Adventure Time spawning an open-world sailing game

“Adventure Time! Tell all your pals, let’s travel very faraway!”

I can sing the opening of Adventure Time perfectly because I enjoy it as a televisual experience. Good news for me and others like me: An open-world Adventure Time game with sail boats and voice actors off the telly is coming out next year. Adventure Time: Pirates Of The Enchiridion sees the land of Ooo submerged in blue wetness and nobody knows why.

And here's another thing we don't know: exactly what you’ll be doing in this game apart from schooning around. “[B]attle bad guys in fast-paced tactical combat,” says publisher Outright Games, which is a bit vague. But they do say you’ll be upgrading the characters with new “items, spells, potions and unique ultimate hero abilities”. So, uh, there'll be some fighting but we don't know what that'll look like.

The salty adventure will feature human boy Finn, non-human animal Jake, personified video games console BMO and red-sucking vampire Marceline. From the screenshots you can also see Ice King, banana guards, penguins and very important inventory merchant, Choose Goose. There is no sign of masterful horse-on-a-ball, James Baxter.

This is a licensed game and therefore in danger of adhering to the dread law: “Licensed games based on movies or TV shows are only marginally less rubbish than movies or TV shows based on videogames”. But note that it’s being made by Climax Studios, the crew that made that Silent Hill: Shattered Memories everyone always harks on about. They also ported Castlevania: Lords of Shadow to PC and were involved in that cancelled Legacy of Kain game.

As for this sail-em-up. Adventure Time has always worn its love for videogames - Zelda in particular - on its rolled-up sleeve. It makes sense that a game of Finn and Jake’s sallying forth should look like Wind Waker.

It’s due out “Spring 2018”.