What’s Next - Uncharted Waters

Since its inception, Grey Havens has been focused on maintaining Puzzle Pirates and Spiral Knights, and supporting the loyal communities that continue to play those games.

That goal will remain our priority. It’s the reason the company was created. Recently, it’s become clear to us that maintaining the health of both games will require additional resources in order to continue into the future. We’re now planning to add another engineer with server and security experience to ensure that both games are secure, stable, and continue to be interesting and engaging for players.

The decision to increase our technical capacity has also created a new opportunity for us. Over the years, several of the team members that originally worked on Puzzle Pirates and Spiral Knights have gone on to work on other games. It’s been a source of pride for the whole team here. Recently, Forculus introduced us to Arcane Waters, the game he’s been working on with friends for the last ten years. It’s pretty fun!

We’ve agreed with Forculus to help manage the “live operations” for Arcane Waters when it goes up on Steam. Live Operations is the fancy way of saying “care and feeding after it’s published”. The work will be different as Arcane Waters is not a free-to-play or subscription game like the titles Grey Havens owns, but it will need support answering player questions and making sure the servers are up and secure. And, most importantly, the opportunity to expand the number of games we support will allow us to expand our community team and, if things go well, further expand the engineering team that supports all of our live operations work (including Puzzle Pirates and Spiral Knights).

We wanted to share this information with you as you may see messages from Grey Havens about Forculus’ game in the coming weeks and months. We want to make sure you understand the context in which we’re taking on the project.

We understand that this is a big step for Grey Havens. Given the modest scale of our business, we feel that the revenue we’ll earn from supporting an additional game will be an asset as we look to fill out our team further.

If you’d like to know more, please head over to the Arcane Waters Steam page and add it to your wishlist to get updates on its development.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1266340/Arcane_Waters/

FAQ

Who owns Arcane Waters?

Black Mammoth Games.

Why are you doing this now?

By coincidence, we got to the point when we needed to invest more in our infrastructure, and we have the opportunity to offer our shared infrastructure to a new game title. We hope our support and community expertise will help that game thrive. We expect that the revenue from the game will expand the resources we have to continue our mission of supporting Puzzle Pirates and Spiral Knights.

How does having a new game help you?

Helping Black Mammoth Games support Arcane Waters gives us the opportunity to have our liveops team help bring in additional revenue to reinvest in our current games by providing additional staff and services. This would include additional development for both Spiral Knights and Puzzle Pirates.

Does this change development on YPP?

We hope it will end up allowing us to increase the resources dedicated to our games. Our games continue to be in great hands.

Crabby already has quite a few plans for the summer and the rest of the year.

Will we lose Forculus?

Forculus moved to working part time for us so he could work on his game. It’s his labor of love! The fact that Grey Havens will provide live operations for his game means he’ll be freed up to work on projects for us.

Are you hiring?

Yes. In fact you will soon see job openings posted for a Puzzle Pirates developer and for a support agent(s).

Do you anticipate any crossover between games?

Forculus will be able to spend more paid time working on his game. That might create the potential for some fun promotions. The reality is, however, that Arcane Waters is a very different game than Puzzle Pirates or Spiral Knights: It will be a one time payment game with the potential for future DLC. We’d have to think about what kind of cross over might work. However, we do hope that people from the community check out the game and give it a Steam review! Positively reviewing swashbuckling adventures is part of the Pirate Code!

How can I help?

Head on over to the Arcane Waters Steam page, and add it to your wishlist so you get updates on its release. There is even a demo you can try!

The game will soon be launching with a demo during Next Fest on June 13th. We’re also holding an official playtest next Wed, so strap on your swashbuckling gear and give it a try!