Announcing Pirate Code 2: Reign of the Pirate King!

Pirate Code 2 will be an open-world, roguelite, turn-based pirate strategy game with a focus on tactical combat, exploration, and fleet customization. You can sign up to received the demo when it's available on CircuitHive.com. You can also wishlist it on its Store Page!

We’re taking everything awesome about Pirate Code and repackaging it in more replayable form. Pirate Code was designed like an old-school Strategy RPG with a campaign that takes between 50 and 80 hours, depending on how many side quests you follow. We wanted to change that to a more digestible 5 to 20 hours and give you a host of options when you first start a playthrough. The world map, the islands, the story, and even the personalities of some characters will all be generated based on a seed. Although we love expanding Pirate Code, we couldn’t do these things without breaking the original experience. It was time for a sequel!

Let’s take a quick look at what we’re building. Keep in mind that we’re actively developing, so expect changes over time. Nothing here is guaranteed.

The Focus Is On Combat

When we started work on Pirate Code 2, the first thing we built was the AI. The upgraded AI can handle complex situations where attacks can cause chain reactions of side effects. We've expanding the battle engine to be faster and stronger. We’re designing it to handle situations with more than one team and ships with more than two moves. We’d like to make multiplayer battles possible (both Co-Op and PVP). The UI has also been updated to give you more information to make quick decisions in the face of terrible odds. We are continuing to shun RNG combat. You will be able to see the outcome of every move before you agree to it.

Ship Modifications

In Pirate Code there are multiple ship categories that each have five ships that can be unlocked. Although the ships can get modifiers, their stats are largely set in stone. In Pirate Code 2 there’s only one ship for each category but it can be upgraded in multiple ways to create the perfect killing machine. As a ship gains levels you can expand the hull to gain more upgrade options. Cannons can have modifiers applied to them to turn them into fire cannons or draining cannons, for example. Actions will also be taught to ships without the use of captains. Ships will still need to be manned by a crew to use them in battle.

A Branching Story

The story in Pirate Code 2 picks up a year after the end of the first game. We'll get into the details of who the Pirate King is in the coming months, but for now let's talk about how the story works. The story is designed to have a similar start and end each time you play. In the middle though the story can branch based on the decisions you make and on what generates in the world based on the seed. Our goal is to make something that can continue to expand as we release new content long after Pirate Code 2 goes live. This will allow you to play multiple times and still have unexpected things happen. You can expect more news on the story in the coming months.

Roguelite Worlds

One of the driving forces behind making a playthrough much, much smaller was to be able to allow you to play through a world, get a reward, and then use that reward to purchase permanent improvements for all future fleets. This fits better with our indie team style of adding contents after the game has been released. When you die, you'll have the option to take your rewards earned so far and abandon the world or spend some of them to respawn. We're very interested in feedback to this system.

The Way Forward

Circuit Hive is a small group of indie developers, so setting dates is often counterproductive for us. However, we do have some milestones we hope to reach and this announcement was the first one. Next is a fully-playable demo of Pirate Code 2 which will be available for free! You can sign up to receive a message when the demo is available on our website. And of course, you can wishlist it on the Steam Page!

Thank you for supporting us!