pace Pirate is a Web-based, non-directed adventure game in the style of Sid Meier's Pirates or Wing Commander: Privateer. In the game, players are given a spaceship to command and a galaxy to explore. Theoretically all players are law-abiding traders, buying loads of cargo at one planet to sell at the next; but the game offers many more lucrative pursuits, such as becoming a pirate, robbing warehouses, and visiting that mainstay of adventure games, the bar, to take on missions of questionable legality.
As is usual in this genre, at the start the spaceships are small, weak
and under-equipped, and players will probably spend a lot of time sneaking, hiding and running away until they can scratch together enough cash to soup up their ride. Unless they are very careful about which missions they accept and how they carry them out, wannabe pirates will quickly run afoul of Imperial warships and be branded as criminals. This is not the end of the universe, however, as they can usually escape the cops with minor damage to ship and dignity.
Dignity is rather important, as each player's virtual crew is looking for cash and glory, and the less glory they get the more cash they want. Because a spaceship's abilities are largely a product of the abilities of its crew, the early portion of the game is a balancing act of building up an expert yet
affordable crew while keeping them happy enough to serve without throwing
their captain off the ship.
Combat, whether between people (on planet surfaces) or ships (in space), is fought in rounds, with players choosing an action (attack, evade, shields, hyperspace) to carry out each round. The special appeal of commanding a painstakingly assembled ship and crew makes combat pretty engaging, but it's still very abstract.
Not fancy, but still fun
Space Pirate is a small-company project and has few frills: there is
little documentation, the map of the galaxy is difficult to use beyond
the immediate area, and there is no record kept of a player's adventures and
exploration. In order to trade effectively, it is necessary to keep paper-and-pencil records of the prices of various goods and which goods are
available on what worlds.
Nevertheless, the game can quickly become addictive. Building up a ship from almost nothing through hard work is an appealing concept, and although the heart of the game is text-based, there are enough graphics thrown in to keep the eyes interested.
Another plus to the game is that multiple people play in the same space at the same time, and they can chat with each other while they play. The game's designers say it will become more interactive as time goes on, and players
will be able to encounter each other's ships, but for now the only interaction besides chat is competing to get on the high-score list.
All told, Space Pirate is a fun but not entirely professional game.
On the other hand, demoing the game is free, and a month of full
membership (which includes the ability to save games as well as a
yourname@spacepirate.com email account) is only $14.95. Anyone
interested in this kind of free-form adventuring should at least demo it and see what it's like to be a space pirate.
