Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town is a brand new upcoming point-and-click adventure game by imaginarylab and VLG Publishing. Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town is a pretty interesting title because it is a return to the classic point-and-click genre and it takes heavy inspiration from some of the best franchises in the genre such as Monkey Island and Grim Fandago. This is our preview of Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town in which we put on our detective hat and search for our missing father.
Right after booting the game, you will notice the unique art style of the game. You also get cinematic cutscenes in the game. Since the game is themed around pirates, you will find the environment spooky, murky, and dark. That is after you complete the first level that takes place in your own house and you have to find the missing parts of your bike to head out. This level plays like a tutorial as you must find all of the hidden parts by searching, puzzle-solving, finding different items, and even combining different items to create new items for use. All of this is done while listening to the brilliant soundtrack of the game which is unique for every occasion and location.
As traditional point-and-click games go, the story is a vital role in these games because apart from the puzzle-solving and all the clicking here and there, you are ultimately there for the story. Willy Morgan wakes up one day and finds out a letter from his father who tells him to look for clues in Bone Town if he goes missing. Turns out, his father has been missing for almost 10 years now and he is only receiving the letter now. After reading the letter, Willy Morgan makes up his mind to go to the pirate town of Bone Town and look for clues about his missing father and try to solve the mystery behind his disappearance.
In the game, you are playing as Willy whose father has gone missing and his mother is out on her own expedition. Just like you would expect from any other teenage kid, Willy is filled with energy, a spark for getting things done, and courage to face anything that comes in his way. Right from the start of the game, you would be listening to Willy’s humorous dialogue as he laments and comments on different things and as you fail to understand some basic puzzles in the game as well. Playing with Willy is great and his witty comments and dialogues will easily remind you of Guybrush Threepwood from Monkey Island and Manny from Grim Fandango. Dialogue plays an important role here to make the game more engaging as you try out different things to progress in the story.
The gameplay of Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town is exactly like you would expect from any point-and-click title inspired by the classics. You click around the screen on different items to know more about them or pick them/interact with them. If the item can be collected, Willy will pick them up and the item will appear in your inventory for later use. Most of these items are consumed or used as you progress in the game so you always have plenty of space in your inventory. You can also combine these items in your inventory to create new items that can be used in the game. If you use an item in the wrong place or you fail to complete a task properly, you will be greeted with a silly comment from Willy.
However, if you need a little help with finding the interactable items on the screen you are currently present on, all you need to do is press the spacebar and it will show all items that can be interacted with. This gives you a slight hint as to which items you have to interact with but how and where is still dependent on your own thinking and skills. At any given time, a whole map is open to you and you have to freedom to explore the location and figure out what to do on your own. The game does not spoon-feed you. After the initial tutorials, it is all hardcore intuition-based puzzle-solving. If you are stuck, you are stuck. Figure out what to do next or use a walkthrough. There is no middle ground.
Since the game is still in development and I was playing a beta, there were a few hiccups here and there but I will not really consider them game-breaking bugs. After reaching Bone Town, for some reason, the audio went out and there was no dialogue sound that I could hear in the game even after restarting the title. This was a little annoying however nothing seemed to be game-breaking. Overall, I really liked the art style and the execution of the game. Willy Morgan and the Curse of the Bone Town is shaping up to be a hardcore point-and-click game that favors attention to detail, intuition, and good puzzle-solving skills.
The point and click genre is slowly fading away in the past however it is good to see developers like imaginarylab still making titles in this genre to keep the genre alive. While the Telltale series still features point and click gameplay, they are targeted at a more mainstream audience and are pretty simple to play. They are more aimed at players looking for the story rather than a complicated point-and-click adventure. Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town is a classic return to the point-and-click genre which gives freedom to players to explore the world on their own and find out what to do while staying true to the hardcore puzzle-solving and a brilliant pirate-themed setting. The full version is slated to release in August and I am certainly looking forward to it.
