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All you fans of pirates (the handsome, comical, romantic kind, not the amputated, murderous, drunken kind that, you know, actually existed) will be pleased to note that Jack Keane, “A hilarious, action-packed adventure game in the spirit of Monkey Island,” will be shipping out to retailers across North American on December 8th. Boy, I sure am glad we can laugh about pirates these days. Why, I think it was only about five or six years ago that I told my best pirate joke at a party and as admonished for being “too soon.”

From the website:

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.

Is there anything that could make this game sound any better? Yes. Airplanes…

...and giant clocks…

And, of course, what’s a pirate tale without a good accompanying mystery?

Tooth Island is ruled by the strange Doctor T, who is cultivating man-eating plants and has his own dastardly plans for the British Empire. Why does he seem to know Jack, who can’t remember ever having been on Tooth Island? What are Doctor T’s plans? And what does he know about Jack’s past?

If you need further 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?

Jack Keane is currently available for pre-order from the Freeverse website. The game requires Mac OS X version 10.3.9, 1.4GHz PowerPC G4 or Intel processor, 512MB of RAM, 64MB video RAM (Intel GMA 950 chipset supported) and 1GB hard disk space.

Product [Jack Keane]