FLATPIRATES

Sail. Fight. Grow old. Be remembered.

Pirates! ate whole weekends. You'd sail off for one more prize and look up to find it was dark outside. FLATPIRATES will do the same: the real Caribbean of 1672, a borrowed sloop, a family to win back and a whole life to live, from twenty to the day you retire. Somebody always leans over your shoulder to tell you where to sail next.

1–2 playersPirate adventureOpen worldSword fightingA whole life

Pre-order FlatboyOne captain at the helm, and whoever is watching over your shoulder telling you where to sail. For two: a duel, one at each end.

Out of Taphus. Into the smoke.

A sloop sailing out of Taphus, then a brigantine laying her guns alongside a Spanish galleon, then steel on a ship's deck. Whoever is watching starts giving orders.

Sailthe real Caribbean, and let the wind decide

Bring her roundside-on, and wait for the gold line

Boardher, and settle it with the captain on her own deck

Real gameplay, straight off the table's screen.

Twenty, from Bergen. One borrowed sloop.

1672. You are Captain Hald, twenty years old, from Bergen, with a borrowed sloop called Ternen, thirty men and a Danish-Norwegian letter of passage. Lord Ambrose Grey, the Grey Admiral, took the family ship off St. Thomas and sold the Halds across the islands: your mother Maren, your sister Sigrid, uncle Brage and old grandfather Eilif. Spain, England, France and the Dutch are at each other's throats. You start at Taphus, the free port.

Then nothing tells you what to do. Trade sugar and spice between real ports, carry a governor's letters, hunt the eight rival captains, dig for treasure, take a galleon from the silver fleet, or turn pirate and sack Cartagena. Every choice adds to the same life, and the days keep passing while you decide.

Three ways to play.

The long one

Career

Pick a face and three initials, a difficulty from Greenhorn to Legend, and one talent: Blade, Gunner, Helmsman, Silver Tongue or Surgeon. A short career retires you at 26, about half an hour; a lifetime sails until you choose to stop, or age decides. It saves at every port.

Face to face

Sword duel

Two players, one at each end. Pick a fencer, the Halds, Lord Grey or a rival captain, and a blade. Best of three. Alone, the computer takes the other end.

End to end

Sea duel

Pick a ship, from a pinnace to a man-o'-war or the Nightjar, and fight under one shared wind. Board her and it goes to swords. Best of three.

1672the real Caribbean

4crowns at war

8rival pirate captains

10ship classes, sloop to man-o'-war

7fates at the end of a life

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