Buccaneers! News

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:


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.


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?
  

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.


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.


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!


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! 🏴‍☠️