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If you’ve ever had the urge to play a deck-building open world pirate game in the style of Sid Meier’s Pirates, Sea of Legends could be for you.
Sea of Legends is a cheerful deck-building role-playing game that is designed to allow you to develop from a scallywag to a pirate king. In the Caribbean of the 17th century you plunder ships, woo love interests and fight the undead – or the other way around. The game blends the systems of the cult-classic Sid Meier’s Pirates with the tactics and storytelling of Shadowrun and the deck-building mechanics of Slay the Spire. The Kickstarter campaign will start on October 1st and the creative mind behind it is Jordan Weisman, designer of BattleTech, Crimson Skies, Shadowrun Returns, Shadowrun: Dragonfall & Hong Kong. He was kind enough to give us a tour of this upcoming CRPG.
The development leads consist of Andrew McIntosh as lead author (BattleTech, Shadowrun: Dragonfall & Hong Kong), Jeffrey Campbell as writer (Darkest Dungeon, Dead Rising 4 and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided) and art director Kate Cruz (Skull and Bones). Sea of Legends is based on the tabletop game of the same name by Jordan’s son Zach Weisman and Ryan Schapals. It is created 100 percent in the Adventure Forge platform, which requires no programming knowledge, and is therefore said to be very easy to mod. The results should be easy to share via this platform. Since the game, including its dialogue, is procedurally generated, voice-over and localization into languages other than English are quite difficult to achieve and currently not planned.
Unlike in Sid Meier’s Pirates, you can date all genders, whether alive or undead. Unlike in Crusader Kings, you most likely won’t be able to marry your horse. Love interests give you bonuses, but tread carefully, because as soon as you mess up, they become your nemesis. In one sequence, for example, we can brag to the French governor’s daughter about our successes against the Spanish or use our charm. This short dialogue was written very imaginatively and the drawn 2D character portraits look pretty decent. You should also stay on the good side of the game’s different factions, after all you want to dock at their ports and trade with them. You should always consider your relationship with major powers such as Spain and France since the decisions in Europe impact the Caribbean significantly. Supernatural factions round off the broad spectrum.
Using point & click we navigate our ship past Spanish gallons and can explore islands, bury treasure or abandon members of our crew, repair or improve our vehicle at ports, trade goods, visit the tavern or talk to the governor. Sea battles are turn-based on an isometric grid. The deck-building aspect comes into play: While the ship class determines your basic card deck, you can use the crew deck to carry out complex maneuvers and access additional offensive abilities.
As soon as you board the enemy ship, raid a city or attack a fort, it’s vital to position your crew members and use your cards wisely. The crew deck is intended to be expanded over the course of the campaign and influenced by your actions. An additional deck is available for Duels of Honor in which your captain engages in one-on-one battles. While the combat screen doesn’t look overly convoluted, the card-battler mechanics are said to be gradually introduced to newcomers.
A dungeon crawler mechanic will allow you to explore ancient tombs, solving potentially deadly puzzles and avoiding traps to find magical relics and legendary treasures. Relics offer bonuses for your crew members, your ship or your personal skills. The pirate adventure is scheduled to be released later this year in Early Access for Windows and MacOs via Steam and Itch.io for $30. A single run will last anywhere from eight to ten hours, but the developers encourage multiple playthroughs.
Conclusion
Sea of Legends is an ambitious procedurally generated open world pirate CRPG with many interesting aspects, from exploration of the rich game world to trading, turn-based combat, dungeon crawling and dating. What we’ve seen of the game looks pretty promising, though it should some of the features will be hidden behind stretch goals of the crowdfunding campaign, meaning enough money must first be raised before these features can make it into the game. Jordan Weisman has already gained a lot of experience with Kickstarter campaigns with BattleTech and Shadowrun Returns and we are curious to see the final game.