Buy Jolly Good: Cakes and Ale PC key

Jolly Good: Cakes and Ale is a text-based interactive comedy of manners with 1.2 million words. As a close relation of an earl, you join London's Noble Gases social club while caught up in a scandal. Your choices shape the story as you try to manage the trouble with the help of your new servant. The game has no graphics or sound effects.

Club life and scandal

Lead the Noble Gases through pranks, debts, rivalries, parties and social ambition. You can lean into your shocking reputation, try to redeem yourself in the public eye or take it easy with a cocktail by the fire. Decide what matters most to you: comfort, loyalty to friends or family expectations. You can recruit members, take down rivals or win them over, and steer the club toward either splendor or absurdity.

Choose from five scandalous backgrounds that significantly affect the story, including museum thievery, over-festivity and public brawling. You may become entangled in secret societies, wealthy would-be sponsors and criminal enterprises, knowingly or otherwise. Cross paths with a famous actor, a politician, a diva, an annoying journalist and a renowned artist, or keep a lower profile while evading the police and a criminal mastermind. You can also spend time with old friends from Tally Ho.

Relationships and choices

You can play as male, female or nonbinary, and as gay, straight or bi. Romance options include a dreamy artist, a rebellious former neighbor, a dramatic clubmate known for golden trousers, and your own servant. With your servant, you can maintain appropriate boundaries or become emotionally enmeshed.

Schemes and activities

Your exploits can include dressing as a bellhop, parlor maid, military officer or wearing a bathrobe and slippers; using wireless radios and experimental steam-powered printing presses; and competing in boxing, swimming, cards, handball, competitive eating and spitting. You can break into hotels, cars, safes, bookshops, dressing rooms and art galleries, sometimes intentionally. Other schemes include ghostwriting love letters, crafting speeches, editing damaging newspaper articles and smashing everything from windows and pitchers to fine art and hearts. You can lead the club to victory in a tournament or make money betting on other clubs.

Format and extras

The game is a standalone sequel to Tally Ho, inspired by P. G. Wodehouse. It was written by Kreg Segall and won the 2020 XYZZY Awards for Best Writing, Best Setting and Best NPCs. Optional in-app purchases provide special features through “Extra Helping” and a detailed hint guide through “Pleasantly Tipsy”.