Rise of Pirates had a lot more packed into it than I was expecting.

Gameplay is decent. The battles are fairly challenging and enjoyable. I don't think I could see myself playing this game for hours on end, but it's fun in short bursts. The controls, however, were a little bit of a problem at first. I eventually got used to them, but they never felt completely comfortable.

Being able to stop at different towns helps to break the monotony of the sea battles. The upgrade system a little bit of depth to it and seems to be balanced so far (but I haven't played far enough in to purchase a large number of upgrades). I like the ability to purchase and sell items in the market to rack in some extra gold. It's very, very basic (it seems you'll always pay the same amount for an item and sell it for the same cost, no matter which town you go to), but it's still nice to have another way to make money. I'm not quite sure I understand the purpose of some of the things available for purchase in the tavern, however.

The game's graphics are pretty nice for such a tiny file. I had the sound turned down, so I can't comment on it.

My suggestions:

-Add a help section that is accessible at any time (I didn't see one - unless I missed it somewhere?). It should include information about controls and basic gameplay.

-Some of the story and tutorial wording was strange. I'm assuming the game wasn't translated properly. It would appear more professional if the story and tutorial were clearer.

-The story is pretty good, but its presentation is bland. Perhaps the developer could add some animated parts.

-A more in depth buying/selling system could make the market more interesting. Items could be worth more or less in each town, or their prices could fluctuate randomly each time the player visits the town.

-Allow the player to have more than one profile/save (without having to create multiple copies of the executable).

Overall, Rise of Pirates is a good game to play in between other things and seems worth its low price.

Thanks GGAOTD and Wheemplay!


............................Moderator Comment................................

Thank you very much for the in-depth discussion. Really appreciated.

Was going to post this review yesterday, but wanted to play this game a little more before making the review.

Game installed and activated fine. Game started just fine and the tutorial helps understand the game. Trying to control the ship with the mouse (especially firing) is more difficult than what the tutorial makes it sound.

Game play speed is a little slow but is fine. Video display is excellent (Raedon HD 3650 video card) other than the arrow they mention in the tutorial. It is difficult to tell if it is an arrow or just a red blob, but I never used it anyways.



...........................Moderator comment..........................

Thanks for your feedback

Thanks for the game. No problems with the installation and played this for a while, until my ship was destroyed. A little slow, but so am I. Thanks.

Not very good. I didn't even play it for a few minutes.

Wow, man, this sure brings back memory with pirate game I play with genesis emulator. I've forgot the name.
Thanks Wheemplay & GAOTD!
Feature request:
1. Sword duel or gun duel on board.
2. Cheat mode


.............................Moderator Comment..........................


Thanks for the suggestions. :lol:

I like the one file download. Once I figured out what to do I wanted to keep playing. Good game for the price.

started playing and was wondering why my ship kept moving towards areas where i didnt want it to go then noticed it was the rocks that kinda sucked you towards them . odd that when i hover over a item in ports market never said what they where fur, gem with rock. arrow pointing towards ships is good. can u add indicator with ships remaining or distance to them they seem to always get first shots off at you wile u run towards them guessing when they will show up on your screen. can u add a fire arc instead of the red arrow . i havnt played very long but is there objective to this besides port trade, delivery, and battles

well i tried it, it made me feel like i wanted to die.... for one the controls dont always respond to what you want to move, if you have to chase your enemy sometimes they go partially off screen even if you are right next to them, the tentacles dont show any animation towards the ship indicating you are being damaged, which might lead people to believe they are not taking damage, and the map screen movement leaves something to be desired, as the controls only respond half of the time
the graphics are done okay, and its the only thing keeping me from rating this as a 0/10,so i rate the game a 3/10

But no matter what way you spin it, it still is only "potential" and potential =/= to sales
i personally would probably not buy the game, but i will try it

Installed fine on Win Vista Home Premium, 32 bit, gameplay is as described, but I would suggest a tool tip style pop-up on mouseover that can be toggled on and off. This would help you learn controls much faster. Graphics are decent windowed, but seem to show some blockiness in full screen. Steering ship has a very slight lag, so I found myself oversteering and compensating quite a bit at first. Maybe an on-screen indicator of direction pressed would help with this, though I got used to it rather quickly. Navigation on the world map is my only real problem with this game, however. I found myself moving my mouse in the same direction over and over, hoping to register movement... Again, a line of some sort, draggable to indicate direction of travel, would be very helpful here, as well.

Thanks for the software! Appreciate the hard work of the developers as well as the GAOTD team!


............................Moderator Comment...........................

Thanks for the feedback

I agree that the graphics are slightly fuzzy on my 15' monitor, but I gave it a quick play to see if I'd like it, and I do! Now I'm off to download it to my laptop too! Thanks GOTD! This one's a keeper!

I really like this game... and the installation is fast. Nice strategy game !

RE: COMMENT # 8

Thanks for checking that out Stephen. Obviously something happened. I didn't think it was you that didn't post it. I thought it might have been another moderator. As you said the comment where I said showing system specs might help was what I did. So for some reason or another it ended up in space. No problem. I understand these things happen.
Also thanks for the great review today. It's nice to have a new game to play.
joe


..........................Moderator comment...........................

Scuze the long delay in moderating. I fell asleep about 9 hours ago.

I have just downloaded this game after playing it for a bit at Kongregate. I like the retrographics (but then I am a bit of an rpg fan) and there is a similarity to Tradewinds in some ways although obviously we are the pirate rather than fighting them.

A great offer and much appreciated ... I was wondering about their other games but notice that all the links seem to be for 'apps' and wondered if this meant they are only available for mobile 'phones (cellphones) usually?


....................Moderator Comment.....................

not sure Terxle, some community members have tried to purchase other games from the developer only to have come a cropper. There seems to be something not quite right about the whole process. I cannot eloborate because I've not tried to purchase any games from them, but those who have have felt ripped off (even though the games were only $0.99)

I usually enjoy Wheemplay games, but this one left me cold.

The good:

-Only one installation file
-Opens in windowed mode so it doesn't take over my screen the first time it loads. (I really like this!)
-You're able to buy upgrades. I like deciding which attribute needs boosting.

The bad:

-the biggest flaw is that the naval battles are very quick and players don't have a lot of control during them. The enemy ships often fire on you before they're on the screen, which makes it impossible to know how to position your ship for maximum cannon coverage of the enemy vessel. Once the ships get close, they board each other and that's all automatic. You just watch the numbers.

-as noted above the ship seems to stall near islands. If this is a game feature, they should have noted it.

-there is no volume meter, just an on/off switch. I like my game sounds to be pretty low, so I have to mess with my speaker volumes every time I play or stop playing the game.

-I had a hard time getting into the story. I think they misused the word 'literally' at the beginning when they talk about a pair of men "literally vanishing into thin air". Were they ghosts? A minor complaint, I'll admit.

......................Moderator Comment......................

Thanks for your feedback; you mooted some useful ideas that I hope the developer will take note of. I think the developer has some excellent games in their portfolio, most of which could do with some work as standalones; still for free I don’t think we can grumble, I just wish they would show up here and leave feed back for us. I've not seen them once since they started giving us their games. They even gave me a copy of today’s game weeks ago so that I could post the review earlier in the morning.

I reckon packaging the whole lot together into an eclectic mix of arcade games, linking them together with mini games would give the whole substance and one I'd be willing to pay a decent price for. As standalone games I think most of them just aren't long enough to be worth more than the asking price. Of course some do include level editors, which can extend the life of those games. Still, it would be nice to see a game from this developer with more substance. I reckon they have thee skill to create some excellent games.

This game plays like a very very very lite version of Sid Meier's Pirates!(1987) or Pirates! Gold.

Stuff that I remember in Pirates! that is not in Rise of Pirates:
1) Swashbuckling
2) Ships attacking ports
3) Commodity price fluctuations (I am a bit hazy on this being in Pirates! It could have been Elite I am thinking about).


Stuff that is in Rise of Pirates:
1) Good old cannon blasting ship fun!
2) boarding enemy ships and having the crew fight each other (minus the swashbuckling).
3) Trade goods, but the prices are fixed and pretty much automatic. You always buy cheaper and you always get a profit when you sell at a different port.
4) Upgrading your ship and your character.
5) There are sea monsters you must avoid.


Suggestions for game improvement:
1) There have been many times that the enemy ships are off screen and firing at me, but I cannot fire back because I cannot move my mouse off screen to fire at them. Maybe it would be better if your ship was always in the center of the screen, so that you can see a wider view.

2) Commodity price fluctuations. Different ports having different prices for goods at different times, and also allow the player to decide whether to sell at the price.


Overall fun for a very lite pirate game.

That's all I can think of from my brief playing of the game.


......................Moderator Comment......................

Thanks for your feedback, it is much appreciated.

Finally I get a game to actually work. This installed smoothly and it worked right from the start. I think it is a good game and is different and fun. I beleive it will fill in those times when I need a distraction.
Not what I have experienced recently.

Last week I made a long descriptive list of the problems I had with that game not working. I listed the computers I loaded it on and the error messages and spent a lot of time to maybe help others with the same problem. I thought I was doing the right thing.
Evidently, it was not deemed worthy of being printed. I know that GGOTD is looking for positive comments to please the companies that offer their product but I think that comments that voice problems should be heard as well. Just my opinion but I think they could learn from that. As you see I comment on the positive when I experience that. Today's game is certainly worth downloading and I than the company for offering it and GGOTD as well. Also Whiterabbit/Stephen for his reviews.


.........................Moderator Comment.........................

Hi Joe, I never saw your comment. All comments with useful, thoughful feedback whether positive or negative will be posted here. I've been asking for both positive and negative feed back for some time now because I agree, both can be of use to the developer. I would never delete or consign to the trash any comment that someone has obviously worked hard to write up and comment about.

I can only suggest that the post was automatically filtered out for some reason. I will check the spam folder once I'm done moderating these comments.


Edit:

I checked the spam and trash folders, there wasn't anything in them from you. I then checked your previous posts using your url to find them all and the last one prior to this one was posted on the 9th May and mentioned quoting specs, which I agreed was a good idea and that I would incorporate it into a FAQ's that I'vce been working on (for ages now).

I really don't know what happened to your post. Spam is only kept for a couple of days at the most, so if you posted it before Friday it could have been automatically deleted. Posts are usually only tagged as spam if they have suspect Emails, web site addressess and links within the main comment. (I get away with my links because I edit them into the post once it's been accepted). The spam filter (Akismet) does a very good job, but can be overly sensitive to genuine posters sometimes. If you still have a copy of the post I could copy it into the comments section via one of your other posts, or yu could post it yourself and I'll make sure it's moderated and let through.

Great game. Kinda unbalanced but addictive :) . Best part of the game is when You have weak cannons. Unfortunately when You want to increase crew number(to kill boss ships >1000HP) You have to buy stronger ship and then cannons do more damage with one shot- no sport...Ai is weak, aiming should be locked to fire only perpendicular.There should be limint of cargo aboard. Anyway i recommand downloading and thumbs up. Thanks again Wheemplay.


......................Moderator Comment......................

Thanks for your feedback Flan

G'Day People,
The screen shot above looks like a cut down version of Pirates( The old school version ). I spent hundreds of hours playing that game and never had the booklet with all the dates( That was a anti-piracy thing, Go figure ).

Anyway Im wondering how it compares to the original Pirates(Pirates Gold was a 256 colour VGA version I believe).

If someone has played the game, Can you give your opinion of the two.

-Cheers


..........................................Moderator Comment..............................................


you can get both Pirates and Pirates Gold for free now. They are classed as Abandonware and are freely available from several abandonware sites. You can get it from one of the better sites called Abandonia. I've listed several other games mes that you or others from the community may be interested in. Don't let the fact that most of these wont play in a windows environment put you off. all will play via DOSBox, which is very simple to set up. There are a couple that do play in a windows environment (probably not Vista though), but I'd play them in DOSBox becasue such games tend to have sound issues when played in Windows.


Pirates Gold (1993)

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/134/Pirates+Gold.html

It was released via Microprose in 1993 (one of my favorite developers/distributors from back then - they also released a brilliant game called Darklands around the same time that is still a brilliant game today despite the bugs that it had and despite the ancient graphics). Here's the storyline, sound familiar?

Well, where shall I begin... First of all, this game is about sailing in areas of the Caribbean Sea in the time from 1560 until 1680. This is known as the "golden era" of pirates. The mission is simple: You plunder towns and ships. Of course this will make you an enemy of one or more nations as a result of plundering. You will also need to close alliances with other nations. You start as a simple Captain, but from this humble beginning a good player may become a duke or a baron. And you will also have to find your family, which is lost and scattered, all around the game's world.

Starting as a new captain with one ship and little start-up amount of gold, it is up to you what you do next. The story of how you become a captain varies depending of which nation and skill you choose at beginning. This is just the best thing in the game as there is no story to follow and you are NOT forced to do anything. You can sail wherever you want and attack whomever you want, but be vary that all your hostile actions will be noted and attacking one nation makes it your enemy for sure… But you may gain FAVOURS of another nation that is at war with the one you attacked. Just remember that this other nation can also turn out to be your enemy - it all depends on current politics and diplomacy.

So gathering news whenever possible is important. There could be sign of a city that was attacked by Indians; thereby lowering it's defences and leaving all it's riches up to you if you are fast. Or maybe some pirates have attacked another town, making it pointless to attack the town because it doesn't have much anymore left for you to plunder. And, of course, there are always news of relationship between nations, so that keeps you informed which nation would turn enemy to you if you attack other nation which is allied with it.

Some bad points of this game exist too, although they are few. Attacking a fortified town with a ship is the most difficult thing, because the fort's cannons will hit your ship most of the time, even if you try to evade. So getting off the ship nearby on land and attack the city by foot is a somewhat better idea, though nothing is too easy. Also the game ends too fast, even with the skill of medicine, so you normally do about 4-5 plunder-runs before you are too old to try your luck again. This game is so much fun that it would surely not hurt to be able to play it longer… but the only option you have is to start new game or to command a famous expedition, which is interesting, but an even shorter option of playing.

Marry the duke's daughter, plunder Spanish treasures, spread fear among the cities and set sail with us for the Spanish Main, high adventure and Pirates' Gold!

reference: http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/134/Pirates+Gold.html accessed 28th May 2011

You will probably require DOSBox to play the game, but it's really simple to set that emulator up. Check out the sticky in the games discussion forums on how to set DOSBox up using a free version of Norton Commander

With DOSBox you can then play all those classic games like the first two Elder Scrolls games Arena and Daggerfall, both of which are now freeware thanks to Bethesda. Daggerfall is actually a bigger world than both Morrowing and Oblivion (the last two in the Elder Scrolls series. The firth one is due out in the third quarter this year; that's one game I've been waiting to be finished for quite a few years. :lol:

Scuze my digression.... :)

Other abandoned games with a pirate theme include the first one you mentioned. Pirates which was also a Microprose title, though re;leased way back in 1987, so you can expect the graphics to be pretty basic. That said, some of these old games don't need graphics to support them becasue the game play was exceptional. If you can get past the graphics interface, this is a great game (much like the game I mentioned above called Darklands (I wish someone would rerelease it with updated graphics and in a first person viewpoint) Anyway here's the download link for Pirates. All the games I'm going to link to are DOSBox supported unless I state otherwise. Very few of these opld gamess support windows, but that's not a problem with the emulator. :)

Pirates: (1987)

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/746/Pirates!.html

Skull & Crossbones: (1991)

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/24336/Skull+%2526+Crossbones.html


Pirates of the Barbary Coast: (1987)

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/835/Pirates+of+the+Barbary+Coast.html


Sea Rogue: (1992)

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/1001/Sea+Rogue.html


Archimedean Dynasty: (1997)

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/27183/Archimedean+Dynasty.html



Uncharted Waters 2 - New Horizons: (1995)

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/276/Uncharted+Waters+2+-+New+Horizons.html

Uncharted Waters: (1992) - (not really a pirate game, but it is nautical):

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/513/Uncharted+Waters.html

Ports of Call: (1992)

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/108/Ports+of+Call.html





Ocean Trader: (1996) - (works in both DOSBox and XP)

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/553/Ocean+Trader.html


High Seas Trader: (1995)

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/214/High+Seas+Trader.html


Gloriana (1995)

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/972/Gloriana.html

Machiavelli the Prince (Merchant Prince remake) (1993)

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/324/Machiavelli+the+Prince+%28Merchant+Prince+remake%29.html


There are more but I think those should keep the most ardent of retro games busy for) All apart from Ocean Trader and Machiavelli the Prince require DOSBox, these two will play in Win XP and probably Win 7 (if not and you have the Pro or Ultimate editions you cnan download an image of XP so that you can play the games via that sandbox.

Sorry for the very long reply. Most of the above games do contain elements similar to todays game giveaway.


Hmmm, here's another one called 1869:

http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/446/1869.html

......................Moderator Comment.................

Looks like my image storage provider is having problems again. Sorry for the inconvinience. You can see all of the images I've posted plus more via the photobucket link.

Wheemplay games are small, but they can be surprisingly challenging.
I like the graphics in "rise of pirates" very much, a kind of nostalgic. And it is rather a nice game to play.

Wheemplay games always start windowed, which makes me happy. You can maximize the window to get a sort of fullscreen though.

Wheemplay games consist of only one portable standalone executable.
It will not mess up your OS, nore your desktop and you can take it with you on a USB-stick.

This executable is worth copying and saving because you can use it without registering or installing. Just copy the executable where ever you feel fit.

The best part of course, it is a surprisingly nice game to play.

really slow moving - got very bored very quickly - not for me

Game is blurry/ fuzzy on a 20" HP LCD monitor, with a pc running Windows 7. I feel there should be a link as well to the tutorial. The brief one you added, does not really help out much, if you cannot access it as needed. What about adding a tutorial battle or something along those lines. Lastly, games seems to be unresponsive @ times, when using the mouse to get my ship into manuvering around on the map.


........................Moderator Comment.......................

I've been playing mine on a 25" wide screen with no problems. The apparent unresponsiveness only occurs when you are near land. To travel effectively on both the world map and the main battle map you need to steer around island without touching them otherwise the ship does appear to stall. Maybe it's interaction with the collision mesh or something along those lines. You need to give at least the thickness of your ship clearance when manoeuvring around islands.

The tutorial battle would be a good idea. I'd also add multiple profiles so that the whole family can play the same game, and perhaps add some power ups that give you temporary speed ups, invulnerability and emulate some of the perks for short periods.

A local networked game would be a great addition as well so that family members could play against or cooperatively with each other. The game certainly has a lot of scope for expansion. Overall I think this is quite a decent flash game.

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of 'potential' cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away even more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you’ve checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain why your reasons for the feedback you post. You could also leave suggestions for improving the game, for example, this game could do with a levels editor, add more power-ups, describing the ones you think would be suitable, add some mini games (which seem all the rage in some arcade games now) or enable the user to be able to change the in game music easily.

Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment.

Regards

Whiterabbit aka Stephen

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rise of Pirates :

Wheemplay Logo

Installation:

Rise of Pirates downloads to a 13.8MB zip file that unpacks to a read me and a wrapped dual setup and activation module. The game installs to:

C:\Games\Rise of Pirates.exe

As with all Wheemplay games, the executable installs directly to the games folder with no folder of its own; the file size is 13.3MB when installed. You can create a folder for the game during the installation wizard, and if you wish change the installation path. There’s no shortcut installed to either the desktop or the Start menu/Programs list, and to uninstall the game just delete it. There is no uninstaller provided.

The game plays on win XP Pro 32 bit, Vista Home Premium 64 bit, Vista home Basic 32 bit, Win 7 Pro 64 bit and win 7 Ultimate 64 bit.

Main Menu

In game image showing direction to travel towards pirates

Introduction:

In this pirate simulation you can play one of two modes, select a character with perks when playing the campaign mode, upgrade your ships and weapons, buy and sell goods and even smuggle contraband between the naval battles that make up the main part of this game

World Map showing the various ports you can travel to. The red one is your immediate destination to complete the level

The Game:


This is a basic pirate simulation where you have to destroy enemy ships avoiding certain areas where sea monsters lurk. If you run over a sea monster your ship receives damage, which then makes it easier for enemy pirates to destroy your ship. Thankfully sea monsters usually show themselves momentarily so you should be able to avoid them. Your ship and weapons are upgradeable. To upgrade these you need to earn money by destroying your enemy or by making a profit by selling goods purchased in the ports either legally from the markets or illegally via the black market (transactions of this type are carried out in the taverns). To upgrade you have to enter one of several ports which are scattered across the globe. Travelling to any port is hazardous because you can be attacked by enemy pirates anywhere, plus of course there are also the dangers from sea monsters.

Once in port you can use your earnings to upgrade your ship. This will increase your defensive capabilities by moving faster or having better armour. Or you can spend your money on new cannon that will give you faster firing cannons or cannons that fire further afield or cause more damage per shot. You can also exchange experience points to improve the various perks that are available which give your character better seamanship qualities and improve the skills of your ships crew. You can see the various upgrades and perks by checking out the slideshow which I’ve linked to below or looking at the various images posted within the review.

When starting the game for the first time you can select either the full campaign by clicking on new game or selecting survival. The latter enables you to start the game right away with no tutorial. Selecting new game will take you to the campaign mode where you will initially be given the choice of two of three characters. The first two; Franklin Ford and Henry Morgan give you either a plus 1 authority perk (Franklin Ford) or a plus 1 Bombardier perk (Henry Morgan) at the start of the game both of which increase the respective skill/attribute by 10%. You don’t get the initial starter perk when playing survival, but you can earn them during the game (if you survive long enough). The third character which has unknown bonuses and no history becomes available once you’ve completed the game in full. Both of the known characters are introduced briefly via a short story. Once you’ve chosen a character you have to keep that character until the end unless you start a new game. You cannot run two characters concurrently from the same executable, which means for the whole family to play this game you’ll need to install the game as many times as the number of family members who want to play it. You will need to install the games to different locations, or alternatively rename the game for each installation so that you don’t overwrite them. :idea: rename to include the name of the family member eg Rise of Pirates - Stephen). The game takes up little space so having multiple copies is not going to impact on your disc space. Once you’ve chosen your character you will be shown a map of the world and introduced to the tutorial which takes you through the basics step by step and introduces you to all new aspects of the game such as movement of your ship, firing your cannons, and upgrading your ships and cannon as well as carrying cargo and adding perks.

The Campaign mode takes you through the whole game level after level whereas survival is one level that is continuous play until you are destroyed. Both modes are accessible from the main menu from the start of the game. Progress is always saved when playing the campaign mode at whatever point you left it, but if you start a new game all previous progress is lost. There is a high score table which gives you separate scores for each of the two modes of play, plus there is a trophy page. Trophies include ‘Best Ship and Cannon purchased’, ‘100 enemy ships destroyed’ and ‘Whole game completed’ , both of which are accessible from the main menu.

Your ship has cannons on both sides which means you can shoot to the right or left of you, but not directly in front of you or behind. Use the left mouse button to fire from the left of you with respect to the fore (front) and aft (rear) of the ship and the right mouse button to fire from the right. This means you must always manoeuvre your ship into a suitable position so that you can hit your opponent. If you see a red arrow it means you cannot shoot in that direction, though the arrow also indicates the position of the nearest enemy when you cannot see them on the map. A white arrow indicates you can fire.

Along the bottom of the in game screen you can see your ships statistics which includes the amount of damage you can take before being destroyed, the reload time and range of your cannon shot, the number of cannons you have, (remember that the number will be divided into two as you can only fire on one side at a time. There are also numbers for steering ability, the higher the number the better the steering, the speed of the ship, it’s armour and cores. To the bottom right corner of the screen you can see the ships health points which is the red bar and the ships crew which is the blue bar. (The latter is important when considering boarding an enemy ship). In the middle of these two indicators is a picture of your character and four buttons that enable you to escape, go to the character screen, pause the game or go to the main menu. You are able to increase the perks via the character screen . Upgrade points are earned by destroying enemy ships, capturing booty (by boarding ships) and by trading. You also gain experience which unlocks new ships and cannon later in the game. There are three types of perks ‘Authority Perk’ which increase’s the strength of your crew, the ‘Bombardier Perk’ which increases the damage potential of your cannon shot and the distance it can travel and the ‘Trader Perk’ which gives you increased gold when capturing ships and/or trading while in port. There are five increments to each perk and each increment increases the perk by 10%.

These perks are earned when you have gained experience. You are able to choose which perk to increase. There is an indicator on the right hand panel next to the perks that tells you how near you are to levelling up. The right hand panel also shows you the experience gained, the number of upgrade points, the ship you own (each ship had different characteristics such as steering, speed, and the number of cannons it can carry), plus how far through the campaign as a percentage you have passed. The upgrade button shows you the various upgrades you can add to your ship such as cannon damage, number of cannon, crew numbers, reload speed, ship speed, ship armour and manoeuvrability. Each of these can be upgraded five times. Also on the bottom of the window you’ll see the amount of gold you have to spend on upgrading these. When you have enough ,those upgrades you can afford will be highlighted. You can choose your destination between levels from the world map, though your main destination is marked in red. While moving to these ports you are likely to be attacked several times. If you survive an attack your ship will be repaired to its normal state. Occasionally messages and more of the story will pop up usually when you arrive at your destination; for example during the first mission you may get the message:

“You’ve got problems. My master wants to get something that belongs to you”, he points to the amulet hanging around your neck (which is introduced in the story at the beginning of the game when you select your character) The story continues with:
‘The conversation started off not as well as it could have and during this long monologue you felt a strong desire to cut your opponent into pieces………

Usually the messages you receive on arriving at port will contain quests that can increase your earning potential for example you may be asked to take some object or goods to another ports for which you get a decent bounty for completing. The first one I received was twice the amount I’d won from destroying three enemy pirates. Once you’ve read the story click on the proceed button. If you are in port you will be given a choice of four locations to visit; the first of which is the ship yard where you can purchase new ships; if you don’t have enough gold in your chest to upgrade to a better ship you can battle with pirates by going back out to sea then returning with more booty or go trade some of the goods you may have captured from pirates by boarding their ships , or from previous purchases from markets you’ve visited in other ports. The cost of ships range from 2500 gold coins to 30000. I’d only earned 398 on the first leg of my journey, which wasn’t enough to purchase the second cheapest ship (you start the game with the cheapest ship). You can also buy new cannons which range from 100 gold to 1030 gold pieces. The cheapest upgrade increases your cannons damage potential to +7. Depending upon how much gold you have, all cannon upgrades that you can afford will be highlighted in light yellow. Those you cannot afford are highlighted in salmon pink ( the same colour scheme goes for all types of upgrades). In the market you can buy a range of goods. Each item gives you the cost to purchase and the resell value. To purchase an item click on the icon. A small window opens which enables you to choose the number of items you wish to purchase then a confirmation or decline button (Yes or No) to accept the goods or not; from the tavern you can buy black market items, purchase support ships or drink rum with old sailors. (I've not discovered what drinking rum confers yet). Finally the in game music can be turned off via the toggle in the top right hand corner of the game. you can also minimize the game to the task bar or maximise it to full screen. The game starts in windowed mode by default.

Controls:

• Move Ship - WASD or Arrow Keys

• Aim Cannon – Mouse

• Fire Cannon Left and Right Mouse buttons



Images:

Slideshow:

You can see all of the images I’ve posted in this review plus more (approximately 50 images) via the following link:

http://s571.photobucket.com/albums/ss160/Whiterabbit04/Rise%20of%20Pirates/?albumview=slideshow

Conclusion:

This is a surprisingly strong game considering it’s a flash game. You’ll find it available to play on several sites if you wish to try it out before downloading (I’ve posted one link below). It may take some time to load as it’s quite large for a flash game, but I reckon it’s worth waiting for. At least you’ll get a feel for whether or not you’re going to like the game and hence whether to download or not.

The two modes allow you to play an extended campaign with lots of levels or a quick survival game where once you die the game ends. The campaign can be quite short if you race from port to port as the indicators dictate, but to get the most out of the game and to be able to upgrade your ship, you should explore the world without following the directed routes. You’ll find plenty of opportunities to earn gold which can then be spent on upgrading your ship, purchasing a new ship, buying better cannons or purchasing goods to export to various ports and to make a decent profit; however, beware, if you lose your ship in battle you lose all of your goods that you purchased in your last port of call as well. When dying you only have to play from your last save.

The game is well worth 7 out of 10 IMO, despite the simple graphics and basic game play. (8 game play, 5 for music, 8 graphics) It’s an ideal game for filling in those odd moments when you’re at a loss as to what else to play. I wouldn’t say it’s a game I could play for extended periods but that said I do like this game and will be keeping it. There are similar arcade quality versions of this game available from places like MyPlayCity and Gametop (see the alternatives section below), and there’s an interesting Facebook game called Battle Pirates that I think is much better than today’s game; the only downside is you have to play it via Facebook.

Character Profile

Items you can purchase to export

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Alternatives:


You can find this game on several flash based sites (just Google it) where you will be able to play it via your browser. As with any flash game you’ll require a flash player to play the game. Due to it’s size it may take some time to load up into your browser. You’ll find a copy at the following site:

http://www.kongregate.com/games/KingDotCom/rise-of-pirates

You can also download Rise of Pirates as a swf file for free via the following link:

http://www.king.com/website_content.jsp?ref=rise-of-pirates



There are several pirate based games of this genre, though I can’t remember offhand the names of the ones I’ve seen and played for free previously. The following can be downloaded for free (full versions) from MyPlayCity or Gametop. Please do make sure you keep an eye open during installation to ensure any boxes are unchecked otherwise you may find a new tool bar installed or your home page has been changed to MyPlayCity. These of course can be avoided by unchecking the appropriate boxes. That said they are not necessarily installed via these games. As with all MyPlayCity games your browser will be opened when you close the game down, but it’s totally innocuous.

1) ... Brave Pirate:

http://www.myplaycity.com/brave_pirate/

2) ... Cosmic Pirate:

http://www.myplaycity.com/cosmic_pirates/

3) ... Pirates: Battle for the Caribbean:

http://downloads.zdnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=765901 (you need to register with the site, though this should also be available from Gametop. I wasn’t able to access the site last night so couldn’t confirm the download at Gametop.)

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