As most readers are probably aware now I have a love for MMO’s. Puzzle Pirates was my first and is one that keeps pulling me back into it. This time the draw back has been the merge of several of the oceans. The two subscription oceans (of which I played on one) have been merged together so there are more people to play together.
This has been something people have been asking for for a long time, me included. The game is a little bit of a niche game and isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but it’s very cutesy and fun. It’s about the only game I’ve ever considered coughing up the subscription for to the point where I get a discount on my yearly subscription price for being subscribed for so long. I really do love the game.
This is my pirates portrait with her recent acquisition – a monkey called Muse. Monkey’s are part of the item’s in game called familiars, there are also octopi, parrots, sea horses (called Ipollito), serpents, skeletal monkeys and ghostlings. They come in all sorts of colours with tan being the cheapest and most common. I recently acquired my first tan monkey, something I’ve been saving for in the game for quite some time. They are quite the status symbol.
Anyway back to the game. It’s puzzle based as the name suggests with puzzles for every type of thing you can do, for example on a ship, when you sail it, there are many puzzles activated that need doing by the players aboard. The captain can perform the navigation puzzle which speeds the ship up and increases the chances of getting the required ship to fight if in pillage mode, or avoiding other ships if in evading mode and moving stock.
Next is the sailing or rigging puzzles which are done by some crew members and contribute to the speed of the ship out of battles and movement tokens in battle. There is also carpentry which is a tetris piece based game where you fill in holes in wooden planking to repair the ship, bilge which is very similar to the popular game bejeweled and finally the gunnery puzzle, as loading your cannons is very important in ship battles.
There are many types of ship from the standard piratey ships to asian and the odd viking ship. Here’s me with one of my pet’s, tari, and muse on one of my newest ship’s the xebec – Creative Spot. It’s a very large ship which can support a max crew of 45 players. The largest ship in the game, the grand frigate, can have up to 150 players on it at once which as you can imagine is quite something to see.
On top of all the many different sea adventures people can go on, all shops to make the ships, clothes, swords, shot and rum needed are also made by players and run by them. There are shop duty puzzles that can be performed to decide on whether the labour being provided by each player is expert, skilled, or just basic and each item to make requires a differing amount of each type of labour hours. So the game has lots of different ways to make pieces of eight (the currency) and have fun, from trading, to socialising, to just passing away a few hours puzzling on someone elses ship. There’s even tournaments of puzzles against other players in the inns on each island, including card games and a very nifty little puzzle called treasure drop.
I think it’s because of this large number of puzzles in one game and large number of ways to make pieces of eight that keep me coming back. No two log ins have to be played the same way.
Here’s the website if you want to check out the game and if you want to see if you can find me I’m on the Cerulean subscription ocean.