Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island review

Set in an exotic world of evil Vooju (it's like Voodoo, only fictional) queens, bold pirates and green-skinned zombies, Ghost Pirates is a comic romp in the tradition of the LucasArts' classic point-and-click adventures. Created by Autumn Moon, the team who brought us A Vampyre Story last year, it uses the same simple but elegant control system, and mix of lovely painted backgrounds with 3D character models. The voice acting and music are pithy and evocative.

You control three separate characters: Papa Doc, a Vooju priest; Jane Starling, a dashing and improbably proportioned pirate, and Blue Belly, a rotund cook with the misfortune of sailing straight into the middle of the things. As the adventure begins, all three have been separated from their bodies. Later in the game, they can function in either ghost or corporeal form.

Ultimately, your quest is to prevent an evil Vooju queen and a foul pirate from raising forces of unspeakable evil, all while clearing the name of the swashbuckling pirate king. In other words, exactly the sort of hokum you want in an adventure game.

The use of three characters means you can tackle multiple puzzles at once, so you're rarely left at a dead end. We occasionally had to resort to the traditional use-everything-on-everything trial and error method, but most of the puzzles function with a satisfying internal logic. The solutions are often as funny as they are logical, producing results like a coconut-based fight between a pair of belligerent zombies. Like A Vampyre Story, your inventory can contain the idea of an item, which then be combined with other items and ideas as you find them. This saves on a certain amount of backtracking.

Ghost Pirates isn't without its flaws. The plot is overcomplicated for such a short game – when the intro sequence started referring to characters we hadn't even seen, we wondered briefly whether we'd accidentally picked up the second instalment in a series. It's also a tad short – experienced adventurers can expect around eight to ten hours of play. However, we were impressed by the thoughtful, well-paced puzzle design, rich environments, great characterisation and humour which, if not laugh-out-loud funny, kept us smiling throughout.