Previews

Gamescom '14 Pick - Her Majesty's SPIFFING is a charmingly xenophobic 3D point and click

Checking in from Cologne

Gamescom '14 Pick - Her Majesty's SPIFFING is a charmingly xenophobic 3D point and click
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iOS
| Her Majesty's SPIFFING

Last week, members of the Pocket Gamer and AppSpy crew were at Gamescom in Cologne. After eating our collective body weight in sausages, we're bringing you hands-on impressions of our favourite games from the show.

SPIFFING

Most indie point and click adventures try to ape the classics. Games like Fester Mudd and Gemini Rue are so defiantly low-fi, you'd think they were real relics of the early 90s.

But upcoming iOS adventure Her Majesty's SPIFFING, from Belfast-based micro studio Billy Goat Entertainment, is going for a more modern look, complete with bold 3D models and rich environments.

Think Telltale's take on Sam and Max, rather than LucasArts's, and you'll be in the right ballpark.

The game's cheeky and assuredly British sense of humour, however, is pretty timeless having cropped up in everything from Simon the Sorcerer to the recent Hector games.

In SPIFFING, you play as moustachioed patriot Cpt Frank Lee English who, along with his Welsh colleague Aled (who calls everyone "butt" - apparently a term of endearment in the valley), works to expand the British empire on behalf of Her Majesty.

But seeing as most traditional ways of doing that are frowned upon in today's society (accidentally infecting natives with smallpox is a pretty bad PR move), the Queen decides to focus her attention on faraway planets.

SPIFFING

As you travel to plop the Union Jack on habitable exoplanets, you'll have to contend with explorers from other nations, including France and the USA.

Developer Billy Goat plans to explore, undermine, and revel in the stereotypes attributed to those countries. Maybe it will be funny, maybe it will be horribly offensive. Maybe it will be both. We can only hope.

As for the actual game, it's a rather traditional point and click, with some modern interface tweaks and Walking Dead-style 3D movement. Also, there is rarely just one way to solve a puzzle and finding different solutions will result in different gags.

SPIFFING shows promise. It's funny, charming, and looks alarmingly professional coming from such a small team. But development is moving at a snails pace - mostly thanks to an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign, and the timesink of making each location look so good.

When it does finally come out, it will be delivered in three chapters and will appear on iOS, among other platforms. We'll keep you in the loop.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer