Now, I already knew Colin Thiele's story of Storm Boy, from the 1976 movie starring Greg Rowe. So the final scenes of the game were unsurprising, buuuuuuut the suddenness of Percivil's death was still tragic and I definitely wiped away a tear as I sat in my boxers on a warm Saturday morning with a bowl of oats on my lap.

I picked up this game as part of our podcast's April Achievement Challenge, a yearly event where our community competes with each other to earn the highest gamerscore in a month. Storm Boy was my first game of April, and a quick 1,000GS earned myself first place on the leaderboard for all of 24 hours.

I'll tell you right now, this game is perfect for a relaxing Saturday morning, if you can look past the painful death of a boy's pelican best friend. The game is beautiful and wistful, and made me want to sprint down to the beach and collapse on the sand.

The game is story-driven, with mini-games to participate in along the way. I enjoyed searching for pipis on the beach and diving from my raft into the sea to say hello to the fish. Feeding baby pelicans was hit miss (a bit buggy), but it was fun making them angry by feeding one lots of fish and ignoring the others. I spent most of my time drawing in the sand however, as you can see in my budding artistry here.

In several ways, the game felt like some of the educational games I used to play as a kid. It's a feeling I can't quite put into words, but left me with a acute sense of nostalgia that I definitely wasn't expecting.

Somehow the fanciful first half of the game calmed me into a false sense of security. Even though I knew of Mr Percival's eventual murder, I wasn't prepared for quite how sudden it would be.

Nor the post-death scene where Mick seeks Mr Percival and accepts that his best friend has passed.
Even looking back at my screenshots of the game, my head pounds with threatening tears again.

The Part Where Simone Tries to Remember the Storyline

Mick lives on a beach with his single father somewhere in Australia (Tasmania maybe?). He spends his days running around on the sand, helping his dad with chores and playing with the local wildlife.
One day, he discovers a bunch nest of pelican chicks without a mother in sight. He hand-rears them to maturity and eventually they fly off to make their own way in life. Except one.
Mr Percival the pelican sticks around and hangs out with Mick every day; inevitably the two become inseparable.
However, as hunting season drawers closer, ducks and pelicans alike are being shot out of the sky on a daily basis. It isn't long before hunters set their sights on Mr Percival, failing to recognise him as anything more than an ordinary pelican.