Elaine Marley and the Ghost Ship

This game plays out rather strangely. In fact, I was not initially even able to start the game. Instead being confronted with a long sidetrack of characters notes. Then after playing the "hour one" segment, There is a whole diatribe of notes that play out _very slowly_ in timed text. I couldn't find a way to skip it or adjust the very slow text timing.

Then onto "hour two";

More notes, then another really bizarre sequence of events.

Then "Hour three". This was even weirder.

So instead, I'll comment on the system;

The presentation is rather strange but unique, using a lot of timed text and some other text effects such as text appearing in boxes around the screen. There are sound effects which actually work quite well. There are some pictures presented and these seem to work nicely too.

The bizarreness of the game itself is somewhat entertaining. But I'm not sure whether that was the actual design plan here. The choices basically walk you though the puzzles and their solution, so you don't really solve anything except to control the order in which you do things.

Nevertheless, i think the weird and wonderful "campy" look does have a certain retro charm about it that lends itself to these sorts of fan remakes.

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/2/24
Playtime: 45m

This is an ambitious look back at and interrogation of an underserved character in the Monkey Island franchise. It bounces back and forth between old style point-and-click play (translated to Twine link-select), and some authorial side bars and digressions into the franchise history, the character, and their engagement with both. This kind of thing is very appealing to me.

From the outset though, it seemed plagued with technical burrs and frictions. For one, it makes use of the dreaded timed text. I find myself more forgiving than most in the community, but this implementation tested that sorely. For one, the opening scrolled intro both had no concept of window size, nor any concept of screen integrity. What I mean is, the text played out, below the bottom of the window requiring scrolling. If you found yourself fussing with slide bars and fell behind… the entire screen wiped before you finished it to start playing out the next one! Eventually, I full-screened the window (which you DEFINITELY HAVE TO DO), but still found myself unable to keep up. It was simultaneously too slow and too fast. For SURE there must be a pause for more at the end of every intro screen. (I am given to understand the current release tweaks these artifacts to some extent.)

This was not the end of the technical woes, however. There were link chains with no back or reverse, which, if you clicked on you needed to cycle through the entire thing again before returning to start. Different colors were used for character dialogue, at least one of which was chromatically close to the color used for links, resulting in link confusion. Graphic elements overlapped words or were completely missing. And oh that timed text, pervasive and stalling through it all. It seemed to be reaching for a conversational paradigm, the author/work talking to you in ‘real time.’ I can squint and see that. Honestly, waiting for text to present itself gave me time to do that.

You get it. Technically it is problematic. I will waste no more time belaboring the point. It is unfortunate that the technical issues intruded so deeply. There was real wit and verve in its homages to the Monkey Island era fonts and layouts.

The content of the game is more rewarding, assuming you can fight through to it. The light ‘point and click’ style puzzles were evocative of, though nowhere near as challenging as, its inspiration. Part of that is that while you can mimic the motions of mouse-to-hotpsot with mouse-to-link, pictures are famously worth orders of magnitudes of words, and you just get fewer hotspots with the latter. While unsatisfying as a puzzle, it surprisingly and pleasantly echoed that playstyle. It is the first time in a long time the Twine paradigm seemed more than an arbitrary UI choice.

Far more interesting was the interplay between that puzzly work, and the author’s inter-scene commentary on the game, the character and the history that informed both. It used the textual complexities of the inspiration to openly engage the boundaries between PC and NPC, and what ‘reality’ means in the context of fiction and gaming. Clearly the author had cause to pour a lot of thought into a character they found compelling but the narrative did not, and how that tension kind of exploded the whole thing for them. Leaving them to pick up and examine all the different pieces without the distraction of the functioning whole. Explosive deconstruction, baby!

There was a really encouraging amount of depth to engage here. Which made the ending kind of anti-climactic. Towards the end, after some time toggling between light puzzle/escape-the-boat play and digressions into lore both real and fictional, it unexpectedly and abruptly turned into (Spoiler - click to show)Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead territory. All the talk of ways to appreciate, deepen and reclaim the character, including actually PLAYING as her!, were (Spoiler - click to show)abruptly forsaken into..literal nothingness.

It is a jarring climax. After all the explorations of ways to interpret the character, to confer agency or broader depth, it nevertheless ends with a repudiation of that very effort. Is it a comment on fan culture’s propensity for putting emotional weight on elements not meant to carry them? (see the first 20 years of Boba Fett fandom) On the tyranny of narrative, whose choices are quite literally the final word? Or are we supposed to cling to the sweetness of that exploration in the face of its doomed fate against an unchanging lore?

Honestly? I don’t know. And that’s kind of cool, but also kind of unsatisfying. Which, why should I have it any better than Elaine?


Horror Icon: Regan/Pazuzu
Vibe: Memoir-y
Polish: Rough
Gimme the Wheel! : For sure the first MUST DO is to add ‘pause for more’ inputs to every opening screen. While doing that, I would seriously revisit the timed text implementation, to make sure its use was intentional, strictly under control, and far less intrusive. Then, either fix or eliminate the Journal. Unless its inaccessibility was also part of the commentary…?

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

This game is a tribute to a character (Elaine Marley) from the Monkey Island games, which I admit I've never played (I've always been more into the 'text' part than the 'adventure' part).

It alternates between notes from the author about his feelings on Elaine Marley and Monkey Island (with some especially fascinating commentary on the layers of reality in the games) and actual gameplay.

I liked both parts. The author notes were fun to read and to compare with my own experiences interpreting and understanding games.

The gameplay parts involved escaping after being kidnapped by the ghostly pirate LeChuck. You mostly explore every option until you find all the items you need, then make some whacky contraption or something to escape. To me it felt like I could feel clever guessing what I needed to do early on, but that if I were stuck, the game would let me try every option until I succeeded.

Overall, I loved the heartfelt feeling the game had, it felt the opposite of impersonal or cold.

The Story

Ghost Ship is a Monkey Island fan game. It’s also a critical essay about the series and one of its central characters, Elaine Marley.

The plot is fairly bare-bones: Ghost Ship has the player solving a few simple puzzles to turn Elaine into a ghost. Once that happens, Elaine can accomplish her role in the original plot of the Monkey Island games.

Major spoiler: Ghost Ship literally ends with Elaine (Spoiler - click to show)fading away.

It’s a pointed conclusion, and I’m pretty sure the author means for it to relate back to Ghost Ship’s overarching themes. The in-game author’s notes describe how Elaine has been overlooked or had her original characteristics erased throughout the Monkey Island series. That fits into the overall ‘ghost’ theme.

When I put it like that, Ghost Ship sounds like a shaggy dog story. Maybe it is — maybe it has to be since it’s a slice of an existing story — but it’s also a character piece. So let’s look at how that does the heavy lifting.

Characterization

In Ghost Ship, Elaine is portrayed through her interactions with a few other characters, but mostly through the narrative tone.

I was going to say that Ghost Ship leans on internet-era snark, with a little more venom than classic Monkey Island humor. I remember Elaine being indignant in context in the official games, not so much snarky for the sake of snark.

But after reading @SpaceTurtles’ review, I see that the exact dialogue choices are left up to the player. I guess the fact that I was put off by some of the snarkier options says more about me than the game.

There are also some concrete attempts to add depth to Elaine’s character. For example, in one key repeated scene, the author tries to portray Elaine as traumatized by LeChuck and as overcoming that trauma. That sort of weightiness would be out of place in the original Monkey Island, but this isn’t the original game, and I think it will be well received by the right audiences.

Ultimately, Elaine is a competent character with some edge, as she is in the games, so the slightly different tone works in the end.

Portraits of Elaine

The game also concerns itself with Elaine’s visual appearance. The author prefers Elaine’s original design and is very critical of the cartoonier designs. The cartoonier designs arguably correspond to poor characterization, with Elaine being reduced to a love interest in some of the later games.

Here’s everything side by side in a single image.

Notably, Elaine is portrayed as a black woman on the cover of Ghost Ship. I like the new portrait for its own sake. Elaine looks good in her own right, and it works as a race-blind interpretation of the character. And above all, it made me want to play the game.

Usually there would be no need to say more than that. However, Ghost Ship is explicitly about Elaine’s appearance. Early on in the game, the author argues that a change to Elaine’s skin tone — a gradual shift from dark to light — is something that’s been taken from her over the course of the series.

But actually, it’s in some of the later games that Elaine has an olive skin tone relative to certain characters. In the first two games, most Monkey Island characters had exactly the same reddish skin tone as Elaine. In fact, most video game characters had that tone as well.

That’s because there were few viable options in the 16-bit EGA color palette. You can see a bunch of Monkey Island characters here, including one who was meant to have a darker skin tone.

It’s debatable whether Monkey Island handles race and culture well or not — how much of it is pirate clichés versus Caribbean etc. stereotypes? But I think it’s clear that some other characters in the series would provide a lot more substance in this area. Trying to apply it to Elaine seems like looking for a problem.

Game Design and Styles

Lastly, how does Ghost Ship play? It has a pretty ambitious design visually and functionally. It’s not perfect, but it’s original and it works.

In terms of function, you’ll interact with the game through an inventory, things that are sort of like contextual boxes, text that replaces itself on hover, images, and regular links. The game is split into chapters and author notes, all united through a main menu, with some repeated scenes sprinkled in.

This would make for a disjointed interface in a more complex game, but Ghost Ship has pretty simple puzzles and progression. I never got stuck or lost.

On the visual side, there’s a lot of font styling and a variety of page layouts. It’s usually appropriate and it sometimes looks good, especially the ectoplasmic green font used for ghost dialogue. Occasionally, some of the colors aren’t really visible against a black background. (The author has also apparently fixed some problems with automatic text, so that’s good.)

In the end, Ghost Ship is rough around the edges at times, but I’m glad that it was made since there are very few semi-documentary IF games like it.

Related Media

Anyone who’s interested in the meta-ness of Monkey Island that Ghost Ship builds on might be interested in this YouTube video.

In fact, you might want to watch it beforehand — I’m no expert on the series and it covers some stuff that is directly relevant to Ghost Ship. Knowing the things that video explained helped me get more out of the author’s notes.

I also wanted to mention a movie called The Cry of Granuaile. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but I guess there is something about legendary, semi-forgotten pirates that invites this sort of metafictional roleplaying. The film goes into Spartacus-esque “we are all Granuaile” territory. Anyone who liked Ghost Ship would probably enjoy it.

Note: This review was written during Spring Thing 2025, and originally posted in the intfiction forum on 9 April 2025.

This is a Monkey Island spinoff/tribute game, exploring the question “What was Governor Elaine Marley really doing when she was stuck on the Ghost Ship?” In a textual choice-based format.

It was interesting running this on a low-res screen (1024x665 pixel size equivalent). I use a low-res screen on my laptop as standard to get larger text to read. But in this game even though strictly speaking I was running in full screen mode it meant that I had too little game area, and had to zoom out some times in the web browser to see some things I needed to interact with. Which meant the font was too small for me to read comfortably (I got the same effect switching my Mac temporarily to 1800x1169 equivalent resolution, full screen again).

I can barely remember the first Monkey Island game. Thankfully this does a recap. Including some meta elements. Then it launches into a series of chapter-like “hour” segments - note they do not take an hour of real time to play, thankfully! These segments are choice based, though often not so much about choosing, as going through a series of options to examine the world around you. But there are some nice choices re how you handle dialogue. And I think occasionally some critical choices re what order you do things in.

There are puzzles, but the game guides you to the solutions. It is generally not difficult.

The writing is amusing, on point for a Monkey Island tribute.

On the downside you have to read every unlocked author’s note to unlock the next “hour” portion of the game. And then when you complete that next hour portion there’s another author’s note to read before you can play the next hour segment. The author notes are amusing but not very interactive, and playing them got a bit tiresome after a while. And woe betide if you accidentally click again on “hour one” when you meant to click on “hour two”. You can save the game during the game, but I couldn’t find any way to undo my mistake of stepping back bar full replaying.

Although I think this aspect has been toned down, there is still quite a lot of timed text in the game. Which I’m rather allergic to. I was particularly exasperated as a reader by

"The door creaks open
slowly,"

where the word “slowly” appeared incredibly slowly, and repeatedly if I am remember correctly. I’m afraid that I wasn’t in the right receptive mood for it!

In the end I made it through part of “hour three”, and possibly got near to an ending. But then I ran out of time. I’m assuming there was a better ending to get. I hope so!

I did enjoy this, and it should work even if you haven’t played Monkey Island. At least to an extent. Though it is probably more successful for players who know that franchise.

I did find the load/save game and my muddle repeating hour one frustrating. I couldn’t find a way to access the saved game once you’d clicked into an hour segment. Including when I clicked on the wrong one. Replaying was annoying.

It’s also why I haven’t had another go at “hour three”, because I’d need to replay all of the earlier portions.

But I was laughing a lot throughout. So that’s good.