f13.net

Ok I figure it's about time I try to pimp out one of our upcoming titles.

We are looking at a May release and the development cycle on this was pretty fast. We have a yet to be announced title being developed in tandum with this.
We are aiming at a Sid Meirer's Pirates! meets Monkey Island feel here, but those are two big names to try to live up to. We'll see how well we do. I think our naval battles are at least very Sid Meirer's like.

One of the things setting us apart here is our RTS like battles for land engagements. You have the RPG elements of Pirates! intact but also get to recruit units to fight with you when you raid strongholds of other pirate factions.

Here is the obligatory link to gameplay video and the website (which is basically landing for our social networks right now honestly).
http://blackcovegame.com/ (http://blackcovegame.com/)

It's a Paradox title, so that should tell most of you what to be expecting. If any of you happened to play any of our previous titles that will fill you in more. This is abit of a departure from our previous titles in a way, because we are going abit more for an arcade like feel rather than total realism in previous titles (sans Woody Two-Legs, which was our first shot at an arcade gameplay title)

Questions, answers ect; Would love feedback from this community.

Sounds interesting,I was looking for something like this a little while ago when I picked up conquest of the americas.Will check out the vids when I get home from work.Releaseing on steam?

Steam, Gamersgate, the usual Paradox channels. We sent off screenshots last week to Paradox for the product pages of both.

Looks good.  Are you guys planning on releasing a demo?

No demo. Price point is planned to be fairly low however. I can't really say how low, just, not "not alot". Pricing is all on Paradox's side, so we don't have much say there.

I loved Sid Meier's Pirates. The sea battles look like a nicely updated version of that.

Do I have to dance with homely daughters of provincial governors in this?

I am cautiously excited. It definitely looks like something I'd play.

How many details are allowed to be released at this stage? Is it sandboxy or more campaign focused, and how, through chapters or a main quest/plotline? When do we get to see more gameplay video? It's really only a month away?!

Like I said, the development cycle on this was rather quick. We're using the Trinigy Vision 8 engine, so alot of the work as far as the engine was concerned was done for us already, alot of it was just plugging in content and editing code to our purposes, and our coders are some impressive people when it comes to what they can do in a short amount of time.

Unfortuneately I can't say I can name alot of titles that also use the Trinigy Vision 8 engine that are shining examples of awesome gameplay. One of the most noteable would be Settlers 7, but the DRM on that seems to overshadowed the game so much I don't know anyone personally who has actually played the game. I know I haven't.
Arcania: A Gothic Tale also uses the same engine, and sure is purty, but I haven't actually played that game either despite owning it. I'm Sky could tell us about it, as far as how stable the game felt. But from what I know of that game, the content is what killed it more than the tech behind it.
All in all we've been enjoying the engines rapid deployment and ease of use.

Alot of details are up for grabs at this point, as we are now in the ramping up the hype engine stage of things, so take any super flowery things I have to say about the game with a grain of salt. I'm posting about it here because, well, I've never posted here about one of our games, and this feels more inline with what the general populous of this forum crave. East India Company and Commander were more niche titles I feel.

We're leaving alot of open sandbox elements in the game, and you can pretty much go and do whatever you feel like, but there are quests that will try to guide you on a certain path to get through the main story and point of the game. Which is to unite the three pirate factions together to fight the Pirates of Black Cove together. We have more gameplay videos being works on this coming week, and I could likely pull some strings to get some more indepth stuff snuck here if people are truly interested.

And yes, this is planned for a late May release, and we're on schedule so far. Price points and preorders should be popping up in a couple weeks.

I like the gameplay pace of naval battles in this game looking at the footage from the Paradox Convention. In contrast the arcade speed of Woody Two-Legs gave me such a bad case of wanker's cramp while PotBS was a snore on sails. I'm intrigued by the idea of trying to steal ships.

Product page and pre-orders have gone up at Gamersgate.
http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-PBC/pirates-of-black-cove (http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-PBC/pirates-of-black-cove)

Looks like the pricepoint is set around 20$/€

edit: And foot in mouth syndrome, we get our first delay from Paradox.

DRM: Other DRM?

(obligatory MY FORMER CEO \o/ (come back and play))

The only title we've released that has had any DRM was our very first title East India Company, which used Stardock's Goo for it's DRM.
Commander and Woody Two-Legs were both DRM free, save whatever DRM Steam provides them (if you happened to get them from Steam)

Pirates of Black Cove will also be DRM free (save whatever DRM Steam provides)

Sorry for the longish delay on the reply, haven't been to work in the last week due to a chest cold, and wanted to run this question by our lead programmer to double check. Knew EiC had some DRM, just wasn't sure what DRM it had in place.

(I've been thinking about resubbing alot lately, one of many bad decisions I've been thinking about as of late. Also might be taking up a coke habit. But in seriousness, if I'm going to start playing bad games again, EvE would be the bad game I went back to playing)

New official release date has been set to August 2nd.

A demo is in the works as well to be released sometime prior to that.

Demo is out.

I... I dunno. It's not buggy, which is nice. The voice acting is so, so, so, so, so bad. Like little kids talking into a tape recorder in a pillow fort bad. It plays like an arcadier SM's Pirates! so I'm not sure what the hook is.

:) Looks great...but will have to confirm if it plays great, downloading demo.

Demo left me underwhelmed. Big problems were:

Destroying random ships in the sea gains you nothing?

Ship navigation and battles are just turning and shooting, was expecting something a lot closer to Sid Meier's Pirates in terms of how the wind affects movement, got "you turn slow but forward movement is always the same".

Cannons seemed pretty useless compared to the special attack.  The fact that they homed in on the enemy ship meant I didn't even have to be facing them.

Not getting anything besides the occasional toolbox, or grog, from defeating random ships at sea was annoying.  I had gathered a handful of ship blueprints, but couldn't do anything with them since I had no gold.  Not sure if that was intended as part of the limitations of the demo, or not.

I bet they blamed crappy sales on pirating. I'd be playing Settlers 7 if not for draconian DRM.