Powerfully English point-and-click adventure Yorkshire Gubbins was first released in late 2017. In her review, Jay Castello said, “Despite being set in a world with slug-people, vampires who run trophy shops, and runaway robots, Yorkshire Gubbins depicts a familiar version of The North. If you’re not up to date on your English regional politics, there’s a stark North-South divide, and we make jokes about it to hide the very real underlying socioeconomic disparities.”
At the time, Yorkshire Gubbins contained a central episode called Humble Pie, in which kleptomaniac protagonist Steggy sets out on a quest to win a pie competition after retrieving her “special meat”, as well as a bonus prequel, and a tutorial episode called Verb School. With a promise of future episodes on the way for free, we settled down to wait.
Now, in April of 2021, a new episode has finally arrived. And it’s a musical. Aye Fair Lady is a rough 30 minutes of smooth point-and-click silliness set on Mandatory Singing Day. Which is exactly what it sounds like: a day when robots fine you 20 pence if you don’t sing. Steggy’s not having any of it, and so your mission is to infiltrate and overcome the Mandatory Singing Day singing competition.
You’re going to have to steal a bunch of things and probably ruin someone’s day along the way, because this is an adventure game after all.
As well as this new episode, Yorkshire Gubbins has been updated with keyboard shortcuts so you don’t have to click on the verbs like some kind of heathen, as well as an optional filter called Steggyvision that makes the pixel art look a bit glowy and smeary like it used to on our old TV sets. Another addition: you can start a new episode without deleting your save in the previous one. Nice.
Designer Charlotte Gore says that, “work will now be beginning on a brand new Gubbins episode. Progress will be slow as I have a full time job now, but I’m very confident the development is sustainable. And that’s good news.”