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Normally, an announcement such as this would go right to the daily Macintosh/iPhone software update round-up, but when it’s pirates and it’s adventure and it’s Freeverse, I have to make an exception.

An article at Apple’s website offers details on Jack Keane, an adventure game developed by Deck13 Interactive and originally published for the PC by RuneSoft. Now, the fine folks at Freeverse will be bringing it to the Macintosh by the end of the month.

In the distributor press release, Jack Keane is compared to the wonderfully inventive and sorely missed “Monkey Island” series, which hasn’t seen a Mac game since Escape from Monkey Island in 2001. If the screen captures are accurate, it seems to take its visual inspiration from Redjack: Revenge of the Brethren, which both pleases and frightens me. I mean, Redjack is one of my all-time favorite adventure games, but it was released in the late ‘90s. I’m not certain we need to be going back there for much when it comes to Macintosh gaming.

Of course, the most important aspect of an adventure game (aside from the puzzles) is the story. Jack Keane’s looks to be exactly what you’d want out of a comedic pirate tale:

Colonial England. Under a certain amount of…duress…Jack takes on a job which will not only cause him a great deal of trouble, but also bring to light the answer to a mystery out of his distant past. A lack of money leads Jack to accept a charter to take a British secret agent to mysterious Tooth Island. When Jack’s ship shatters on the mysterious island’s cliffs on arrival and the secret agent quickly becomes a meal for a monster in the jungle, Jack is soon left to cope with the situation on his own.

So, we’ve got a stressed out pirate, a mysterious island, and a monster that eats British secret agents. Seems that covers everything, and yet, there’s more: 250 objects will need to be utilized to solve the game’s puzzles, dozens of off-beat characters will come into play, and you’ll get to play as both Jack and the lovely Amanda, who apparently has a habit of stealing Jack’s crew members from him.

And if you need proof that Jack Keane will warm the heart of classic adventure gamers everywhere, just read this paragraph from Brad Cook’s article at Apple.com:

Getting back to the story, Jack and Montgomery have arrived at Tooth Island and jumped across the precipice. A fallen column — the unfortunate result of a temple that collapsed when Montgomery fired his grappling hook up the cliff — blocks their way, but a plank from Jack’s shipwrecked vessel could help them past the obstacle, although not in the way you might expect. Jack needs to fish the plank out of the water, but maybe something left aboard The Charming Princess can assist with that task. The ship is currently inaccessible, however.

With puzzles like that, who even needs graphics? Just catch that Babel Fish, adventure games. Catch that Babel Fish.

Jack Keane is due for release September 29, 2008 for $39.95. It’ll require Mac OS X v10.3.9, a 1.4GHz PowerPC G4 or Intel processor, 512MB of RAM, 64MB video RAM (Intel GMA 950 chipset supported) and 1GB hard disk space.

Via [Apple.com]