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Review: Puzzle Pirates
pc
03.23.04 / 06:04PM / Boris
Puzzle games, like Tetris, are addictive right up until the point where it dawns on you that there’s no point to getting any better. Once you’ve satisfied the learning curve, without any reason to keep pushing that boulder uphill, the desire to do it fades. Puzzle Pirates attempts to put several reasons why you should continue – fame, fortunate, and the excuse to say “Arrr, me buckos!” when swordfighting against other players.
The Plot: There isn’t a plot. And the setting is a little loosely defined as well – you’re a lego person pirate, sailing Midnight Ocean in search of booty in the company of other like-minded swabbies. The ocean is full of islands, some colonized, some not, and profit can be had from moving commodities from foraging uncolonized lands and putting into port around a colony that will buy them. If, that is, you can defend your hold from other pirates, player and nonplayer alike.
You start out as a rag clad swabbie (or swabbette; the game does not prejudice itself against she buccaneers) on a desert island, picked up by an NPP (non-player pirate) ship. Your generic pirate tour guide makes you play the bilging game to earn your passage to a nearby colonized island, where you’re left with a handful of pieces o’ eight and an active harbor town with ships coming in and shops hawking their wares. What you do from there is your choice.
Essentially, the game isn’t something you accomplish, it’s something you do. Which, given that it’s a subscriber fee game, that makes sense. You don’t beat the game, you treadmill at the game. In order to keep the treadmill spinning, there is plenty to keep you occupied (and announced plans to add more variety of things to keep you busy). You don’t have to play all of the games if you don’t want to, and you can choose how much involvement you want to have with the major activities of the game – but, the deeper you choose to involve yourself, the more that infective hook sinks into you. Which leads me nicely into…
The Gameplay: Simple interface. Your little piratey dude (who can be chosen from a small selection of skin tones and hair styles) can visit clothiers, distillers, iron mongers and the dock simply by clicking on the shop’s door, or, faster, on the shop’s name on the island map. You can be social with other pirates through tells, or waltz into a circle of pirates and talk or emote at them. And while all of these are important activities, more important is getting yer scurvy hide onto a ship and working.
The notice board lists both navy (NPP) and player crews looking for jobbers to hire on for temporary work. Once aboard a ship, there are several duty stations to do, each of them fires up a minigame. Your performance at the minigame affects the success of the crew that you’re with – which is why the minigames actually mean something more than a learning curve. Bilging, which is in my opinion, a dreadful chore, is a matter of swapping tiles to make matches. Boring, but the puzzle approximates the dullness of operating a bilge pump, I suppose. If nobody bilges, the ship takes on water, and slows down (they don’t, however, sink – there are no real risks to your pirate’s life and limb). Carpentry both slows down leaks (thus making the bilging lighter work) and repairs damage sustained from cannon fire. Sailing provides speed to the ship, obviously. Gunnery loads the cannons to be shot in tactical combat. Finally, navigating (which only officers can do, so you’ll have to sign on and impress a crew in order to do that job) increases the efficiency of sailors, speeding up the ship even more.
With all players working together at a good efficiency, the ships really zip. Which is good if you want to turn a profit, because player owned ships don’t pay you for your time spent in the puzzle – they pay you out of profits taken from piracy. So, with enough wind at your sails, there’s always the option to engage nearby ships and plunder them – Midnight ocean is full of player and nonplayer ships, and they’re out to plunder you, too. Once ships approach each other, a tactical combat breaks out (again, something only the officer gets to play) where ships use movement tokens generated by sailors and position themselves to take shots at each other. Once a ship has been sufficiently softened up, the captain can steer the ships on a collision course, allowing the crews to board and engage in swordfighting.
(Incidently, being damaged by cannon fire or clumsy battle navigating really effects the ship – not only are you taking on bilge until the carpenters can repair the damage, but your swordfighting window may be partially filled by unbreakable junk blocks – a performance penalty for the crew of a shot-ridden ship. Again, a good example of how interconnected the puzzles are).
Swordfighting is a blast, typically. Colored sword tiles drop in pairs from the top, and the idea is to make either blocks (2x2, 3x4, etc) of colored tiles, or at least strings of like-colored tiles. Less commonly (maybe 1/20 tiles), a “breaker” will drop – these tiles are colored like the tiles, and if connected to its matching tile, destroys every tile of that color that is connected. For every two single tile you break, a white block falls on your foe. If you break a block, then a sword of matching dimensions (like a 2x5 block turns into a vertically falling 2x5 sword) drops on your hapless foe. The swords turn into white blocks, the white blocks eventually turn into colored tiles – and the color of those tiles depends on the sword you’re wielding. All swords have their own unique drop pattern, and careful study of those swords before you purchase one is critical to long term success of your crew. To make matters more interesting, you can “team up” against other pirates – you can swap who you’re fighting against, and if more than one of you are ganging up on a rival pirate, your drops can really pound somebody silly. It’s a lot of fun when it works out, especially if you engineer a double or triple combo (which multiplies the amount of litter you dump all over your foes).
Once the fight is resolved, the winning crew robs a significant portion of the loot from the enemy’s hold. And then you return to the seas to hunt for more. The novelty of the experience is how puzzle playing, typically a solitary time sink, turns into a really cleverly constructed multiplayer effort. The success of everybody depends on your individual successes. Which makes signing on with a crew on a permanent basis a hazardous decision for the time-crunched – the more you work with a crew, the more you like them, and the more you want to share in their success.
Addictive altruism aside, you get sweet, sweet PoE (pieces of eight) as a cut from the booty, and this can be used to either buy swords (an essential for good swordfighting, as the foil you start with is a miserable weapon) or clothing. Clothing has no actual use in the game, but it’s amusing to play dress me up with clothing, and it gives your lego pirate a little bit of personal flaire. Player preferences range from dignified pirate chic (all white uniforms, purple with yellow trim uniforms, etc) down to completely ridiculous get ups. My current outfit, on my white skinned, red haired pirate, is flame red shoes, yellow pants, and a red/white striped shirt with a yellow vest. In short, I’m the pirate what looks like Ronald McDonald. Later down the road, you can invest in your own vessels and buy and operate shops, although the price range for those activities is insanely out of reach for your average, “I’m just here to have a good time and play the game” pirate.
The problem, unfortunately, is that once the learning curve is over, the fun starts fading into a treadmill. Affording a vessel is fine, and swords are certainly pricey, but those are really the only things you can reasonably manage to spend your PoE on. The economy is more or less limited to clothing expenditures, which isn’t too inaccurate when you consider your average teenager, but you have no ability to influence the economy other than ferrying goods (either foraged off of uncolonized islands or bought from marketplaces on colonized islands) or being a laborer at a shop. That, and clothing really nets you nothing of game-play value; we’re not talking armor here, just fancy duds so that your avatar gains notice. I sent an e-mail to the developers, and they are aware of the problems (there’s “the list” of things to do, and among that is to fix the economy), so buyer beware – this is a very fun, but unfinished product. If you like diversions, then by all means enjoy the game, but the sense of accomplishment you get from your subscription to this massively multiplayer game may be less than what you get from a MMRPG, where your character builds in ability as you progress, not just in bankroll.
The Aesthetics: The game is simple, graphically – it’s a puzzle game, and too much glitz and glamour would distract you. All pirates are cutesy and lego-like, you only have a few expressions (none of which I think you can actually choose to wear; puzzle pirates walk about with a blissful, Prozac inspired smile on their face; you only show other expressions when being rated at your performance at a job, or when you win/lose a duel. Sound effects are important, but tastefully muted; a bosun’s whistle alerts you if you’ve been ordered or challenged, cannon shots boom and crash, and puzzle activities make notification sounds. Largely, the experience is easy on the eyes and ears, but not so impressive that you’d ever lose focus of the activity station you’re jobbing at (I do kind of find myself enjoying the orchestra hit you get when you sail effectively, especially if you string a bunch of combos together – it sounds like a symphony).
Final Thoughts: It’s worth a try, considering it’s free to do so. You can’t buy really fancy duds if you’re a greenie (i.e., a non paying pirate), but subscribing is just $20/3 months. Since I’m (as of writing) less than a month into my 3 month subscription, I can’t adequately say whether or not the interconnectivity of puzzles is addictive enough to string out for 3 months worth of play.. but it’s a damn good improvement on Pop-Cap’s “Move the shiny object! Now, buy this game so you can play more shiny object movement” business model.
Arrrrr, it also be an opportunity ta spit shine yer Piratese, ye scurvy lubber! Whar else can ye be getting’ away with sayin’ ahoy matey? Thar be a touch o’ culture ta the players; ‘tis customary ta be sayin’ ahoy instead o’ hello when ye be greetin’ a matey or be jobbin’ a vessel, doncha know? Avast, even th’ swearin’, which pirates be known to do, harrr, has a bit o’ humor to it – ye say scupper and barnacle when ye really mean ta be sayin’ words what makes the planks curl. Th’ language be optional, but if ye be a natural ham, thar be plenty o’ opportunity ta be goofin’ around. 03.23.04 / 06:04PM / Boris |
