Avast, me hearty bowls of soup! That’s a pirate saying, right? Sure it is. Everyone knows it, because everyone loves pirates. Despite this, the last few years in pirate-flavoured gaming have been less a mighty haul of shining gems, more the last few dregs of rum in a dusty bottle. Sure, we’ve had Sea of Thieves and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, not to mention the criminally overlooked Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, but you don’t need to know which way starboard is to see that a handful of games does not a genre make.
But wait, what’s that on the horizon swaggering its way into port? Do ships swagger? Should ships swagger? Who cares! King of Seas is here. Well, it will be in 2021.
There are two approaches to pirate games, but really they’re two sides of the same doubloon. One is all grubby and covered in bloody fingerprints, chronicling all the gritty stabbings, shooting and horrific flesh-eating maladies that sailors face. The other is shined to add a bit off sparkle, strap an adorable parrot to your shoulder and deal with a loveable, Saturday morning cartoon style of piracy. Loveable scamps that might still condemn dozens of merchant ships to a watery grave, but do it in a charming way. King of Seas is very much the second kind. This fantasy world is inviting and sunny, packed with outlandish characters and supernatural intrigue.
The closest immediate analogue to its isometric sailing would be Sid Meier’s classic Pirates!, although it’s actually quite a different barrel of biscuits. There seems to be far fewer RPG and simulation elements, for one. You can still dock in ports to trade and purchase goods like repair kits, as well as replenish your crew, but it seems less focused on simulation than it is on simplified seafaring and immediate, arcade ship combat.
At least, that’s my impression from the 45 minutes the preview build was limited to – some elements seemed streamlined to be shown off, preventing me from getting a real feel for how some elements might end up. A simplified ship economy, for instance, meant I could switch out my starting sloop for any ship in the game at the cost of one gold. It was a blast to rule the waves in a huge frigate so early, but it did mean I never really got a good feel for how economics and upgrades would factor into the final game. That, or these shipwrights are really underselling themselves.
One thing the build did capture was how both sailing and combat play out. Manoeuvring, though a little slow on occasion, is handled with real detail. It would have been easy to have the ships handle like, say, a micro-machine car, but the control of your ship feels very much dependent on factors like weather and momentum. There’s three levels of speed, decided by how many sails you put up, and you have to plan a few moments ahead to steer. It’s still got that nice, immediate feel that you’d want, but manages to give the impression that you’re very much at the mercy of the elements, rather than taking the easy way out and giving your boat some sort of invisible engine.
Success in combat also requires forethought. You’ll need to take your momentum, projectile speed, and firing arcs into consideration. It feels, for lack of a better word, very analogue in its approach, as if you’re shouting commands at a tiny digital crew that have a bit of a mind of their own, and need to physically haul ropes and pulleys around to achieve anything. There’s three standard types of ammunition, and each ship has three different ‘health’ bars to match. There’s a different type of shot each for taking out sails, crew, and hull. Taking down sails, for example, will mean whatever merchant ships you’re currently raiding will have some serious trouble getting away, while going for the hull will just sink them outright.
It’s not all realism, though. I was given a front-mounted flamethrower a few missions in, and came up against poison-blasting buccaneers. There were even a few ghost ships! The sea itself is peppered with wrecks to scavenge, collectibles, explosive barrels, and the occasional kraken tentacle, so it isn’t just a case of slogging over endless procedurally generated blue waves between ports, either.
Short though my demo was, it really is a pleasant place to spend an afternoon, with all its popping colours, jaunty tunes, and promises of decks to swab and buckles to swash down the line. The ocean is certainly calling, although whether or not this charming pirate adventure can crown itself the King, we’ll have to wait and see.
