Demo spills out for Bru & Boegie: Get da MILK! 

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

First installment in South African cartoon adventure series available on itch.io, coming next month to Steam

Adventure games are often about the pursuit of some ancient artifact, invaluable treasure or other mysterious MacGuffin, but anyone who isn't a morning person knows that one of life's most important quests is a good cup of coffee. Of course, you have to have the appropriate accoutrements to go with it! And that's going to be a problem in Bru & Boegie: Get da MILK!, the debut installment of MIKDOG's episodic point-and-click adventure series. 

While his best friend Boegie stays behind to tend things at home (and offer a bit of guidance to get started), the "caffeine-craving man-child" Bru has a simple solo mission: to get some milk for his morning coffee. Normally it's an easy task to bop down to the "shoppie" and pick some up, but not when your dog is lying on the map, your tricycle is locked down, the alarm fob is missing, and the "local townsfolk of Kifftown are ready and waiting to exchange ridiculous banter." To succeed you'll need to scour the colourful cartoon environments for a variety of unusual items and "use them in the mooniest of moon-logic ways to reach your goal."

Conceived by Mike Scott in university over two decades ago, Bru & Boegie have starred in numerous webcomics and printed books over the years since, along with a number of animated shorts. Get da MILK! marks the duo's first (but definitely not last) interactive adventure, promising a "STEAMING HOT cup of ridiculousness." How ridiculous? Well, consider the fact that neither the "stupid and confident" Bru nor the "wise and uncertain" Boegie (both voiced with distinctly South African accents by their creator himself) wear pants. Fortunately there is still somehow room in the protagonist's "tighty-whitie undies" to store any number of odd objects he deems fit to cram into his "pantsventory." The gameplay is otherwise quite conventional, with a simple point-and-click control scheme, loads of interactive hotspots (many just for laughs), a fast travel map and plenty of puzzles to solve. 

Bru's hunt for milk shouldn't take too long, with an expected play time of less than an hour, but along the way he'll encounter a "buncha weirdos" to engage in fully voiced conversation, such as the picnicking, maternally-minded Stacy and the curiously bread-headed next door neighbour. Rather than choose lines of dialogue, here you'll select from icons representing different topics, including some amusingly philosophical non-sequiturs. The action is accompanied by "groovy soundtrack" with "catchy tunes to make you feel kiff." (Consult any South African to English translator to know what that means.) At home you can play a light arcade game called "Meditation Hero" to blow your negative thoughts away, while out and about you should keep your eyes peeled for any collectible stickers you might find. And of course, it's never NOT a good time for dabbing performatively at will for no reason at all. 

If you're poor or a cheapskate (or both), a complete name-your-own-price version of Bru & Boegie: Episode 1 – Get da MILK! is available now on itch.io. However, on October 29th a more polished version of the game with added achievements will be launched on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux. (A demo for both is also available from their respective storefronts.) If you like what you see, there's more where this comes from when the bald boys return for a bigger quest to – you guessed it – Get da SUGAR! Be sure to check out the official Bru & Boegie website as well to learn more about the pair's exploits in other mediums.