Burly Men at Sea is a folktale about three large bearded fishermen, named Hasty, Steady, and Brave, that has recently been released on Steam after appearing on iOS and Android. The brothers set out looking for adventure after finding a map and your choices and direction will decide how the story plays out. While it can control like a point and click adventure there is no inventory, no puzzles, and no fail state, just the continuing story that you tell. The game will start and end with the same event but you are able to run into two different events in between them, and each one allows you to play things out in different ways. Even when repeating the same situation on a new journey the brothers might end up doing something else, possibly changing the outcome or situation in events you thought you had already fully explored. Repetition is avoided both by the possibly of events playing out different and by the brothers remembering their past adventures and commenting on their previous experiences. The game has a simple but very fitting and charming art style and the sound effects are made entertaining because they are all done by human voices.

Burly Men at Sea is an odd sort of game, with it's simple art style, repetitive music, simple story threads, and child friendly tone, it feels less like a game and more like a bedtime story that gets read to a child every night to help them fall asleep. Things get even less complicated when talking about the gameplay, you have move left, move right, and interact. Things never get more complicated than that. Each playthrough takes about 20 minutes give or take and while that sounds ridiculous what BMAS does have is it's unique story branches. It's not ridiculously expansive but every choice you make in the game leads you down a completely different narrative path, which is pretty dang ambitious for a game of this caliber.

While I wouldn't call any of the narrative paths engrossing there's a certain childish charm to them that I found myself wanting to stay in (enough so to 100% the game). The only downside to it is that once a narrative path has been exhausted there really isn't any reason to return to it (aside from if you'd just like to play it again?).

I can see this being a great game for parents to play with really young children and it's admirable that a game essentially for toddlers can still manage to be enjoyable for an older audience. While I don't see myself returning to it anytime soon, Burly Men at Sea has enough charm and uniqueness for me to recommend it.

So like this indie game is super wholesome, and hecka interesting. While I personally don't like the title as it feels very bland, the overall simplistic style of the art reinforces a lot of the game itself. This is a game about going a little adventure, and making choices to get different endings. It's a lot like the Stanley Parable, but far more wholesome and genuine. If you like choose your own adventure games, then I strongly suggest you give this one a look as it's rather short, and kinda an easy platinum. It's super quirky and fun with all the noises that are made each turn.