Grab The Games: Pixel Piracy

Pixel Piracy is at the moment in Steam's Early Access (now at version 0.6.5.0), so of course everything can change and bear in mind this review is based on an unfinished version. The game looks great as a concept: it is a sidescrolling roguelike-like (we should have competition for a new name for this genre!) about pirates. You start the game by answering a few questions that decide what kind of world you are going to get (the world is of course procedurally generated each time, thankfully it is done very quickly); the starting equipment of your captain and a bonus he has. Then you find yourself on a pirate island with a bunch of coins, you can recruit your crew (at the start you can only afford at most 2 crew members), buy some provisions and build a ship. At the beginning your ship will be not much more than a raft, but still you can customize it a little and make it yours. I don't think there is much of sailing ability here, however you build your ship, it is going to float the same :) Still, customization, even if only visual is always nice. After that you get your crew on board (you can order your captain and crew separately to do different things and even give orders when paused) and go in search of adventures.

Building my first ship... or at least floating something

You will fight dangerous beasts and people, capture or sink ships, find treasure, get better equipment and new skills for your pirates. This sounds great doesn't it? The problem (for me at least) is combat. There is a lot of it and it could be great... if not for the sidescrolling nature of the game. Topdown works great for naval games, you can manoeuvre, use tactics etc, here there is not much you can do... And when it comes to mel, while you can issue orders, there are only two directions you can move in, so not much playing with positions or anything like that. Your characters will charge any enemy in range and basically combat is a very simplistic and frantic. This is not necessarily bad, the metagame is interesting enough, but there is really a lot of combat and it could have been much more interesting, as it is, you do it just to get something and not because it is fun.

The battles are pretty chaotic, may be realistic, but is not tactical

The game has a lot of charm, the whole style is not very serious with all the pirates shouting very stereotypical pirate phrases, not knowing how to swim, which in fact most pirates could not (although they can throw ropes at a great range and climb on them so it does not matter beyond the atmosphere) and the graphics are cute (although at times in the dense of battle it is hard to see what's what and who's who). All in all the presentation is pretty usual for the genre, it is there, can be fun at first but ultimately it is just to be functional.

Where shall we sail next?

At the moment I have trouble recommending Pirate Piracy, I just don't enjoy the combat that much here. Still all the other elements are solid and the game is still in early access, I can very well imagine that the game will be great upon release, it sure has a lot going for it even now.

Mikolaj W