We took a look at the upcoming pirate-themed city-builder title and were pleasantly surprised by the beautiful visuals and interesting combat mechanics.
Pirates are back in fashion! After the first ones gameplay presentation of the updated AC: Black Flag, we also played a demo version of the upcoming one city-buildera Corsair Cove, where we have the opportunity to build a pirate metropolis, and perhaps an empire. Under the publishing baton of the now famous Hooded Horse, Corsair Cove pleasantly surprised us first of all with excellent visuals of the crystal clear sea and some cute details like the stumbling of eternally drunken pirates.
This is a typical construction-management game in which you build some kind of housing starting from scratch. Your group of pirates ran aground on some Caribbean island aptly named Skull Island, because one rock looks awfully like a skull. Amara, the captain of the Spanish monstrosity, who organically can’t stand you, strongly encouraged you to get stranded.
Very quickly, the interesting models of “buildings” that your pirates are able to construct stand out, and at what heights! Namely, since spacious plains are a rarity, you are doomed to vertical construction. You will often find yourself building, for example, stone warehouses at a height of about a hundred meters above the sea, and everything is connected by a dense network of wooden bridges, platforms and ladders. During construction, I tried to use some logic that it is better to build bigger buildings on solid ground, and tents on higher ground… It would be a good motivation to give up rum, but it’s all of an aesthetic nature, admittedly. I even think it would help if some building collapsed or a random drunk took a closer look at the sea.
In addition to wooden dwellings, you can also build ships, which then need to be assigned a captain who further improves the vessel’s characteristics. You have a choice of several characters who will often comment on the plot of this construction title. As far as I can see, the story is focused on revenge against the mentioned captain and the ambition to build a real little pirate empire. There is also solid voice acting, and the directed scenes are presented in 3D PowerPoint style.
You will not be able to fly your ships manually. You throw yourself into the research by activating a trip to a certain point, to which the ship then goes on its own, and the player has to wait for it to arrive at that destination. You’re probably wondering if there is a fight and what it’s like, and it’s somewhat surprisingly done in card style with dice rolling.
Namely, the player gets a choice of several actions in the form of cards, with which he can choose whether he wants to do as much damage as possible in his move, prepare to avoid enemy missiles as efficiently as possible, or something in between. Your ship has three main characteristics: how much structural damage it has taken, the amount of crew, and the amount of supplies. If one of the first two is reduced to zero, you have lost the ship, and the supplies are spent on actions, that is, on those cards, which can consume more or less of those supplies. There are also resupply options, such as pushing a couple of your own sailors overboard.
You can always see what your opponent’s intention is, so you can adapt to it, and if you choose the option that you want to attack and do, say, 3-5 damage, the aforementioned dice comes into play, and fortune determines the final number. The same applies to the opponent. Missions to explore an island, a stranded ship, and the like work very similarly. Such missions are segmented into research phases and at one point very certain fights between your crew and others, some locals and the like, with the fact that during the research phase the cards offer “advance 200 m cautiously” or “hurry up and accept damage / loss of people”.
As you fight, loot, explore, and build, you unlock technologies on a tree that has four distinctive branches: notoriety, wealth, seafaring, and combat. By unlocking these technologies, you get new types of ships to use.
The rest of the gameplay is typical for this genre. In order for the population to remain satisfied, they need to be provided with basic conditions such as accommodation and food, and the local community will also help. If the satisfaction of a certain settlement drops to zero, an immediate fight and fuss breaks out, which you have to calm down in whatever way you know how and within a certain period.
Another way things can go to hell is if the cohesion of your entire group of rogues drops to zero. Then general chaos and rebellion breaks out, and for you this means restoring your saved position to avoid the game over screen. Cohesion generally rises with successful campaigns, and falls with receiving new arrivals, along with your decisions during some tricky situations that pop up here and there.
Once the basics are secured, then you start building the industry, where it is of course important to arrange the layout of the buildings harmoniously and connect them efficiently. If you need bird droppings (yes, really) and coal to produce gunpowder, then you are doomed to have the facility where you produce coal be near a notorious pile of bird poop, as well as the woodcutter himself, in order to maximize efficiency. Then it would be nice if there was a warehouse nearby so that they would have as large a stock as possible for the example of the gunpowder taken.
When maneuvering around my own islands, I was often troubled by a rather clumsy camera, partly because of its slowness and partly because it was forever stuck on the rocks. I also think it can be cut down on suggesting the connections of your buildings to the rest of the platforms. If I want to place the tent in a position between the two previously built platforms, the projection offers me six ladders and three bridges. And not every tent has to have its own ladder if I made a whole staircase for that rock!
The visual beauty is dominated by the sea with admixtures of blue and turquoise. And cute building models are enough to draw attention to this upcoming title. Corsair Cove offers both a seemingly large map to explore and plenty of opportunities to test cannons through interestingly implemented card battles. We expect the full content of the game on 7/31 of this year – what the hell is the same month as Black Flag Resynced.