Jolly Rover is a 2D graphic adventure game developed by Australian studio Brawsome. The game was released in early 2010 for the PC, distributed digitally.
The game takes place in an 18th-century pirate setting in which all of the characters are dogs. The game's story revolves around a sausage dog named Gaius James Rover, who is kidnapped by a crew of pirates, before becoming a pirate himself. The game play, characters, and story are comparable to the Monkey Island series, which the game makes multiple references to.
Gameplay
Jolly Rover is a traditional point-and-click adventure game in which players control the character of Gaius James Rover. The player must explore a range of environments, and solve a series of puzzles in order to progress through the game. The majority of the game's controls are performed with the use of the cursor, as the player uses Gaius to travel through different environments, pick up items, combine items, examine objects and converse with various non-playable characters.
At the beginning of the game, Gaius meets and befriends a parrot by the name of Juan Leon. The character of Juan Leon doubles as a hint system throughout the game, as Gaius may ask Juan questions in order to receive subtle hints. The player may also use Gaius to feed Juan crackers in order to receive increasingly stronger hints from the parrot.
Plot
The game is focused on a young and naive British Dachshund named Gaius James Rover who is sailing across the seas to deliver a cargo of Jolly Rover, a brew made of rum spoiled by tobacco to governor Guy DeSilver residing on Groggy Island, a small backwater and haven for pirates. However, James is quickly captured by pirates led by Captain Howell who is the first one to give him the nickname and titular name Jolly Rover.
After three weeks in capture, James Rover manages to escape and disguises himself and meets Juan Leon the Parrot, a wisecracking animal sidekick that would serve as the hint system for the game progress. But Jame finds that they have already arrived at Groggy Island and captain Howell simply orders him to roar him into shore.
James tries to confront Governor DeSilver and accuses captain Howell for trying his cargo but Howell denies it and settles the arrangements with delivering the same cargo of rum that he stole from James. DeSilver then proceeds to threaten a rather desperate and reluctant James to settle the debt of 50 pieces-of-eights by paying him 5 pieces per month or be put in jail and most likely hanged. James agrees the terms reluctantly and is recruited by captain Howell to be their ship cook for making up for the incident and that James disposed of their previous cook earlier.
During his quest to make "Salamagundi", a favored salad dish for the pirates, James is given by a Dalmatian retired pirate a guide book on Voodoo which will be very useful for the game such as Raise the Dead, Voices of the Dead, Scare Beast and Heat Iron. He also learns that DeSilver was a notorious pirate hunter who betrayed his own brother privateer later known as the legendary pirate Captain Silvereye, the nickname being that he used an eye patch with a silver coin attached to it. After Captain Silvereye mysteriously disappeared, DeSilver semi retired and became governor of Groggy Island, controlling the blackmarket trade with an iron fist. To make matters worse, James sneaks into his office and it is accidentally revealed that the corrupt governor is in league with a sinister voodoo priest by supplying him with human sacrifices (or rather dog sacrifices in this case) in exchange for immortality.
James completes his task by making the salad dish to the pirates and they have a round of rum. Though reluctant, James toasts his share of rum with the pirates but being extremely light headed, James promptly faints after only one drink.
During a dream flashback, it is revealed that when he was a young pup, Jame's father was a famous clown working for a circus and that the young pup promised to have his very own circus one day. James' father proudly encourages his sick son to sleep and walks off to work where it is highly suggested that it was the very same night where James' father was tragically comedic killed from a blow to the groin from an improperly loaded joke cannon.
