Even as a child, Morgane Castillo wanted nothing more than to lead a pirate's life out at sea. Her mother tried to discourage her by telling her that it's bad luck to have a woman on board a ship, but Morgane was determined to prove that silly superstition wrong. Years later, she gets her chance when her father offers her a position as acting captain for her seventeenth birthday. If you have played Wizarbox's earlier games, So Blonde or So Blonde: Back to the Island, you will already know that she eventually succeeds, as Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle is a spin-off of those adventures, though set in a much earlier time. Taking its title a bit too literally, this game starts off at a boringly slow crawl, but when the pace picks up you'll be pulled into an exciting story that fascinates to the very end, although it's somewhat hobbled by various strange design choices.

The game starts with an introductory chapter that doubles as a tutorial, in which Morgane is an eight-year-old girl simply wanting to go outside and play with her friends. Her mother thinks she should do some household chores first, like sweeping up some patches of dust and cleaning the windows. Since this requires Morgane to pick up items in and around the house, combine them and use them with other objects, these tasks familiarise players with the interface and the basic game mechanics. There isn't a lot of challenge, however, and it is by far the most repetitive, dull and uninteresting bit of the game, which can't be skipped and might easily scare players away. That would be a pity, as the story really starts when this first chapter finally ends. Still, it sets up an important plot point to come, as Morgane eventually spots her father's ship pull into the harbour, and she overhears him tell her mother the tragic news that Uncle Eduardo was lost at sea, having fallen overboard during a storm. Morgane is inconsolable and refuses to believe this is really true.

Thankfully, the game then jumps to Morgane's seventeenth birthday, when she receives the surprise gift of a new sword and promotion from her father, Captain Alessandro Castillo. The first task to perform in her new role is to find a new crew to replace the three men recently fired, along with some cargo to make money. The ship is currently moored at Bounty Island, the island where Morgane's family used to live before her mother died. Her father is still mourning her loss, and has a shrine dedicated to her in his cabin aboard the Winsome Maid. Morgane thinks his grief is getting unhealthy and interfering with his everyday life, and she intends to do something about it (although she isn't sure just how). Meanwhile, she manages to find a rich merchant, Thomas Briscoe, recently retired and now with enough time and money to pursue the tale of a "Golden Turtle" said to exist somewhere in the vicinity. He wants to charter the ship and the crew to follow a vague trail of clues, and is willing to pay handsomely for it. In her travels, Morgane also hears rumours that Uncle Eduardo may still be alive and well on a neighbouring island.

Naturally, all three major and most minor storylines eventually turn out to be entwined. We follow Morgane on her adventures through five islands, one of which featured in the So Blonde games. Along the way, she meets lots of interesting characters and discovers clues about the original explorer that reported having seen the Golden Turtle, Buckleberry Tanner. By visiting his grave, digging up some old maps, locating an island named after him and talking to people who once knew Tanner, Morgane slowly unravels the mystery of the fabled turtle. She doesn't forget about her other tasks though, making sure to ask about Uncle Eduardo in every tavern she visits and trying to persuade her father to get on with his life. Over the course of ten chapters (and about as many hours), she matures into not just a good captain but also a strong woman in an enjoyable, well written coming-of-age story that has a nice blend of emotional depth, swashbuckling, high seas adventure, and quite a few funny moments (like when young Morgane wonders why her parents' door needs to be locked when her father arrives home after months at sea), never taking itself too seriously.

Every island looks and sounds totally different, and each one looks magnificent with incredible attention to detail. From the eternally dark Crab Island to the tropical Turtle Island, it's a pleasure to admire the beautiful hand-drawn backgrounds and listen to the Caribbean style music and sounds. Little creatures scurry around, leaves move in the breeze and water ripples to make the world seem alive. It's fun to recognize people and places from the earlier So Blonde games if you have played them, but it is not necessary to have any knowledge about them to enjoy Captain Morgane. This game re-uses some of the locations from its predecessors, offering a whole different perspective for those who played the PC original, but only marginally updating the same scenes presented in the Nintendo-only Back to the Island, which seems a bit lazy.

Cutscenes show a series of stills in a style reminiscent of graphic novels, but with sparse animation that shows no regard for physically possible angles or proportions, which gives these scenes an amateurish feel. The 3D character models and their animations during player-controlled scenes look good, though it is a bit weird to see Morgane shove everything she picks up, from half-eaten fish to a crossbow, anchor or sword, into her well-formed bodice. At times, however, some ill-advised preset animations take over from the player, like when a conversation is started or a task is succesfully completed. For example, after initiating a dialogue, Morgane waves her hand at the other person for a second or two, then the other person looks around and waves back, and only then does the conversation start. All this time a spinning cursor is shown on screen to indicate you have to wait until the sequence stops before you can do anything.

What's worse is that the same cursor also appears during conversations for an entirely different purpose. After each and every sentence the mouse button needs to be clicked (twice or three times if a sentence is so long it gets truncated in the subtitles), but here the cursor means the game is waiting for you to click. Meanwhile, the gestures and lip movements Morgane and her dialogue partner make continue to loop all this time. If you don't click, they keep on waving, bowing or clapping for a few minutes before the game finally moves on. These gestures look very exaggerated and distract from the conversation.

Fortunately, the voice actors are quite good at conveying emotions. Morgane's Spanish accent (wisely re-recorded by the publisher due to public outcry over Morgane's original, inexplicably English accent) and Briscoe's British dialect are convincing, but Alessandro sounds a bit wimpy for such a mighty pirate. Adults imitating children's voices are, as usual, awful. The tropical-style music is pleasant at first, but does tend to get a bit repetitive after a while, either because it loops too often or simply begins to all sound the same after a while, so a little more variety would have been welcome.