Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet – Switch Review

Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet is a beautiful point and click adventure game with a quirky plot and charming characters. However, its simple puzzles and frustratingly clunky Switch controls do not allow this game to shine as brightly as it might have done.

You play as Nelly Cootalot: pirate, adventurer, and bird lover, and are tasked by your ghostly mentor Captain Bloodbeard to find his lost “Treasure of the Seventh Sea” before the evil Baron Widebeard can get his hands on it. You are joined by your bird friend and companion Sebastian, voiced by Tom Baker, who can assist you with puzzles or provided hints when you get lost.

As with any other point and click game, Nelly’s adventure is repeatedly halted whilst you explore new areas to find objects to help you carry on your way. Though disappointingly these areas are often quite small and everything you can find is used by the time you leave. In this sense, the puzzles that are thrown at you are quite simple. Never was I stumped by one for which I had already gathered all the necessary items, it was always that I had not spoken to a specific person or visited a new location yet. Once I had everything, the pieces came together quickly.

Furthermore, the smaller levels did nothing to alleviate a huge frustration for me, Nelly’s walking speed. For a person on an important quest, she does not half take her time to go anywhere. Due to clunky controls I would accidentally click the wrong part of the screen and watch Nelly walk for five minutes away from and then back towards what I actually wanted to examine. An ability to skip animations or speed them up would have been greatly appreciated.

At least this gave me more time to appreciate The Fowl Fleet’s 2.5D aesthetic. The overall look was like that of a storybook, but the slight depth to character models made them feel just that tiny bit more real and was a style that really suited the game.

Whilst I appreciate Application System’s efforts given their smaller team size, Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet was at times not fun to play. Even when I did enjoy it, I could not help but feel like I would rather be playing something else. I often found the game a struggle to finish, not from difficulty but from sheer annoyance at the controls. If point and click adventures are generally not your thing, you might want to give this game a miss.

Thanks to Application Systems Heidelberg for the review copy.