Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail! is an adventure game created and published by Sierra On-Line in 1996. It was the sixth and final game in the Leisure Suit Larry series written by the series’ creator, Al Lowe. It was the last game to feature Larry Laffer, the main character, until Leisure Suit Larry: Wet Dreams Don’t Dry was released in 2018. This game came after Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! from 1993.

Compared to earlier games, Love for Sail! included more adult themes. It also had more detailed cartoon-style graphics and full voice acting. A mobile version of the same game was released by Vivendi Games Mobile in 2007. The next game in the series was Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, released in 2004.

Gameplay

Players can appear in the game by placing voice samples of chosen dialogue and a digital picture in a specific folder (the default is Al Lowe). Because of time limits, instructions about this process were not included in the manual. Instead, the information was shared later in an online message.

The game Love for Sail! includes a more direct version of Easter eggs: when certain unusual actions are completed, a small icon shaped like an Easter egg appears in a corner of the screen. This usually means a "seduction" scene can be played, which shows nudity that is typically hidden.

The game also included a "CyberSniff 2000," a sheet of numbered scratch-and-sniff paper. Each number on the paper matches a number shown on the screen at a specific location. This allows players to smell the area where the character is located.

Plot

Love for Sail! is the first Larry game since the third one to continue directly from where the previous game ended. As usual, the story shows Larry being rejected by the woman who was the main goal in Larry 6, named Shamara.

The game follows the same structure as earlier Larry games. The unique feature is that Larry is a passenger on a cruise ship where the guests are humorous versions of famous people. Some of the other passengers include "Drew Baringmore" (a parody of Drew Barrymore), "Dewmi Moore" (a parody of Demi Moore), "Victorian Principles" (a parody of Victoria Principal), "Jamie Lee Coitus" (a parody of Jamie Lee Curtis), "Nailmi" and "Wydoncha Jugg" (parodies of Naomi and Wynonna Judd), and "Annette Boning" (a parody of Annette Bening).

The story centers on Larry's effort to win a weekly contest on the ship, organized by Captain Thygh, a beautiful blonde. The contest includes a variety of activities, such as sports like bowling and more unusual challenges, such as a test of sexual ability. Each passenger receives a scorecard with a list of competitions to participate in. The passenger with the highest total score at the end of the week wins a free additional week on the cruise with Captain Thygh in her cabin.

Larry uses dishonest methods to win the competitions and achieve the highest score. He participates in events like a cooking contest, a "best dressed" contest, horseshoes, bowling, and the sexual ability test. Sometimes, he wins not through cheating but due to unexpected events caused by his actions. For example, after meeting fashion designer Jamie Lee Coitus, Larry's leisure suit becomes a fashion trend, helping him win the best dressed contest.

After several competitions, Larry accidentally returns to his room naked. A mysterious woman named Annette offers him a task involving her husband, but Larry misunderstands and believes she wants him to have sex with her. Later, Larry enters the husband's room in the dark, thinking it is Annette, and interacts with the man. When the lights are turned on, Larry realizes he has mistaken the husband for Annette, causing the man to have a heart attack. Annette then gives Larry shares of a crude oil shipping company.

Larry continues to win contests and eventually reaches Captain Thygh's room. He expects to spend time with her but is rejected. Larry gives her the stock from Annette, which pleases her, and they presumably have a relationship. The ship sails away as the credits play. After the credits, the ship is taken by an alien spaceship.

Development

The game Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail! was first named Leisure Suit Larry 7: Yank-her's Away!. According to the game's creator, Al Lowe, the team originally planned to use real-life videos for the game. However, they realized this idea would not work well with the humor and jokes they had planned. They decided to return to the cartoon style they used in earlier games, which they believed better suited the content.

This was the first Leisure Suit Larry game to receive an ESRB rating of "Mature" when it was first released. Lowe explained that the game included more suggestive content than earlier versions but emphasized that the focus was on the humor, not the nudity or sexual material. He also said the game was not intended for people looking for explicit content.

The game supported English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Polish languages. However, the Polish version had a problem with typing special characters on the console.

A puzzle in the game required Larry to push a door even though guns appeared in the wall, suggesting he should not touch it. Producer Mark Seibert said the team knew this puzzle was not good, but they included it for humor. Many players later wrote to him about how they found the puzzle confusing or silly.

Like Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work, this game cannot be made impossible to complete due to poor choices.

Mobile version

A mobile version of Leisure Suit Larry: Love for Sail, created by Mighty Troglodytes, was released by Vivendi Games on June 21, 2007. This version does not include the exclamation mark found in the PC version. The mobile game has a different story compared to the original.

Reception

A reviewer for Next Generation criticized the game's puzzles and the return of a text parser, stating, "While we sometimes miss text parsers, combining them with point-and-click gameplay creates a game that is unclear in its design. This adds confusion to puzzles that are already difficult to understand. Additionally, the game’s other major problem is that the series has not made much progress—like its main character, it seems to remain stuck in a stage of not fully growing up." However, the reviewer noted the game still had enough strong moments to interest fans of the series. GameSpot praised the game’s difficulty and hint system but found the overly suggestive humor became annoying over time. The game was also reviewed by Danny Wallace in the January 1997 issue of PCGamer (UK) magazine, which gave it a score of 23% and described it as "a pointless and unimpressive collection of ideas."

In 2011, Richard Cobbett wrote a review of the Larry series for Rock Paper Shotgun, calling the game "a really good, very underrated adventure." That same year, Adventure Gamers ranked Love for Sail as the 71st-best adventure game ever released.

According to Al Lowe, sales of Love for Sail reached more than 280,000 copies by early 1999. In 2006, he mentioned in an interview that the game had ultimately sold "750,000 copies and many more through different Larry collections."

Ports and re-releases

The game, known as Leisure Suit Larry 7, was part of the Leisure Suit Larry: Ultimate Pleasure Pack collection released by Sierra Studios in 1999. On February 19, 2013, Codemasters released the game again as a downloadable version on GOG.com for Microsoft Windows and OS X, included with DOSBox. The game was later made available for download on Windows through Steam on December 22, 2017. On April 26, 2018, the Windows version was updated to support ScummVM 2.0. A Linux version, included with ScummVM, was released on May 15, 2018. On August 2, 2019, the macOS version was updated to support ScummVM 2.0.