Puzzle Pirates

Arrrr, matey, how would you like a pirrrate MMORRRPG? Then you should have a look at Puzzle Pirates, also available in German and Chinese. Puzzle Pirates is a cheap game, the client is free, and you can play 10 times for free before having to pay just under $10 per month. But fortunately cheap doesn't have to mean bad, Puzzle Pirates is a thoroughly amusing and fun game for the whole family.

Graphics are simple, 2D, and your character looks a bit like a character from Lego or Playmobil. But for 2D, the graphics are nice enough, in a cartoonish style. The whole thing runs under Java, so you can play it under Windows, Linux, and even on a Mac.

You are playing a pirate, stranded on a small island with just a sword and some rags to name your own. Fortunately the tutorial ship comes along, picks you up, and shows you the ropes. (They are the lying coiled up on board of the ship, har, har!) This sets you off to a glorious career in the pirating business, which might end with you as a dreaded pirate captain.

As the name Puzzle Pirates suggests, the game is full of puzzle mini-games. In fact, everything in Puzzle Pirates is a mini-game. Sailing, fixing the ship, pumping the bilge, even sword-fighting. And tradeskills will be puzzles too, although just now only the brewing puzzle is implemented. The puzzles are of different kinds, several variants of Tetris, Reversi, sliding-puzzles, and "fit the piece in the hole" puzzles.

In spite of being simple, the game is surprisingly fun. Even the PvP (Pirate vs. Pirate) combat, a sort of multiplayer Tetris, is fun, and you can only lose and be robbed once, so griefing is not really an issue. And the community is one of the nicest I have met for a long time. Maybe because it is NOT that immersive, everybody is doing his best to piratify his language and do a bit of role-playing. Like many games, Puzzle Pirates is more fun if you are part of a group (crew), with everybody fulfilling a role on the ship, and then all joining in the ship-to-ship combat.

As you can try this game for free, I would really recommend you check it out. The download is small enough, and being able to log in 10 times before you have to pay is very fair in my opinion.
- posted by Tobold @ 12:24 PM Permanent Link