Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! HD

Nelly Cootalot

Nelly Cootalot is the stupidly named pirate adventurer with a heart of gold. Uncover corruption and wanton punning in this HD revival of a classic freeware adventure game.

The revenue of the game - after fees and taxes are deducted - will go to the RSPB, a British charity taking care of our feathered friends (birds).

Story

Nelly Cootalot, fearsome pirate and lover of tiny and adorable creatures, is charged by the spirit of a dead buccaneer to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a fleet of birds known as spoonbeaks. Her adventure will bring her face to face with the nefarious Baron Widebeard as she uncovers corruption and wanton punning in the Barony of Meeth.

Key Features

Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! is your opportunity to:

Rescue endangered and unusually named wildfowl.

Acquire morally dubious items on behalf of minor aristocrats.

Intercept the private correspondances of a daredevil pilot.

Come to the aid of downtrodden supernatural beings.

Be confused by obscure colloquialisms.

Borrow facial hair from long-dead pirates.

Wantonly misuse the word 'borrow'.

Background

Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! was originally released by Alasdair Beckett-King hundreds of years ago in 2007. The game started out as a birthday present for his girlfriend and got wildly out of hand. In 2016, he even made another Nelly game called Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet.

The HD remastering of Spoonbeaks Ahoy! brings the original game back to life, with a streamlined interface and loads more pixels and voice over (!) for the first time. Read the details below!

Alasdair has been tweaking and polishing (and breaking and fixing) Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! for many months now. 1920x1080 HD resolution and a FULL VOICE OVER in English are the obvious highlights. Here is the full list of the improvements we've made to the original 2007 game.

New resolution

The game now runs in full 1920x1080 HD, (as well as other widescreen resolutions). This is flipping massive compared to the tiny, square original graphics (see trailer video).

Full voice acting (English only)

Extremely cheap voice acting by Alasdair Beckett-King, real Nelly and literally no one else. Think of it as a director's commentary where he got to do a load of dodgy accents. (Yes, this feature CAN be switched off.)

Support for more operating systems

Full support for macOS and Linux as well as all recent Windows systems.

Other improvements

Streamlined point & click interface.

Improved launcher app.

Bad jokes replaced with good jokes (we wish).

New "business" model

Revenue goes to the birds.

We've put a lot of work into this remastered edition. However, Spoonbeaks Ahoy! is a shorter game than „The Fowl Fleet“, and the original was freeware. So we've decided to make this release super, super-cheap.

Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet

In 2013 Alasdair ran a successful Kickstarter to fund a new stand-alone Nelly game (Nelly Cootalot – The Fowl Fleet). With the support of over 1000 backers, Alasdair teamed up with Application Systems Heidelberg in 2014. With ASH on board, the project rapidly grew in scale, adding cross-platform support, text localisation, German voice acting and tons more animation in glorious High Definition.

The Fowl Fleet isn't a sequel to Spoonbeaks Ahoy! It is a new Nelly story and it is not necessary to play one to understand the other.

The budget for the new game grew from the modest Kickstarter haul to a six figure sum, with a team of 45+ people across 4 countries. Blimey, we've been busy!