Ghoul Britannia: Land of Hope and Gorey Review for Steam

Created by Binary Space studio (written by Broken Sword’s Jonathan L. Howard), Ghoul Brittania: Land of Hope and Gorey – a play on words of the phrase Rule, Brittania, is a charming and politically charged point-and-click adventure game in the style of 90s classics like Skull Island, albeit with a more modern it still stylized top-down isometric aesthetic. Set in a dark future post-Brexit future where you play as a dark skinned girl in rural old England, filled with non-too-sensible Brexiters itching to get rid of the foreigners, to say this game is politically charged would be an understatement.

Set in the aftermath of a Brexit, ‘Great’ Britain – in the form of its not-so-charismatic Prime Minister, Nigel Frottage (I wonder who that could be?) – promises to make Britain Great Again by having undead laborers take up the dirty, dangerous jobs that good British folk refuse to do. Unfortunately, before the ELU’s – Extended Labor Unit’s – can be deployed, the zombie mind control tower keeping them, well, controlled, blows up. Cue the zombie apocalypse and you, the player, waking up a few undisclosed months later to get on with your point and click adventures. 

The procedure that follows should be familiar for any fan of the adventure game genre. Something is broken – you need to fix it, and that will involve walking places and clicking on people. The task design wasn’t revolutionary but the dialogue and characters were smart, and getting what I needed to progress the plot was both intuitive and rewarding: to start up a generator I had to tell a dumb militia member to sod off, find a repair shop, get a permission slip from the militia reservist i casually flirted with earlier, bring it back to him, get the repair item, then go back to the generator – then I had to work the winch on an old truck to get spark plugs from a car on the other side of the electric barrier, where the ELU’s stood shuffling like bored, unattended retirees at a rest home.

The next puzzle section had me evacuating the rest of town as the undead piled in, but the real twist came when – spoiler alert – the game introduced an undead character whose woken up late and is a little slow on the uptake about his newly deceased status. This is where the tongue in cheek clever writing starts to flex itself and play around with the standard adventure tropes. All the zombie workers have smiley face helmets, and you can put one on to blend in – prompting your character to remark, when walking by an ELU, “I’m the fu*&^ corpse whisperer, me.” It’s awesome.

I don’t want to spoil too much of the rest of the plot, as there are a number more twists, but the game’s real sell is in its writing and the prevalence of a characteristically dark british humor that reinvigorates a time-tested adventure game formula. For fans of the genre, lovers of sharp, dark comedy, and curious newbies alike, Ghoul Brittania has a lot to offer. 

Check Out the Ghoul Brittania: Land of Hope and Gorey Trailer:

Ghoul Brittania: Land of Hope and Gorey comes out for PC and Mac via Steam Early Access on October 9, 2019. You can wishlist the game right now.