Yorkshire Gubbins is a funny comedy adventure game
Try the demo!
I don't write reviews so this isn't a review. The news is: Area Woman Plays Yorkshire Gubbins, Really Quite Likes It. That's news, yeah. Released in October 2017, Yorkshire Gubbins is an anthology of comedy point 'n' click adventure games featuring all the local touchstones you'd expect in god's own country: tea, ginnels, pies, slugpeople clones, robots, and the greeting "ey up". It's funny, it's warm, the puzzling flows nicely, and it's all a tidy length. The prequel and tutorial are free and all, so have a go.
Welcome to Yorkshire! (I want to say it's set round Hebden Bridge way? And not just because that's all I really know.) Tea is life, a witch and a wizard run the local print shops, robots are made of asbestos, southerners are inevitably tosspots, and the slugpeople cloning everyone are actually quite friendly. Unfortunately, they've also cloned our pal Bertrella on her wedding day. In a prequel episode we try to figure out which Bertrella is real, then in the first main episode we're trying to make amends for our imaginative investigative techniques.
Ah, it's great. Charlotte Gore's writing is daft and cheeky, with every conversation leaving me laughing or smiling. The voice cast, especially protagonist Steggy herself, have an infectious enthusiasm - especially when they say rude words. Puzzling is at just the level I like in adventure games, where I'll rare have more than six objects and solutions can be odd but they flow naturally with the tone, rarely requiring fiendish leaps of logic. And the farty synthbrass soundtrack is very fitting. I like this video game. That's the news: I like it.
Charlotte Gore (under the banner of her Stairfall Institute) plans to release more episodes later this year. Good. Lovely.
Yorkshire Gubbins is £4/€5/$5 on Steam, which will include those other bits to come. If you'd rather have a go first, you can play the excellent tutorial, Verb School, for free in your browser. A enjoyable tutorial is so rare but here we are. Holy Molluscamony, the prequel episode created during a game jam then revamped after this became a full thing, is free from Game Jolt too.
