Buccaneers! news & patch notes

Fellow swashbucklers, We’ve released a small patch addressing some high priority issues with loading save games as well as a handful of minor fixes. Buccaneers! Version 1.1.01 Changes - Increased the size of ship health UI elements to make ship names and crew numbers easier to read. - Added an error message when a save fails to load. This should be less likely to happen now (see below). Fixes - Improved error checking when loading save files to fix some saves not loading at all. - Fixed new autosaves not always overwriting the oldest autosave first. - Fixed world map tutorial videos not playing on Steam Deck. - Fixed controller navigation not working in the Mods menu. - Fixed controller back button not working while changing a key binding. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, The Buccaneers! Original Soundtrack is now available as a DLC! Now you can listen to 20 piratey themes directly through Steam, including bonus tracks not featured in the game. The soundtrack includes MP3 files and high-quality WAV files so you can use whichever you prefer on your own devices. The DLC features over an hour of music composed by Christian Tornholm-Lehn, including cinematic ship battles, sailing ambience, shanties and more! Check out the store page right here where you can get the soundtrack for a 20% discount for a limited time! If you already own the game, you can save even more with the Game + Soundtrack bundle. Happy pirating, me hearteys! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, Modding support is finally here! After a long hiatus, we’re excited to give you new ways to customise your ships with cosmetic mods. This feature is currently in beta and may be updated and expanded based on your feedback, so please let us know what you think in the forums and our Discord! Please note that Steam Workshop support is not included with this release, but we’re looking into adding this soon. This release also brings several improvements and bug fixes, including a fix for some save files not loading properly. We apologise to those who were affected by this issue and hope this resolves it for you! Check out the full patch notes below: Buccaneers! Version 1.1.0 New Features - Modding support : You can now create and install cosmetic mods to customise the appearance of your ships. A full modding guide can be found in the “BuccaneersData\Streaming Assets\Modding~” folder inside the game’s install directory. Mods can be installed in the “Documents\Buccaneers\Mods” folder and enabled or disabled via the in-game Mods menu. Changes - The “Sail Ho” pop-up now displays a success chance to indicate how difficult an encounter is before it begins. - Removed the “Battle Plan” screen from the World Map UI. Selecting “Attack” in the “Sail Ho” pop-up now starts the encounter immediately, matching the behaviour in open-world sailing. - You now have a 100% chance to evade certain quest encounters via the “Sail Ho” pop-up if they prevent you from fleeing once the battle starts. This allows you to prepare your fleet and return when you are ready. - The ship customisation menu now uses a live preview of a model ship to show paint scheme and sail combinations instead of static images. - Cabin paint schemes now also use a live preview of a small cabin mock-up instead of static images in the purchase and customisation menus. - Added a field-of-view slider to Photo Mode to allow zooming in or out. Fixes - Fixed a bug that prevented some saves from loading if there were contested regions on the map. - Fixed some areas in the large shipyard sometimes becoming inaccessible on foot. - Fixed the fleet strength threshold for the optional fleet upgrade quest goal before the final boss fight in Act 3 (Retribution). This now only triggers when your fleet is slightly more powerful than the enemy (shown in the success chance in the “Sail Ho” pop-up). - Fixed town music persisting when returning to the main menu. - Fixed quest-specific battle music not playing when the encounter was triggered in open-world sailing mode. - The following UI elements are no longer visible in Photo Mode: enemy captain health bars, AI boarding progress bars, encounter zone markers and interaction prompt text. - Quest goals requiring you to own a ship of a specific tier will now be automatically completed if any ship in your fleet already meets the criteria, not just your flagship. Happy pirating and modding! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, We’ve released a new update with many enhancements to make your life on the seas all the merrier! Open world sailing has been given major improvements including support for bounties and quest encounters, plus a new world map UI for quick reference. You’ll also notice some new music in a few places including battles, sailing and taverns, so we hope you’ll enjoy them! Check out the full patch notes below: Buccaneers! Version 1.0.14 New Features - You can now replace a captured ship’s faction upgrades with your faction’s upgrades in friendly shipyards. From the Fleet Management menu, select a ship and go to Upgrades > Refit to preview and confirm the changes. - You can now view a condensed version of the World Map from your Captain’s Log while in open-world sailing. This allows you to see your current position, view information about each town (including imports and exports), and set a town as your destination. - Bounties and other quest battles can now be encountered in open-world sailing without needing to use the World Map. - You can now use the spyglass to mark a town as a destination or track a nearby quest encounter. Changes - Added some new music tracks and made improvements to several existing ones. Taverns now play some jaunty sailor’s tunes from time to time... - Ship battle music is now split into two groups: one for smaller battles and one for larger battles (including forts). - Encounters in open-world sailing now show the same “Sail Ho” pop-up as the World Map, giving you the same options to attack or evade. The outcome takes place after a fade-to-black which advances time slightly. - Location and quest markers in open-world sailing now update when you change the tracked quest in your Quest Log. - Quest encounters that happen in specific regions no longer randomise their position every time you enter your cabin. This now only happens after leaving a town or ending a battle. - Treasure Fleet quests now include the name of the target ship in the title. - You can no longer open the Captain’s Log while using the spyglass. - Increased the minimum starting distance between friendly and enemy ships in ship battles. - The accent colour on the ship’s wheel’s centre spoke no longer changes with your ship’s paint scheme, so it is now easy to see at all times. This is especially helpful for manually recentering the wheel in VR mode. - Modified the design of ship health bars and VR boarding progress bars for better contrast and consistency with other UI elements. - Added a bell to every fort which plays the ringing alarm sound during land battles. - Added some new sketches to the World Map and moved some existing ones. - Added an icon that displays when you manually save the game via the Pause Menu. - The spyglass view is now slightly clearer and location marker text is larger and easier to read. - Highlighted locations and quest markers now remain visible outside the spyglass view until you hold it near your face, instead of disappearing as soon as you grab it. Performance - Removed potential stutter when changing ships in a shipyard. - Reduced framerate drops when boarding starts. - Reduced occasional framerate drops while sailing in the open world. - Improved performance while using the spyglass. Fixes - Location markers in open-world sailing no longer slide around unexpectedly. - The delay between increases in fire severity on your ship now correctly scales with the Cannon Reload Speed setting (Options > Gameplay). - Subtitles no longer get stuck on screen when the game is paused. - Region buttons on the World Map now align more closely with the dotted boundary lines. Happy pirating and have a spooktacular Halloween, me hearteys! 🏴‍☠️🎃

Fellow swashbucklers, We’ve released another small update with some much-needed quality-of-life improvements. Notably, the world map now presents more information about quest markers, allowing you to distinguish between different encounters at a glance, and we made multiple adjustments to VR mode for a better room-scale experience. Check out the full list of changes below. Buccaneers! Version 1.0.13 New Features - Added a manual recenter function which is triggered by holding down the Pause button for 2 seconds. Please note: This only changes your horizontal position and rotation, and does not persist between play sessions. If you want to apply persistent offsets to your height, ship’s wheel position or playspace rotation, you can use the settings under Options > Controls. Changes - Boarding approach requirements have been replaced with visible zones on each side of the target ship. To initiate boarding, you now just need to be inside an active zone on either side of the target ship. The angle of approach no longer matters. - Hovering over quest markers on the World Map now shows you the name and objective of the active quest associated with the marker. If there is more than one objective at the same location, the marker shows the quantity instead of the default “!” icon. - Encounter and dock buttons with associated quests on the World Map now share a consistent design with a quest marker that no longer obscures the button. - Added a heart icon next to the player’s health bar, which is replaced by the Second Wind icon when that ability is unlocked and ready to use. - Added visual and audio effects when the Second Wind ability is triggered. - Added crew battle cries when starting boarding or a land battle. - Added an alarm bell sound to land battles. - The player’s health bar is now split into segments, making it consistent with the non-VR version. - Player locomotion/teleports and collisions are now handled relative to your current position within your playspace, instead of from the centre of the playspace. - Snap/smooth rotation now uses your current position within your playspace as its pivot, instead of the centre of the playspace. Fixes - Fixed ranged enemies failing their line-of-sight checks against the player on land when there are no obstacles in the way. - Fixed a bug that allowed the player to damage allied crew with melee attacks. - Fixed a rare issue where a ship would initiate boarding on one side and swing around to the other side of its target before the grappling manoeuvre had finished. - Fixed a rounding error that would sometimes calculate a small repair cost when it should be zero after partially repairing a ship. - Fixed the target ship in “The Hunt” starting with zero crew after stealing it from a harbour. - Fixed incorrect detection of completed main quests when starting a new game after loading a different save. This sometimes caused Elite encounters to appear too early in the game. - Fixed the “Acquire a Tier 2 ship” objective in “Trial by Fire” not completing if you steal one from an enemy harbour. - Fixed custom key bindings for the Sprint action not being correctly applied after relaunching the game. - Fixed controller aim assist ignoring line-of-sight checks when aiming a ranged weapon. - Removed leftover colliders for cannons which are hidden when sneaking into enemy shipyards. - The game should now close when trying to quit via a VR platform overlay (e.g. Oculus Dash or SteamVR menu). - The game now pauses when the headset is removed or a VR platform overlay is opened. - Fixed the spyglass moving further away from your hand while on a fast-moving ship. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, Our latest update is now live, featuring several enhancements for both VR and non-VR modes. In VR, steering your ship should now be smoother and more reliable for most headsets, while non-VR mode now has directional indicators to give you more feedback when you get hit in combat. Alongside this update, we’re pleased to announce that we now officially support the Quest 2 VR headset via Oculus Link! While this headset has already worked with the game since launch, we now have one in our office to test with, so we can provide better support as we continue to update and optimise the game. Check out the full list of changes below: Buccaneers! Version 1.0.12 Changes - Flipped the Y-axis of the third-person ship camera and added an option to invert it independently from the first-person camera (Options > Controls > Invert Y Axis (third person)). - Added a visual effect to indicate the direction of enemies that hit you in combat. - Added new icons for player abilities. - Added an option to prevent the ship’s wheel from recentering itself when it is not being held (Options > Controls > Ship’s Wheel Recentering). - Increased the grab zone size of the ship’s wheel spokes to make it easier to grab them without looking or while it is recentering itself. - When turning the wheel, your ship now gradually turns towards the desired steering angle instead of immediately snapping to it. This helps to smooth out any jitter caused by hand tracking issues while holding the wheel. Fixes - Fixed the walkable area in Cockburn Town excluding the wooden docks. - Added a fallback to regenerate intrigues if a “Gather Intrigue” quest goal failed to initialise correctly. - Fixed the “jolt” that occurred whenever your ship finished recentering the wheel in non-VR. - Fixed the Captain’s Log not being locked off while in stealth mode on land. - Fixed the doors to Nassau’s fort being closed during combat. - Fixed shadows on the Three-Decker and Two-Decker appearing incorrectly from some angles when using third-person sailing view. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35764527/aaebe8b4c2909fe3a76d99f368e677786f1718ce.jpg Buccaneers! is a part of Steam VR Fest! You can now get the game for 33% off! Don't miss this chance! The sale ends on July 25 at 10:00 AM PDT (GMT-7) Also, you could try the demo if you wish. The demo is playable in both VR and non-VR modes and supports the Oculus Rift/Rift S and HTC Vive series of headsets. Or just try the Prologue: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1631240/Buccaneers_The_New_Age_of_Piracy/ Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, Another new update is now live, bringing with it a much-requested feature: third-person sailing mode! You can switch to this camera view at any time, giving you a new perspective of your ship and fleet both in and outside of combat (but please note you cannot use this view in VR mode). Check out the full details including other changes and fixes below: Buccaneers! Version 1.0.11 New Features - Added a third-person view for non-VR sailing mode. You can freely switch between first-person and third-person at any time while sailing by pressing Tab (keyboard) or D-pad Up (controller). (Note that you always return to first-person when boarding.) - The game remembers which camera view you used last and will automatically switch to it whenever you enter sailing mode. Changes - The “Orders” hotkey used in stealth combat on land now shares the same binding as the Map hotkey (M on keyboard, Back/View on controller) to be consistent with its use in ship battles. - Added more accurate map images and location markers for some towns. - Repositioned most NPC dialogue panels and a few other UI elements to ensure text does not get cut off when playing in narrow aspect ratios (minimum of 5:4). - Rearranged some buildings in Maracaibo and Puerto de España to give better lines-of-sight from rooftops during land battles. - Made minor adjustments to lighting in most harbours. Fixes - Fixed missing or incorrect collisions in some harbours which enabled ranged attacks and AI line-of-sight through some walls and buildings. - Fixed AI ship pathfinding errors in the Cumana region due to missing navigation meshes. - Fixed missing customisation merchant in Bridgetown and Saint John’s. - Fixed non-pirate ships appearing in random encounters during the prologue quest. - Fixed UI bugginess when deleting saves. - Fixed Quick Save and Quick Load hotkeys causing errors when pressed during a loading screen. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, We just released our tenth update since launch, including challenging new encounters, balance changes, quality-of-life improvements and more. Check out the full list of changes below. The game is also 30% off during the Steam Summer Sale, so if you’ve been waiting for the right moment to come aboard, now is a great time! Buccaneers! Version 1.0.10 New Features - Added “Elite” ship encounters which present a greater challenge for high-level players. These are denoted by a red skull icon and can start appearing once you reach Level 13 or complete Act 2 (The Hunt). - Added Legendary Treasure Fleets which can start appearing once you have unlocked Elite encounters. The intrigue for these is more expensive to acquire, but capturing the target ships grants you a random Legendary item that you haven’t yet unlocked. - The most difficult Bounties now feature Elite ships once you have unlocked Elite encounters, and offer higher payouts for completing them. Balancing - The encounter spawn rate is now lower while sailing through friendly regions. - The factions used for random encounters now depend on who owns the region you are currently in: a random enemy in neutral or friendly territory; the owning faction in enemy regions; or a random enemy with partial ownership in contested regions. - Your ship is no longer immobilised while repairing in battle. However, each repair cycle now takes 10 seconds (up from 7.5 seconds) at the default Cannon Reload Speed setting. - The reward for selling prize ships is now reduced by the ship’s repair cost, so you will earn less money depending on how much damage the captured ship has taken. - Increased the Prize Money ability bonus to 35% (was 30%). - Increased the value of all cargo types by roughly 20%. - Increased the reward from completing Bounties by roughly 20%. - The XP reward for defeating ships now increases by 5% for each installed upgrade (excluding the default faction upgrades). The reward for normal encounters is the same as before, while Elite encounters and certain boss ships give more XP. - Ships generated for random encounters and Bounties now have a randomised notoriety value depending on their difficulty (up to a maximum of 4 stars for Elite ships). - The Influence (red ribbon) reward for defeating ships now scales with the notoriety of the target, increasing by 10% for each star. - Increased the starting duration of normal Treasure Fleet intrigues to between 7 and 14 days. (This will still decrease over time, so will be lower if you acquire the intrigue several days after it was generated.) - Moved some of the spawn points in Maracaibo and Puerto de España to make land battles less difficult. - Increased the chance of armour-piercing rounds dealing critical hits against crew. - Grapeshot and Bar Shot can no longer destroy armour. - Mortar shots now ignore armour and have a higher chance of dealing critical hits. - Medium forts now have a single mortar in their central gun battery. - The turn speed of dismasted ships now scales with the global Ship Speed setting. Changes - Added a new Orders page to the Fleet Status tab which allows you to quickly change the orders for all ships in your fleet from a single menu. Orders assigned to “Fleet” will be automatically applied to ships you purchase or capture. - Pressing the Map hotkey (M on keyboard or View/Back on controller) while in a ship battle now opens the Fleet Status tab instead, giving you quicker access to the new Orders page. - Added an on-screen prompt for accessing the Orders page in ship battles, and moved the Disengage prompt to the opposite side of the screen. - Crew members on Rogue ships now use the pirate models with a unique texture. - Intrigue cards now display a rarity colour to indicate their importance. Quest intrigues always appear as Legendary (yellow). - The green “Importing” icon is now shown next to the Sell buttons in the Merchant UI, while the red “Exporting” icon is shown next to the Buy buttons. This clarifies which actions are recommended to make a profit when trading. - Your current XP and the threshold for the next level are now shown in the Abilities tab of the Captain’s Log. - The owning faction’s name is now shown on the town map UI, and the town name banner is coloured blue for friendly and red for enemy factions. - Added critical hit sounds and sinking/destruction sounds for ship battles. - Your lieutenant now calls out critical hits against crew and forts in ship battles. - Added interaction sounds to some buttons that were missing them in the World Map and Captain’s Log. - Added red splash zone indicators and incoming explosion sounds for enemy mortar shots. - Fort gun batteries now display a mortar icon if they have one as well as cannons, and both icons are greyed out when the battery is destroyed. - Ships are now moved up or down to the default world height when boarding to prevent them sitting too high or low in the water. - Increased the max display value of the Damage stat in the Choose Cannons menu to correctly represent the damage of Bronze Carronades. (The actual damage values are unchanged.) - Fort battle progress bars now display in front of other objects and have been raised higher above the ground where needed. Fixes - Improved the obstacle avoidance logic for AI ships to make them less likely to clip through islands. - Fixed a rare bug where AI ships could get stuck in a “fleeing” state in battles. - Fort guns and mortars will no longer target ships which are being boarded. - Adjusted the path mesh on the Brig to make boarding plank connections more reliable. - Added a fallback to force quests to move on if they didn’t advance after completing an objective. - Fixed colliders in some harbours to prevent NPCs from shooting through buildings during fort battles. - Fixed a rendering issue with the ocean when using the “Low” quality water setting. - Fixed smoke particles sometimes not fully stopping after putting out a fire on a ship. - Fixed the ship not stopping if you exit the world map while sailing to a destination. - Fixed an exploit for avoiding random encounters on the world map by starting and stopping sailing at regular intervals. - Fixed the target ship in “The Hunt” not being removed from the town it was docked at if you capture it at the ambush point. - Fixed an error with the Load Game menu if you deleted all saves in a campaign slot. - Fixed the XP bar showing as empty in the Abilities tab once you reach max level. - Fixed incorrect maps and location markers being shown in some towns. - Fixed the custom captain model, name and stats not being used when boarding Fortune’s Favour in Act 3 (Retribution). - Fixed skin tones being randomised on the Admiral and Lieutenant each time they appear in the main quest. - Fixed the town map showing on top of other elements in the post-battle UI after a fort battle. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, Another big update is now live, featuring major improvements for melee and ranged combat! We’ve added several new weapons including the much-requested Musket, and we’ve made swords and guns more varied and satisfying to use. Read on for the full details! Buccaneers! Version 1.0.09 New Features - Added a parrying mechanic to melee combat which allows you to temporarily stun enemies, increasing melee damage against them. To trigger a parry, perform the following action after an enemy starts swinging their weapon, but before their attack hits you: - > Non-VR mode: Press the “Block” button (holding the button before the attack starts results in a regular block). - > VR mode: Move your weapon forwards to intercept the enemy’s blade (holding it steady results in a regular block). - All melee weapons now have a “Parry” stat which indicates how easy it is to trigger a parry with it. A higher value allows you to trigger a parry earlier in the enemy’s attack animation. - The weapon loadout chest has been added to all cabins, allowing you to change your equipped weapons without visiting a blacksmith. Changes - Blocking melee attacks now absorbs a percentage of the damage instead of negating it completely (but parrying blocks all damage). All melee weapons now have a “Block” stat which indicates the percentage of damage they absorb. - You now need to hold down the Block button to block with a sword instead of pressing it, so you can block for as long as you want. - Pistols and heavy weapons no longer auto-reload after firing; you can now trigger this manually by pressing the Fire button again. - Added new weapons: - > Musket (Common) - Long range, single-shot heavy weapon with a bayonet melee attack. - > Cutlass (Common) - Sword with 4-foot reach, medium damage, slow swing speed, high block and medium parry. - > Falchion (Rare) - Sword with 4-foot reach, high damage, very slow swing speed, medium block and low parry. - > Double-Barrelled Pistol (Rare) - Ranged weapon with two barrels that functions like the Pepper-box, but with higher range, damage and accuracy. - > Sabre (Exotic) - Sword with 4-foot reach, medium damage and swing speed, very high block and low parry. - > Nock Gun (Exotic) - Seven-barrelled heavy weapon that fires all barrels at once, dealing very high damage at medium range, but has a long reload time. - Rebalanced some existing weapons: - > Rapier - Reduced damage, increased swing speed and increased reach to 5 feet (this was previously reported incorrectly as 4 feet, but was closer to 5). It also has low block and high parry stats, and is now Rare with a higher purchase cost. - > Dagger - Increased swing speed and allowed blocking as the secondary action. It has very low block and high parry stats. - > Flintlock Pistol - Increased damage so fewer shots are required to kill tougher enemies. - > Pepper-box - Increased reload time to 5.5 seconds (was 4 seconds). - > Blunderbuss - Increased purchase cost to 1,750 DB (was 1,000 DB). - Changed the starting loadout in the prologue quest to give you a Rapier, Double-Barrelled Pistol and Musket. - While playing the prologue quest, you can no longer purchase small or medium weapons above Rare or large weapons above Common quality. - The sword you pick up during the prison escape is now a Cutlass instead of a Rapier. - Added archery-style targets to the blacksmiths which show bullet holes on impact. - Added new weapon textures and updated some existing ones, giving the Blunderbuss and Rapier different textures to make them more visually unique. - Removed the “lunge” swing from melee attacks and made it easier to chain swings together for more fluid animations. - Player ranged attacks now play hit sounds on impact, including a separate sound for headshots. - Added new firing/melee sound effects for some weapons to make them more distinctive. - Pistol and heavy weapon ranges have been rounded up/down to more sensible numbers where applicable (e.g. Flintlock Pistol’s range is now 50 feet instead of 49). - Weapons in the loadout chest are now sorted by size and rarity. - NPC health bars now reposition to match the camera height in close quarters for better visibility. - Increased starting funds (after the prologue quest) to 2,000 DB. - Added reward funds for some quest objectives in “Trial by Fire” and “The Hunt”. - Merged the “Show ship” controller hotkey with “Set sail/stop” on the world map, as the two actions are never active at the same time. Both now use the “X” button. - Added a controller hotkey for the “Set Destination” and “Dock” functions on the world map (both use the “Y” button). - If a ship gets reduced to zero crew, it can now be boarded without being dismasted. - Weapon pick-up sound effects no longer play when browsing the loadout chest. - Improved ambient sound effects at sea, in the cabin and in blacksmiths. - Adjusted the minimum time between melee attacks on all weapons to more closely match non-VR damage-per-second. - Removed the “half damage” swing threshold for melee attacks, so you can now do full damage with slower swings. - Weapons now have bespoke holster models, and holsters are now visible on your chest when you have the required ability. - The post-battle UI now appears in front of objects and quest notifications to avoid being obscured. - Subtitles now appear in front of objects for better readability. - If the game experiences an error but doesn’t crash, it will now save a separate log file when you quit the game. This will help us debug some issues even if you don’t have a save file to send us. Fixes - Fixed a quest generation bug that sometimes prevented Act 2 (The Hunt) from starting. - > IMPORTANT: If you experienced this bug, follow the instructions in the workaround below to restart Act 2 in an existing save. - Fixed the world map UI becoming unresponsive when using a controller if the player keeps moving before the camera transition completes. - Fixed the bribe amount slider not being selectable with a controller. - Fixed the cannon reload indicators going down if the cannons are fully loaded while the ship takes crew losses. - Fixed the player ship’s health bar not appearing at the start of a random encounter in sailing mode. - Fixed the player remaining crouched when returning to the helm if they were crouched when boarding ended. - Ships stolen from harbours should no longer auto-repair after battles. - NPC melee attacks should no longer hit you if you move out of melee range before the animation completes. - Fixed melee attacks sometimes not hitting the intended target when multiple targets are grouped together in close quarters. - Fixed NPCs sometimes teleporting onto your ship when you join a boarding fight which is already in progress. - Fixed the weapon pick-up sounds not playing when equipping weapons at the start of “A Way Out”. - Fixed ship colliders not being positioned correctly during boarding; these should now prevent other ships from clipping through in mid-boarding. - Fixed the target ship in a treasure fleet being duplicated for the ship battle. - Fixed holsters not highlighting when trying to equip weapons at the start of “A Way Out”. - Fixed heavy weapons sometimes not entering their holster when dropped into it. - Fixed press-and-hold not working for boarding and disengage inputs with Vive wands. - Fixed the remaining crew indicators appearing too low on Three-Deckers while boarding them. Act 2 Bug Workaround If you completed Act 1 (Trial by Fire) but do not have Act 2 (The Hunt) in your quest log, follow these steps to force it to start: 1. Load the Main Menu and make sure you are running version 1.0.09. 2. Load a save from after you completed Act 1. 3. Open your quest log and make sure it is empty. If you have any active quests such as bounties, either complete these or abandon them first. 4. While your quest log is open, press Ctrl+Shift+Z and “The Hunt” will be added to it. This will not work again after you successfully complete the quest. DISCLAIMER: If you trigger this workaround in a save where you have completed the entire story, you may encounter some unexpected behaviour. You should only use this for saves where Act 2 failed to start. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers,

If you love collecting things, we have good news! You can now earn Steam Trading Cards by playing Buccaneers! - plundering loot doesn’t get any easier than that! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35764527/d998ed84026d58ace961d663e38391a74fa4eb30.png We’ve created a full set of cards and other items for you to collect, including: - 6 trading cards featuring ships from the game - 5 emoticons to give your messages some piratey flavour - 3 backgrounds to add some nautical decor to your profile If you’re looking to expand your collection but don’t yet have the game, you can now get it for 25% off for a limited time. We hope you have fun swapping cards and tales of your adventures with your fellow shipmates! Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, We're delighted to announce that Buccaneers! is now officially verified on Steam Deck! 🥳 This means the game runs great out of the box with no graphics tweaks required, and all the controls work as expected. We've made sure the game supports aiming with the touchpad and gyro controls as well, so you have more options to play how you want. If any of you have a Steam Deck or are planning to get one, we'd love to hear about your experiences with the game! Enjoy swashbuckling on the go, me hearteys! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, We’ve released a minor update which adds new achievements, new model details and more bug fixes! Here’s the full list of changes: Buccaneers! Version 1.0.08 Changes - Added achievements for conquering the entire map as each faction. If you have a save in which you have already done this, loading that save will unlock the achievement for your faction. - If you go beyond the map boundaries or get stuck in an island in open world sailing and return to your cabin, your ship’s position will now be moved to the nearest point on the map. This prevents World Map travel from breaking. - Added new rigging details to the Two-Decker and Three-Decker. - Replaced the “Rogue” faction flag with a new design to make it more unique. - Crew starvation rate now gets reset when docking at any town, so you no longer lose your entire crew after one day if you set sail with no rations. Fixes - Fixed the merchant UI not showing correctly in Saint John’s and Bridgetown. - Fixed missing/outdated Russian translations for some player abilities. - Fixed the sabotage option not working correctly after bribing tavern keepers in enemy towns. - Fixed ship notoriety not showing more than three stars in the Fleet Status menu. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, We’ve just released our biggest update yet, with a whole host of fixes and improvements for AI, UI and more! There’s a lot to cover, so without further ado, here are the details: Buccaneers! Version 1.0.07 Changes - The number of campaign save slots has been increased to 10. - Ships now have coloured name banners (blue for allies, red for enemies) in ship battles. - The armour points on ships and forts are now displayed with a number on a single icon (instead of showing one icon per point) in ship battles.. - Allied ships now show an icon for their current orders next to their name banner in ship battles. - Added an hourglass icon to represent “temporary” ships added to your fleet as part of a quest. - You now receive a legendary reward at the end of “The Hunt” as intended. - Legendary cannons that are pre-installed on some quest ships now show a lock icon in the shipyard if you have not unlocked those cannons for use on other ships. - When AI ships complete boarding without player intervention, they now try to transfer enough crew over to captured prizes to keep them well-manned, as long as their own ships remain well-manned. - Added a button to transfer crew between ships before the Loot screen after a ship battle. - AI ships will now attempt to put out fires over time as long as they haven’t been hit recently. This also means they are less likely to reach the highest fire severity (🔥🔥🔥), so the base chance of exploding (which only happens at max severity) has been slightly increased to compensate. - The locations and number of days remaining are now shown in the Intrigue purchase UI. - The Intrigue and Abilities tab buttons in the Captain’s Log now show red notification dots when you have unread Intrigues or unspent Ability Points, respectively. - Improved visibility from the deck of the Brig. - If you have conquered most or some of the map before completing the main story quest, the AI will now recapture towns where appropriate if you continue the quest, allowing it to progress correctly. - Moved the attacking ship spawn points further away from San Juan fort. - Fort cannon sound effects are now louder and can be heard from further away, making them consistent with ship cannons. - Disabled the land-facing gun battery on Clarence Town’s fort and added a standalone battery on the other side of the harbour to compensate. - Minor updates for Russian and Simplified Chinese translations. - Increased the size of the interaction zone for climbing the ladders on Two-Deckers and Three-Deckers to prevent you getting stuck if you climb towards the side of the ship. - An on-screen keyboard now appears when selecting a text input field with a controller. (Please note: This only works in Steam Big Picture mode.) Fixes - Fixed the target height of several forts’ gun batteries being set incorrectly, causing the AI to aim too high or low. - Fixed AI ships firing through land to hit forts. - Fixed AI ships sometimes trying to sink nearby ships when their orders are set to “Capture” and their closest target is a fort. - Fixed controller navigation sometimes getting stuck when using the dropdowns in the cargo transfer menus. - Fixed controller navigation not behaving as expected in the Merchant UI. - Fixed incorrect walkable area when the scaffolding is not present in a shipyard during a sabotage attempt. - Fixed minor model and lighting issues in the large shipyard. - Fixed an exploit that allowed you to install legendary cannons that you haven’t unlocked onto other ships in your fleet. - Fixed the “Wait until night/morning” interaction not updating its text immediately after using it. - Fixed the “Wait until night/morning” interaction skipping to night later that day if the current time is between midnight and 6am (which still counts as “night”). - Fixed quest markers not being removed when a quest ends or is failed while using the World Map. - Prevented some quests with a town size requirement from including factions in their search if the factions don’t own a town of the right size. - Fixed fort health and armour not resetting and defending ships not respawning when restarting a fort battle. - Fixed captured ships not appearing as prizes after a fort battle. - Fixed camera movement not being disabled during the fade to the “Defeat” screen when the player’s ship sinks. - Fixed treasure fleet encounters sometimes spawning the wrong support ships if you had multiple treasure fleet quests active. - Fixed shoreline effects not showing on the beach in some small harbours. - Fixed defending fleets not being updated when the AI conquers a town. - Armour-piercing rounds are now aligned correctly when firing. - Fixed a crash that sometimes occurs when starting a new game with the prologue quest enabled after loading a late-game save. - Fixed active Intrigues persisting when starting a new game after loading a previous save. - Fixed climbing direction not syncing up with the play area rotation setting. - Fixed the ship name button being hard to select in the shipyard menu. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, We’ve released a new update with more fixes for quest progression, brigs, and more! Here are the details: Buccaneers! Version 1.0.06 Changes - Brigs can now be purchased from any shipyard. - For those who want a challenge, the Brig is now a playable ship. (Please note: this ship was not designed with the player in mind, so the visibility on deck is not ideal. This will be addressed in a future patch.) - Crew numbers will now update in real time on ships’ health bars while AI boarding is in progress. - The Rapier now has a new visual design. - Improved the icons indicating which goods are being imported and exported. Fixes - Fixed the target ship in “The Hunt” not appearing when going to the ambush point. - Fixed the “Steal Ship” option not working in “The Hunt” if the target ship appears in a Large harbour (such as Havana or Santo Domingo). - Fixed crew numbers sometimes dropping below zero after boarding between AI ships. - Fixed AI ships continuing to use round shot when ordered to “Capture” if their installed cannons don’t have grapeshot. - Fixed ship health bars appearing too big through the spyglass while they’re involved in AI boarding. - Fixed Brigs not being serviceable in any shipyard. - Fixed smugglers not appearing correctly in towns when you go to complete smuggling quests. - Fixed a pathing issue in the blacksmith. - Fixed merchants sticking around in some towns during land battles. - Fixed allied ships sometimes not being serviceable in shipyards due to their faction being unassigned. - Fixed “Ship’s Wheel Offset” not applying when you spawn on your ship. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, We’ve released another hotfix which now stops crashes that some players were experiencing when a new in-game week started. Here are the details: Buccaneers! Version 1.0.05 Fixes - Fixed the AI’s target towns not saving and loading correctly, causing a crash if they attempted to invade a town at the start of an in-game week. Affected saves should be fixed by this patch, and invasions should work correctly going forward. We apologise to anyone who experienced these crashes, and thank you for your patience while we investigated the cause. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, We’ve released a small hotfix for a bug introduced in yesterday’s patch, including the following changes: Buccaneers! Version 1.0.04 Changes - Added additional failsafes to try to prevent a crash that sometimes occurs when a new in-game week begins. If you still experience crashes like this, please let us know. Fixes - Fixed the wrong ships spawning at the start of Trial By Fire after joining the British. If you saw a friendly encounter with two British brigs and chose “Move to greet them”, you will need to start a new game for the correct encounter to spawn. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, We have another new patch for Buccaneers! with multiple fixes for quest progression, town conquest and more. Here are the details: Buccaneers! Version 1.0.03 Changes - Added separate gun emplacements to some forts and disabled some gun batteries that were difficult to hit. - Increased the docking trigger zone outside all harbours, allowing you to enter or launch assaults without needing to get right next to them. - Replacing a ship in the shipyard UI now deducts the current ship’s sell cost from the new one’s purchase cost. Replacing a large ship with a smaller one will pay you the difference. - The AI will no longer try to capture towns that are required for an active quest. - Quest encounters such as bounties and boss fights now only complete their “go-to” quest goal once you select “Attack” in the encounter UI. This prevents the goal from disappearing if you choose to evade and come back later. - Failing a main quest goal (such as sinking a ship you were required to capture) now shows the “defeat” screen with the failure reason and lets you restart the battle. - Added a “Ship’s Wheel Offset” to Options > Controls to allow you to move your playspace closer to or further away from the helm when sailing. Fixes - Fixed blocked entrance to Cockburn Town fort during battles. - Fixed battle objectives always appearing in some large harbours. - Fixed the info cards in the Intrigue Log not auto-selecting when using a controller. - Fixed boarding failing if the target ship has zero crew remaining. - Fixed player being able to join boarding from the same side of the target ship as their ally. - Fixed the optional “Steal Ship” quest goal in The Hunt not completing or failing if the target ship was captured or sunk during a fort assault, respectively. - Fixed an issue with the Bounty Board sometimes generating invalid bounties. - Fixed governors and shipwrights not showing their specialist UI when speaking to them immediately after a quest dialogue. - Fixed the Cargo Transfer UI using the wrong scrollbar and not working with a controller. - Fixed ship armour not being reset correctly when restarting a ship battle. - Fixed wrong ships sometimes appearing in the dropdown menu in the Loot screen after a ship battle. - Fixed the Post Battle UI freezing if activated while inside a docking trigger zone after a ship battle. - Fixed occlusion culling hiding the wrong area inside some medium forts. - Fixed a formatting error causing a line of dialogue to fail to appear in Trial By Fire when playing in Russian or Simplified Chinese. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, The next patch for Buccaneers! is here, with notable improvements for AI ship behaviour and several other quest fixes. Check out the full details: Buccaneers! Version 1.0.02 Changes - Your allied ships will now change their behaviour correctly if you change their orders via the Fleet Status menu while in a battle. - The “Attack” button in the enemy town UI now says “Fort and Ships” to make its purpose clearer (the menu it opens allows you to attack the fort or steal ships, if you have the required abilities). - The “Cutting Out Expedition” ability description now specifies that only ships up to Tier 4 can be stolen. - The “Steal ship” buttons now show information to explain why a ship cannot be stolen, even if you have the Cutting Out Expedition ability. - The base chance of sneaking into all enemy harbours has been increased by 20%. - Ship repair costs have been reduced slightly. - Shipyards now tell you what percentage of your hull and sails will be repaired when you select the Repair button (if your ship is too big for the shipyard, it can only be repaired to 75%). Fixes - Fixed colliders and enemy crew spawn points for fort battles in some harbours. - Fixed battle objectives always displaying in some towns. - Fixed some “Ship Sighting” Intrigues not loading their information correctly when loading a save, causing them to display the wrong region. This fix should apply retroactively when you load an old save. - Fixed AI ships not closing in to board their target if both sides of it are reserved for boarding. - You will no longer be trapped inside the prison cell if you die and respawn at the start of “A Way Out”. - Fixed enemies not surrendering when the Notorious ability is unlocked. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, We’ve released the first patch for Buccaneers! to address a few issues based on early feedback. Here are the full details: Buccaneers! Version 1.0.01 Changes - Bounties are now always generated at three difficulty levels (easy, medium and hard) based on the largest ship in your fleet, instead of your player level. - The sabotage goal in “Trial By Fire” now explicitly tells you to sabotage the fort’s defences “at night”. You can skip time to night via an interaction at a specific table in each tavern. - Moved the two merchants in Clarence Town harbour to avoid their UI getting cut off by the props around them. Fixes - Fixed player spawn not working in some harbours when trying to steal a ship. - Fixed wrong objects and NPCs staying active when sneaking into enemy shipyards at night. - Fixed issues with temporary ships granted in the “Trial By Fire” quest. - Fixed extra cannons with a sabotage prompt appearing in the large shipyard. - Fixed bribe option not working in enemy taverns. - Fixed some towns using the wrong size shipyard. - Fixed Steal Ship button not working for quest ships. - Fixed ocean rendering incorrectly with holes in the mesh when using the Low quality in Graphics settings. Thanks for all the great feedback we’ve received so far! We’ll have more patches in the coming days, so watch this space. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

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Fellow swashbucklers!

The time has come - Buccaneers! is available now!

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35764527/99ce92f269d06929d31bcacc4c6c76a20571370e.gif After four years of development by a team of three, we’re so excited to finally let you play the full game. It’s been a long and difficult journey, but we’re proud of what we’ve managed to create, and we hope you enjoy it! The prologue quest from the free demo is also included in the full game, but if you’ve already completed it, you can skip it when you start a new game. If not, we highly recommend keeping it enabled - the end of the prologue is an important moment that sets up the story for the rest of the game! In the main quest, you get to choose which faction to join after a brief intro sequence, and the game opens up after that. You can follow the events of the story or explore the open world and do as you please - the choice is yours! As always, we really appreciate your feedback! If you have any comments, questions or bugs to report, feel free to join our Discord and let us know. We will be on the lookout for bug reports and will focus on fixing any serious bugs over the next few days, so please bear with us if you experience any issues. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

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Fellow swashbucklers!

The free prologue for Buccaneers! is now available! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1631240/Buccaneers_The_New_Age_of_Piracy/ You can download Buccaneers! The New Age of Piracy right now to get a taste of what to expect in the full game. Command and customise your own ship, experience tense naval and land battles, and find out how your story as a renowned captain begins! If you enjoy this prologue, be sure to wishlist the full game and check it out when it launches on March 7th! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35764527/d2450ff4f1f53b9b779b4a9d4061f0932ec7d355.gif

Ask The Dev

We’d love to hear what you think, so feel free to join our Discord if you have feedback or questions to share. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow Swashbucklers, We have some important news to share as well as new details about the game's story, so let's get right to it...

Steam Next Fest and Release Plans

We're pleased to announce the Buccaneers! prologue will be playable in the upcoming Steam Next Fest in February! The festival runs from 21st - 28th Feb and will feature the final version of the prologue, building upon all your feedback from previous demos. To avoid clashing with this event, we've pushed back the full game's release by 11 days (previously 24th Feb). The new release dates are: - Buccaneers! The New Age of Piracy (Prologue): 2nd March - Buccaneers! (Full game): 7th March Development is still on schedule, and we're working hard to add the final touches to the game before release.

Story Details

We've kept the key details of the game's story under wraps for a long time, and while we're not going to dive into all the specifics now, we wanted to explain how things will work when you first load up the full game. Starting a new campaign will present you with this menu with a few options to customise your experience: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35764527/109b602a589a28cbcd14760310b65a12ba5a5d4f.png First, we've added some options to change your name and skin colour, letting you personalise your character. You can choose different names and colours for each playthrough if you wish. Next, you can choose whether to play the prologue quest before jumping into the main story. The prologue teaches you how to play and sets the stage for the main story, so you should only skip this if you play the standalone prologue before the full game launches! Finally, you can turn tutorials on or off to make subsequent playthroughs more streamlined. Again, you should only turn them off once you have played the story at least once! The prologue now leads straight into the start of the main story, and once you get past the intro sequence (we won't spoil it here!), you will be able to join whichever faction you want: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35764527/d4aaa7fbbce01218fca5f29c41b62fa6c7c86071.jpg Selecting each faction reveals more details about their unique ship upgrades as well as some context for why you might want to join them. You cannot change your mind once you join one, but you can choose differently each time you start a new campaign, so feel free to experiment to find the one that best fits your playstyle! We won't give too much more away now, but throughout the story, you will acquire bigger ships, build up your fleet, capture towns and battle powerful enemies. You will also meet some notable NPCs along the way - some helpful, some less so - as you make a name for yourself in a Caribbean consumed by war.

More to Come

We'll have more news and announcements in the coming weeks as we get closer to release, so watch this space. Be sure to join our Discord and add the game to your wishlist if you haven't done so already! Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, Here's a quick reminder that the Buccaneers! playtest ends today ends today (14 December) at 18:00 GMT/19:00 CET/10:00 PST! Any new sign-ups for these last few hours will be automatically accepted into the playtest, so if you still want to give it a go, be sure to visit the store page! We'd like to thank everyone who has participated in the playtest, and we hope you've enjoyed our latest gameplay improvements! We're especially grateful for all the insightful feedback we received - it's been incredibly valuable, and we've taken all your comments on board. Stay tuned for more announcements and development updates in the coming weeks, and as always, you are welcome to join us on Discord! Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow Swashbucklers, We’re pleased to announce the next public demo of Buccaneers! is now available! The demo is being run as a Steam Playtest, so you can sign up to join via the full game’s Steam page. There will only be a limited number of spaces at first, but we’re planning to expand this over the next few days once we’ve had some initial feedback. The playtest will be live for two weeks, so you’ll have plenty of time to participate! Please note that the playtest uses the Prologue quest, so you are limited to the British faction and start with a mid-game ship and several abilities unlocked. In the full game, you will be able to choose which faction to join and will start with a smaller ship to work your way up. For this beta release, we are looking for feedback in a few key areas, including:

General Gameplay

The biggest aspect we want to gather feedback on is moment-to-moment gameplay. How does the game feel to play? Is it fun and intuitive? Do you think anything could be improved, and if so, what would you like to see changed? If you feel that the ship combat is too slow or fast for your liking, check out the Gameplay settings and try changing the ship speed and cannon reload time to suit your tastes.

VR Support

As detailed in our previous developer update, we have overhauled the game’s VR systems to use the more modern OpenXR standard, and we now need to make sure the game works with as many headsets and controllers as possible. In particular, we want to find out if the game works with:

• Valve Index
• Oculus Quest/Quest 2 via Link
• Oculus Rift S
• Windows Mixed Reality (any device)
• HP Reverb G2

If you have any of these devices and are able to test the game, please let us know how it goes! A few things to look out for include:

• Do the in-game hands line up with your real hands? (You can adjust this in-game in the Controls settings menu.)
• Do all the controls work as expected?
• Does the game display the right button prompts for your controllers?

Rebindable Keys and Improved Gamepad Support

We also recently added fully rebindable keys for mouse and keyboard controls, allowing you to change the primary and secondary bindings to your liking. You can find this menu under Options > Controls > Key Bindings. Feel free to play around with this and let us know how well it works! We also improved support for different types of gamepad, so the game should now work with DualShock and Switch Pro controllers in addition to Xbox-style ones, and will show the appropriate glyphs automatically. If you run into any issues with this, please let us know (but note that your mileage may vary with third-party controllers). Please send us your feedback either on our Discord or via the Steam forums - we’ll be keeping a close eye on it and responding when we can. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, We’ve made great progress on Buccaneers! since we announced the delay over a month ago, so we thought we’d give you a glimpse of how this extra time has allowed us to improve the game so far.

Improved VR Support with OpenXR

When we started developing the game with VR support back in 2018, the headsets and development tools available were very different to those on the market today. As such, our VR integration was based on code that has long since been deprecated, which has made supporting newer devices like the Valve Index very difficult. Although the controllers technically “worked”, we couldn’t properly support their button layout or full feature set. Our solution was to migrate our code to OpenXR - the new cross-platform standard for targeting all VR devices, backed by all the major manufacturers. This required a substantial rework that simply wouldn’t have been possible with our previous October release plans, but the work has finally paid off. With OpenXR, we can now expand our list of supported VR devices as follows: Officially supported (tested in-house):

• Oculus Rift
• HTC Vive/Vive Pro
• HTC Vive Cosmos

Theoretically supported (needs community testing):

• Valve Index
• Oculus Quest via Link
• Oculus Rift S
• Windows Mixed Reality
• HP Reverb G2

Our plan is to promote the “theoretically supported” headsets to “official” status on a case-by-case basis once we have done extensive public testing and ironed out any issues.

Rebindable Keys and Improved Controller Support

As part of the major overhaul outlined above, we also had to upgrade our input code for non-VR mode, which allowed us to implement an important accessibility feature: fully-rebindable mouse and keyboard controls! Almost every action in the game can now be rebound, and you can even add secondary bindings for more flexibility. For players who prefer using a controller, we now have the ability to offer different control layouts, such as left-handed mode. We’re looking at other games for inspiration, but we’d also love to hear from you: which controller layouts would you like to see? We’ve also improved the way controllers are detected by the game, which has several benefits:

• Controllers that are connected but not in use should no longer interfere with the input you’re currently using (whether it’s another controller or mouse and keyboard).
• The game will now automatically detect the type of controller in use (i.e. Xbox, DualShock or Switch Pro controller) and display the appropriate button glyphs for it.
• Mouse movement can now be used in tandem with controller input, allowing players with a Steam Controller (and upcoming Steam Deck) to use the touchpad for camera control.

These improvements are just a couple of examples of how this extra development time has benefitted the game. Keep an eye out for a follow-up post detailing even more changes, including some new locations which add greater variety to the game’s towns!

Public Demo On the Way!

All of these changes are no good unless they work in the real world, and that means we need your help to put them through their paces! We will be running another playable demo very soon to give you a chance to try these features and give us some feedback, so stay tuned for more details in the coming days! As always, we welcome your thoughts and ideas in the comments and on our Discord server. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Ahoy everyone, Unfortunately, there’s been a change of plan regarding our release schedule. Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had to delay both the full game and prologue to February 2022, and the prologue will no longer be part of the October Steam Next Fest. The new release dates are: - Buccaneers! The New Age of Piracy (prologue): 17 February 2022 - Buccaneers! (full game): 24 February 2022 In recent weeks, we’ve lost a lot of development time for various reasons, which made us re-evaluate our previously-stated release date of October 14th. It was already going to be an extremely tight deadline, and we would need to put in a lot of extra hours just to finish the full game’s content - there would be no time left for polishing and very little for QA testing. The game was not going to be the finished product we envisioned, leading to poor sales and reviews, so it was clear that we needed more time. So why February? Simply put, with stiff competition and the usual Steam sales just around the corner, the rest of this year would have been a bad time to launch our game. We would have suffered from low visibility and reduced sales as a result, so we couldn’t take that risk even if the game was done by the end of the year. January isn’t a great time for new releases either, as it’s typically a lull right after the Christmas period. That leaves February as the earliest viable month to release the game without compromising its chances of success. The good news is this gives us more than enough time to finish the game and polish it to the high standards we’re aiming for. We’ll have plenty of time to act on feedback that otherwise would have been put on the backburner due to impending deadlines. There is no doubt the game will be a much better product because of it. However, we know this will come as a huge disappointment to many of you, especially this close to what would have been the game’s release. We’re disappointed too; after nearly four years of development, we were really keen to launch the game this year. These extra four months will do the game good, but for us, getting over the finish line just got that bit harder. If you’re still itching to play the game before its release, don’t worry - we’ll give you more opportunities to test the game soon. As always, thank you all so much for your continued support. We remain committed to delivering the awesome pirate game you guys want, and we hope it will be worth this extra wait. - Team Skyward 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, There has been a slight change of plan regarding the release schedule of Buccaneers! and its free prologue, The New Age of Piracy. The games will now launch on the following dates: - Buccaneers! The New Age of Piracy (prologue): 7 October - Buccaneers! (full game): 14 October The reason for this change is twofold: not only will we have more time to polish the game and address your feedback, but the prologue will also be able to participate in the upcoming Steam Next Fest, starting on 1 October. This will give everyone another chance to try the game and have their say while we make the finishing touches. As an added bonus, everyone who plays the prologue during the festival or after it launches will be eligible for free DLC for the full game! This will include exclusive paint schemes for your ship, cabin, sails and more! We're hard at work on this last leg of development, and we can't wait to wrap things up and deliver an awesome pirate game for you all very soon! Remember to wishlist the game and join our Discord if you haven't already done so. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️

Fellow swashbucklers, We're very excited to announce that Buccaneers! will launch 23 September this year! We've partnered with Valkyrie Initiative, publishers of Sea Dogs: To Each His Own, who will be helping the game to reach its full potential. We will have much more to share in the weeks and months before launch, so watch this space! Don't forget to add the game to your wishlist if you haven't already done so, and be sure to join our Discord for all the latest updates. Happy pirating! 🏴‍☠️