Nelly Cootalot returns for beautifully illustrated sequel The Fowl Fleet

A helpful nudge from IndieGames reminds me to check the PC Gamer news vault for the words 'Nelly Cootalot', only to find that we've never even alluded to one of the loveliest AGS games ever made, Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy! Given that it came out in 2007, well before this site was launched, perhaps that can be forgiven, but if you haven't played it, and you enjoy games that make you click on things to make other things happen, you should probably give the (free) game a try.

Why am I going on about a freeware game from a million years ago? Because a sequel is on the way. It's named Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet , and it's on the Steam Greenlights if the following video inspires you to put your clicking finger to work.

Nelly Cootalot creator Alisdair Beckett-King has teamed up with Application Systems to develop the belated sequel, and as you can see from the enjoyably tongue-in-cheek Greenlight trailer, it appears to be shaping up rather well.

The Fowl Fleet will see pirate heroine Nelly Cootalot supplying answers to the following questions: "What is Baron Widebeard planning? Can he be stopped? In what way is a frozen volcano involved?" Questions that have plagued us all at one time or another, I'm sure. There's no word on a release date yet—last year's Kickstarter suggested a June 2014 release, although that's obviously come and gone.

I'll leave you with another trailer, which reassured me that the voice acting might be on the right track:

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.