Lost on Cow Island found on Steam

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Demo also available for classic-styled point-and-click comedy adventure on Windows, Mac and Linux

Monkey Island may get all the press, but turns out it's not the only animal-named island in adventureland. The latest you can explore for yourself in indie developer Tessier/Ashpool's newly released Lost on Cow Island.

Where and when cow island exists aren't entirely clear at first, but how you came to arrive there is not. Unfortunately, Doc Braun's time-traveling scheme didn't go quite according to plan, as the good scientist isn't always a stickler for details, and his chronology-challenged VW van has crash landed on the titular island. As Julius Templeton, the "erudite and sardonic English art student" who accompanied him, it's your task to explore the island, engage with its cast of "kooky af characters," and collect the dozen or more parts needed to get back home. 

Along with its obvious homage to Back to the Future, Lost on Cow Island is a traditional "linear story-driven comedy adventure game" inspired by the LucasArts classics, though its interface is more reminiscent of Sierra, with its cycling cursor icons between Look, Interact, and Talk. Fully voiced and entirely hand-drawn (apart from some AI-assisted inventory artwork), the game promises plenty of items to collect (and occasionally combine), "moon-logic puzzling" and humour as you converse with its eclectic cast of anthropomorphic animal cast. Not JUST cows, despite the title, as there are horse-people and hippo-people too, along with aliens, robots, ghost pirates and the occasional actual human being. Fortunately they're (mostly) friendly, but you'll nevertheless manage to get yourself into a variety of "impossible situations" to extricate yourself from over the course of a projected five or so hours of play time. 

If the game had you at "moo," the good news is that Lost on Cow Island is now available on Steam for Windows, Mac and Linux, along with a playable demo for those who'd prefer to milk a freebie for all it's worth.