Update From Forculus

Ahoy Puzzle Pirates crew,

Forculus here, stopping by with a quick update on my recent voyages. Some of you may have noticed that I've taken a step back and have handed the bulk of things over to Crabby. He and the rest of the team have done an incredible job keeping the Puzzle Pirates ship sailing smoothly. Keep a lookout for some more exciting updates on what the team has been diligently working on. To help explain what I've been up to, I need to give a little backstory on where things first started.

When I was but a wee pirate, I was captivated by a game on the Super Nintendo that some of you may have heard of, called Uncharted Waters. I loved sailing throughout this massive, open world on dangerously long voyages, and strategizing on how I could find ways to win battles against notorious pirate scoundrels. Countless hours were spent, and I never forgot my piratey adventures in this world.

It was 1993 when it came out, and online games wouldn’t start becoming popular until several years later. But when they did, I immediately thought back to this game and realized what incredible potential this world of piracy could have if it was brought online. I didn’t even know how to drive yet, much less develop a game, but I knew a good idea when I had one. So I decided to use my fancy, newly acquired dial-up modem and email address, and send an email to the company that developed Uncharted Waters, and let them know they needed to make an online version. Sadly, I did not hear back.

As I got older and realized that I might one day want to become Forculus, developer of online pirate games, I figured I should probably try making my own little pirate game, as kind of a learning experience and test of my abilities. So I did, and "Merchant Seas" was born. I was still in school at the time, but it was a good first experience into the world of creating an online pirate world.

After finishing school, I began looking for a job in the game industry, and I decided to send my recently created pirate world as a portfolio project to a certain fellow by the name of Cleaver. Well, as luck would have it, he saw enough potential to bring me on board to help out as a developer on the game we've come to know and love as Puzzle Pirates.

I’ve now had the good fortune to be a part of the Puzzle Pirates crew for well over 10 years. In the back of my mind I sometimes wondered, with all that I learned, what would my little pirate world look like if I were to truly revisit it beyond poking at it in my spare time? Well, with Cleaver's blessing, and with Puzzle Pirates in Crabby's capable hands, I've been able to find out. Reimagined, and with a new name, I present to you...

Arcane Waters is a fulfillment of that dream I had since I was just a kid, and was in fact the same dream that originally led me to become a part of the Puzzle Pirates crew in the first place. So I feel incredibly lucky to now have the support of Cleaver and the Grey Havens crew to help bring this dream to life and to share it with you all.

While Arcane Waters is a world of online piracy, it does have several key differences from Puzzle Pirates. The first and foremost is that Arcane Waters does not include puzzles, so if you're looking for your puzzle fix, then Puzzle Pirates will continue to be your #1 place to go. Arcane Waters is obviously not intended to be any sort of replacement, and it never could be! But if you're ever looking to try a different take on pirate action and exploration, you might find something here that shivers yer timbers.

With Arcane Waters, the focus is more on co-op adventures in a huge open world. I always loved the open world exploration that games like Uncharted Waters allowed. For some reason, the variety of challenges and quests in older games always made the game environments seem so much bigger and more full of surprises. What they lacked was the large-scale co-operative play that today's games have. My hope when I set out to make Arcane Waters was that I could bring together both worlds, making real-time cooperative play possible in an environment that was as varied and unexpected as the games I played as a kid.

We'll be launching into Early Access on Steam November 14th. We'd be honored if you gave it a try and shared your thoughts. You can find the game on Steam here. All pirates who get the game this November will also earn a fancy pirate hat to use in Arcane Waters in thanks for their support.. Every pirate needs a hat!

Please join our launch celebrations on Discord. Thank you for supporting my dream, it means a lot to me. I am grateful to be a part of the Puzzle Pirates community.

--Forculus