an area of concern. “Being my first time writing for a game this was the thing I was most worried about. It was also the thing I most cared about because I want to do more of it. I thought I could write for a game, but wouldn’t know for sure until it was out there.” Though he lists “design and writing” as his chief interests, the economic reality of independent development saw Goulding wear a range of hats. “I took on just about everything that didn’t constitute art and audio,” he says, citing programming, voice casting and marketing among his many responsibilities.
In announcing Tales of Monkey Island, LucasArts and Telltale Games inadvertently triggered the darkest chapter in Jolly Rover’s development. While comparisons with the pirate themed classics were already inevitable, Goulding now faced the prospect of sharing virtual shelf space with the genre’s most celebrated franchise. “I almost wanted to quit when I heard that news,” he says. “I didn’t want to be seen as a ‘me-too’ product. But I’d come so far I couldn’t bear to quit. Plus I thought I could still make my own pirate adventure game that would stand on its own.”
Adventure games have enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years, with Telltale’s Sam & Max and Capcom’s Phoenix Wright among the more successful efforts. I ask Goulding to identify the impetus for the genre’s return to the mainstream, only to discover that my question may be based on a false premise. “I’d hardly say ‘returned to the mainstream’,” he says. “Yes Telltale has been the champion of adventure games but I don’t know if it’s really mainstream in the same sense that Halo, Call of Duty or Wii Fit is mainstream.” I take this as confirmation that Wii Balance Board support is coming to Jolly Rover, but you probably shouldn’t.
Though he feels that adventure games “may never get to the top spot again”, Goulding is encouraged by the proliferation of the genre, stating that “the increase in the number of titles can I think be directly linked to digital distribution”. Jolly Rover is already available to download from no fewer than seven online stores, including industry leader Steam. “Before digital distribution if you wanted to get a game out you’d need to convince a publisher it was going to sell. Now, you can just get it out there online. It allows you to reach niche audiences with lower overheads.” According to Goulding, taking “out the middleman has allowed developers to actually make a living doing what they love.”
However, his decision to bring Jolly Rover to Steam wasn’t universally welcomed by those anticipating the game. “I’d heard some people didn’t like Steam,” he confirms, “but it did surprise me how vocal some people were about it after the game was released. I think Steam is hands-down the best digital distribution method for gamers and developers. I saw distribution on Steam as key to success. And I have certainly seen the bulk of revenue come from Steam. Honestly, without Steam, Jolly Rover could have been an abject failure.”
In 2003, Goulding used the fan-friendly Adventure Game Studio toolset to release Just Another Point and Click Adventure. He was part of a small but dedicated community of enthusiasts sustaining a genre that, at least in a financial sense, had long since collapsed. Therefore, it’s hardly surprising that he decided to abandon the genre when he set out to make his fortune. Actually, that’s a blatant lie. History tells us that Goulding contributed to the development of casual adventure games Emerald City Confidential and Avenue Flo before releasing Jolly Rover into a hostile market. “I was concerned about the commercial prospects of Jolly Rover,” he concedes, “but if you look around there are still high quality adventure games being made and selling, though they’re not selling in great numbers, as far as I know.”
While cognisant of the trials awaiting him, Goulding remained confident that his game could appeal to an underserviced niche. “The adventures games that are being made are for the most part high-end 3D games with a focus on realism, or low-end 2D titles. Telltale, I believe, comes in at a sweet spot between the two and focuses on characters and story and a more cartoony style, but they’re also episodic. With Jolly Rover I felt there was a hole in the market for a high quality full length 2D adventure. There are other companies doing that as well, such as Daedalic with The Whispered World, but I still felt Jolly Rover would find its place among these few titles.”
We ask Goulding to list some of the stumbling blocks that he faced in bringing Jolly Rover to market. “Distribution and marketing were the two biggest challenges,” he says, “mostly because I didn’t know exactly how I would get them.” Fortunately, as an active participant in the indie development community, Goulding was able to trade “ideas and expertise” with his fellow creators. “It seems we band together around the business aspects because they’re the things we’re all still figuring out,” he says. This spirit of cooperation doesn’t appear to apply to the creative aspect of development, at least not to the same extent. “We don’t talk about design much, we figure we’ve got that covered. We all have our own unique ideas and actually keep them fairly close to our chest. But we’re quite open about the marketing, distribution and networking side of things.”
Though many have described the iPhone as the perfect canvas for adventure games, Goulding once had his eye on an entirely different handheld console. “I originally wanted to bring Jolly Rover to the DS,” he says, “because I thought that was the ideal platform for adventure games.” He is certainly not alone in his assessment, with Lost in Blue, Hotel Dusk and Another Code among the dozens of adventure titles already available on the format. Though Jolly Rover is going great guns (or should that be muskets) as a PC release, it’s clear that Goulding still harbours a desire to see his baby released on other systems. As for the iPhone, he remains uncertain. “The screen does seem a little small for adventure games,” he muses. “I think I’d prefer to port Jolly Rover to the iPad, but I wouldn’t mind seeing how it would look on the iPhone, even if I don’t release it.”
What’s next for Andrew Goulding and Brawsome? “Currently I’m working pretty much full time on various contracts for other people. This is just to make ends meet, so unfortunately I don’t have the luxury of time to develop my own ideas.” This is not to suggest, however, that Goulding will permit economic concerns to derail his artistic ambitions. “There are plans for a sequel to Jolly Rover,” he says, “but development on that won’t start until I can do a game on the same scale as the original, which was quite large.”
He also alludes to a second, as yet unannounced, project. “I am talking with a designer friend about a potential new design of a puzzle game with adventure elements, which is looking pretty cool and I’m getting excited about it. We’d like to apply for funding to get the project off the ground, but I’m not entirely ruling out talking to the right publisher. So, any publishers reading this, come talk to the award winning Jolly Rover developer Brawsome about an awesome new project.”
Jolly Rover is available now on Steam, Club Casual and a host of other gaming portals. Our thanks to Andrew Goulding for participating in this discussion.
