The Marvelous Raincaster of Yell Holler looking like a hoot

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Unique time-looping "puzzle ballad" unveiled by the creators of Doggins and Burly Men at Sea 

The husband-and-wife duo Brooke and David Condolora at Brain&Brain have treated us to a pair of delightfully charming narrative adventures over the years (Doggins, Burly Men and Sea), and soon they will look to do so once again in the upcoming "puzzle ballad" called The Marvelous Raincaster of Yell Holler.

Writing the perfect song is part inspiration, part iterative reworking of ideas until it all comes together just right. Both will be front and center as you play "a folklorist visiting the rugged hill country of the Ozarks." There an old hat-wearing crow sings his "chronicle of local lore" about a haughty, "(somewhat) legendary weather-making rooster." Unfortunately, he has a tendency to forget how it goes, making him an "unreliable storyteller." It'll be up to you, then, to help rewrite his "wayward ballad by rearranging its stanzas." But while that may sound fairly straightforward, it comes with a crucial complication, as "each stanza you move is also a moment in time: shaped, like most folklore, by what comes before."

The Marvelous Raincaster of Yell Holler features another delightful minimalist presentation by these developers, its simple hand-painted aesthetic befitting an animated storybook told entirely in verse. Described as a "time-looping puzzle ballad," the game will "strut [the] leggish hero" in side-scrolling fashion through a variety of environments populated by a "strange cast" of animal characters, including a possum playing dead, a banjo-strumming raccoon and a bespectacled giant turtle. Throughout the rooster's travels you'll need to "orchestrate a shindig and other such matters, gain the assistance of a traveling conman salesman [and] gather scraps of folk wisdom to decipher how events weave together." It's not just the accuracy but the sequence of events that matters here, because as you begin rearranging the order of the ballad, its stanzas will impact the timeline in tangibly altered ways, creating a "ripple effect on the whole." The challenge is in figuring out how best to use this mechanic achieve your objectives, rewinding time to try again when necessary. 

We'll need to fast forward to an as-yet-unspecified time in the future before seeing The Marvelous Raincaster of Yell Holler released on Steam for Windows and Mac, but you can check out the game's official website for ongoing updates while you wait.