iGR Insight - Kaptain Brawe: A Brawe New World iOS Review

Kaptain Brawe: A Brawe New World is a hidden item game in a fantastically realized interstellar setting. You take control of Kaptain Brawe (a space police officer) out to make his mark on the galaxy. The story revolves around Brawe and his quest for fame and glory while seeking out two kidnapped alien scientists. He and his crew will need to unravel the conspiracies that shroud the truth behind the SOS signal they receive at the outset of the adventure. Your adventure begins quickly, and after priming the ship for travel, Brawe lands on the planet Jama Spacea. Your journey spans four fully realized planets in all. Each location offers more clues that bring you closer to the survivors of the crashed ship.

The art direction is easily Kaptain Brawe: A Brawe New World’s strongest attribute. The characters and set pieces are gorgeous. Each of the 40+ locations are distinct and engaging. The use of a 3D interactive environments helps bring your interactions to life. Every item in the environment has been painstakingly articulated to reflect the quirky tone of Kaptain Brawe’s adventure.

The witty dialogue between characters also helps to convey the overarching theme of Kaptain Brawe: A Brawe New World. At times I felt like I was in control of Futarama’s very own intergalactic inept space captain Zap Brannigan, which is just about as funny as it gets. The chosen dialogue helps to distinguish Kaptain Brawe’s three main characters Brawe, Luna, and Danny.

Kaptain Brawe’s soundtrack and fx also helps define the experience. The use of sound brings the mostly static environments to life very well. Without a fitting soundtrack a game like Kaptain Brawe: A Brawe New World would continually stumble trying to establish it’s tone. Luckily the fx Cateia Games chose doesn’t suffer this setback. The musical score also help to convey the larger than life setting of outer space, and the alien worlds you visit.

The game play consists of navigating your environment and discovering objects that will help you to interact with your surroundings, and accomplish tasks. Many times you’ll need to find several objects and combine them to get the desired effect. This allows the user to problem solve in a fun, creative way. The recent update to Kaptain Brawe brought it up to version 1.2, and added an improved hints feature that guides players towards their goal without showing the exact steps needed to succeed.

The one area that detracted anything from my experience was the UI. It’s not that it wasn’t responsive, or pleasing to look at. The issue was simply the amount of menu navigation that was needed to equip an item and use it, and the amount of real estate the menus ate up. Titles like Machinarium have a very clever way of dealing with multiple items in your inventory, employing a collapsible “task bar” of sorts at the top of gaming space. This feature gave you rather easy access to your inventory by simply navigating your pointer to the top of your view, and didn’t intrude on the gaming space. The “left to the wolves” feeling I had when trying to solve the puzzles was quickly remedied with the upgraded hint system.

Being a 33 year old and an avid console gamer I wasn’t sure what to expect from Kaptain Brawe: A Brawe New World, but I was more than satisfied with my experience. The art direction is very pleasing, the witty dialogue fleshed out characters, the plot was enjoyable, and the soundtrack helped give life to your actions and surroundings. The UI misstep was the only opportunity for real improvement.

+ Beautiful animated visuals
+ Unique characters
+ Great Soundtrack
+ Fun plot

- User interface was a bit intrusive

Review Score: 7/10