Indie Focus: Pixel Piracy

Pirates don’t get to come to Indie Focus too often. Hopefully with the rave success around Assassin’s Creed IV’s pirate-y mechanics we’ll have an influx of piracy (the good, in-game kind) to satisfy our now urgent need to sail seas and shoot at ships. Pixel Piracy, available in Early Access on Steam and currently in alpha, is a side-scrolling, swashbuckling pixel roguelike that has you hiring and controlling a crew of rapscallions as you sail the seas in search of plunder.

True to roguelike fashion, it’s difficult. You will notice this either when, after five or so minutes of hiring some crew on the starting island, you are immediately decimated on the island you then traveled to, or otherwise when you start starving to death. It’s also randomly generated, with every new game having hundreds of locations and ships to explore and plunder, which is nice but to see it all you will likely need to be Poseidon himself to turn the seas against your enemies (note: this is not a game feature).

Survival is important – you need to feed your crew to keep them alive, and you need to pay them to keep them happy. If their morale drops too low, either from no payment or from an unfortunate amount of poop on the poop deck, then they will simply leave. And since it costs a sizable chunk of cash to hire them it’s best you avoid losing them. You can always dock at a settlement and let them spend some time in the tavern.

While they are drinking themselves into a pirate-y stupor, you can go to the bookshop and buy some skill books. These are used to teach just about everything to your pirates – they need one to learn to cook (which is recommended as the first thing you buy unless you want starving pirates for company), clean (hence the poop on my poop deck earlier), poop properly (this one escapes me), and so on. To use a skill book you need TP, which is earned by levelling up and is also used to upgrade your pirates’ stats.

As you progress further, your pirates get stronger and you will find and buy more loot, and you can improve your ship. You start with enough parts to make what is essentially a raft, and as you plunder other ships you get the parts they are made out of to add to your own, as well as buying them in settlements. Building your ship consists of placing tiles in whatever shape you like, adding decorative tiles, adding barrels to store food without it rotting, and even cannons to rain down large heavy metal death on your enemies. A good design may be crucial later in the game as cannons can destroy ships, as you might expect, but I don’t know because I haven’t managed to make it that far. I just keep dying.

Pixels are the aesthetic flavour here and it’s presented charmingly. Everything is brightly coloured and vibrant, fish swim below the surface of the water, and pirates chat to each other when they’re in proximity with little speech bubbles, as well as spouting off typically pirate-y lines and references. The pirates all have high-pitched, Worms-style voices that are just hilarious for whatever reason, and they have little back stories that you can see from their stats page. My current crew has a member who was once an astronaut somehow, as well as a Terrarian…

Pixel Piracy is going places. While it’s currently in alpha it is eminently playable provided the difficulty doesn’t put you off (tip: go for the easiest options every time and don’t be afraid to leave that island full of 30+ health tribal warriors alone and come back later). It’s unique at the moment, it’s charming, and it’s got some very interesting features coming to it, such as running a pirate haven, attacking trade lanes, a deep faction system and even online multiplayer. If you enjoy piracy or fun then this pixel-based version of it is bound to be entertaining.