Cleo - A Pirate's Tale Review

Initially funded through Kickstarter by over a thousand backers, Cleo - A Pirate’s Tale takes players through a charming pirate adventure divided into four storybook-style chapters. Inspired by classic LucasArts adventure games like the Monkey Island series, Cleo offers a combination of speaking to animated NPC characters, exploring islands, gathering various items, and solving simple puzzles. Cleo was created by solo developer Christoph Schultz as his first full game release, and I can confidently say I enjoyed my time with it.

The game follows Cleo, a girl who dreams of going on an adventure and becoming a real pirate. After a series of supernatural events involving ghosts, a giant Kraken, and a talking parrot, Cleo embarks on a glorious adventure to find an ancient and powerful treasure. The game takes you to many unique, piratey locations, which are essentially puzzle-filled areas where you need to help NPC inhabitants complete various tasks. These range from helping a swamp monster grow a moustache to fixing a drink mixer machine, and the game does a great job of keeping things goofy and lighthearted.

Cleo doesn’t outright tell you what quests are in progress or how to complete them. This adds a challenge, harkening back to classic adventure games, where you might even need to pull out a pen and paper to write down a code or important dialogue. I had admittedly gotten stumped a few times and had to look up a walkthrough, but that’s all part of the fun. The puzzles are fairly simple as well, you typically just need to find a series of items and insert them in a certain order to complete a recipe or unlock an area. Covering every nook and cranny of the map to find an item can be a pain at times, but the game’s art style, vibrant environments, and ambient music make it more enjoyable.

Cleo’s voice acting is a standout feature for me, on par with many AAA titles. It’s some of the highest-quality dialogue I’ve ever seen in an indie title and each character sounds quite unique. There are clever jokes and fourth wall breaks scattered throughout your conversations as well. When speaking to an NPC, there are often two or three dialogue choices, and one will progress you through the story. However, I enjoyed exploring all the available options since the voice acting was so consistently solid. The plot itself is also engaging throughout with a few basic twists to keep you immersed and looking forward to where Cleo’s adventure will take you.

One interesting feature is a minigame called Kraken Fodder, which is a fairly substantial card and dice game built within Cleo. I believe this is a completely unique game and I was surprised to see it fully available to play. It’s mostly RNG-based, but there is some minor strategy involved and I enjoyed the change of pace from Cleo’s main gameplay. Though, one complaint is the animations are noticeably laggy, likely due to an entirely different 3D graphics style used within Kraken Fodder. There’s also a fishing minigame to further mix up overall gameplay. Controls and movement are fluid, but very standard. In fact, Cleo is more of a point-and-click game where combat is inconsequential. The vast majority of your time is spent exploring, and I appreciated that you’re given a fairly speedy sprint option, which makes backtracking and fetch quests less of a chore. Lastly, areas aren’t particularly large, so you won’t feel overwhelmed when reaching a new location to explore.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time with Cleo - A Pirate’s Tale. There are nuggets of comedy sprinkled throughout and references to similar games. For example, when asked to gather twenty flowers for no apparent reason, Cleo sighs and comments on it being a fetch quest. However, these seemingly boring quests always have a few twists and turns to make them more engaging than simply gathering stuff. In the previous example, the last flower is just out of reach, and you need to go through a sequence of puzzles to unlock the area to collect it. Once that’s complete, a clever joke (which I won’t spoil) awaits you at the other end.

I think that Cleo - A Pirate’s Tale is severely underrated and deserves more attention, especially by fans of classic adventure games. It’s a homage to the genre, but also a solid addition in its own right. You won’t feel bombarded with references and will want to see where the story goes next. The amount of content is also fair at about five hours and the story wraps up rather nicely. I’m looking forward to the developer’s future work and hope to see a sequel.