Paper Pirates News

As we prepare to say goodbye to the Haunted Seas event, we’re setting sail for destination 2.5! The focus of this patch is improving the Paper Pirates user experience, and hopefully making it so that everyone who plays can get a better understanding of the rules. Don’t be too sad about the end of Haunted Seas - keep an eye on the Steam updates for more seasonal events as they happen!

[h2]Celebrate the Winners with an All-New Game End Experience[/h2]
The game’s not over when you reach the shore or all your treasure’s gone overboard, and we’re recognising that with an all-new, freshly revamped game end experience! New screens and animations add tension as each crew member is revealed to be a human or ghost, and if you made it home safe? Watch out as the captain’s role is dramatically revealed, revealing the winning team to all!



If you’re playing a scored game, there’s a second game end screen featuring our party podiums, that show each pirate’s coin total. Watch out for a last-second reversal of fortune as the secret objectives are revealed - especially if you have a Demotivated Stowaway!



[h2]Pirate Leaderboard[/h2]
Every time you play a game of Paper Pirates from 2.5 onwards, your player statistics will be saved to your pirate template. Keep using the same pirate name to build up a score over time, and then see how you fare amongst your friends with the new Leaderboard! On the Leaderboard, you can sort by a number of stats (including human wins and ghost wins!) to see who’s truly the most victorious pirate of all.



[h2]Player Chat Improvements[/h2]
We’ve given the in-game chat a little bit of a facelift, to make it more user friendly! The chat history has been separated from the Game Log (which you can still find in the menu), and shows up when you’re sending a message. Additionally, each player is assigned a colour which shows up throughout the game - in their nameplate, in the chat, and during the game end screens! There are ten colours in total, but don’t be fighting amongst yourselves for your favourite colour - they’re randomly chosen each game!

[h2]Connected Player Guidance and Graphical Improvements[/h2]
The connected player client has received a visual overhaul with 2.5, which adds improved guidance throughout the game indicating what you need to do and when. Additionally, there are a host of fun new animations that play at certain points in the game - look out for all the different event animations as you play! If you’d like to reduce your bandwidth usage while playing, or improve client performance, you can turn animations off in the menu after you’ve connected to a game!



[h2]The Captain Returns![/h2]
For this patch, we’ve coordinated some socially distanced voice recording, and we’re delighted to welcome back Captain Wilson who has topped up the voice acting in Paper Pirates. Once again you can look forward to announcements throughout the game, including the rules introduction, during events, and in the new improved game end screen!

[h2]Voting History[/h2]
During voting, your connected device will now display an indicator of who is currently voting (remember, pirates vote one by one from stowaway to captain!), and a record of who each pirate voted for - or a note to say they passed their vote if they did!

[h2]Scurvy[/h2]
Patch 2.5 sees the introduction of one new event, but it’s sure to really mix up your games! When treasure goes overboard, there’s a chance the Scurvy event might activate, offering a pirate a bowl of fruit. Share the fruit amongst the crew, saving pirates in turn - the question is, is there enough fruit to save everyone…?



Don’t forget that you can join us every Saturday at 8pm GMT (adjusted time for the UK’s daylight savings time!) on Twitch for our weekly dev stream, or pop by our YouTube channel to see Let’s Plays of Paper Pirates, How To videos and more! Or if you’re looking for a crew to set sail with make sure to join our Discord!

Throughout October, celebrate Paper Pirates’ first seasonal event by taking part in the Halloween-themed Haunted Seas event! Running from 1st October - 31st October, a whole host of spooky goings on are waiting for you.

[h2]Limited Time Costumes[/h2]
While the Haunted Seas event is on, Sam Sherbot has some new outfit options available to unlock in the Outfit Shop! If you buy an outfit option during Haunted Seas, you can wear it all year round - but the items will be disappearing from sale when the event is over, so don’t delay and buy today!



The full list of outfit items available during Haunted Seas is:

• Face - Pumpkin
  
• Top Hair - Bride of Frankenstein
  
• Top Hair - Widow’s Peak
  
• Accessories - Fangs
  
• Shirt - Skeletal
  
• Shirt - Tee (Webs)
  
• Coat - Bat Wings
  
• Coat - Vampire Cloak
  
• Legs - Skeletal
  
• Hands - Skeletal
  
• Feet - Skeletal
  

[h2]Trick or Treat?[/h2]
Go on a sailing adventure during the Haunted Seas event, and the Halloween Spirits may appear to one of the crew. During the Event phase of the game, the Trick or Treat? event may activate for the duration of Haunted Seas, offering a randomly chosen pirate a choice. Will they take the easy option and choose a treat, or are they feeling brave and willing to risk a trick?



[h2]Halloween Bots[/h2]
Invite some bots into your game during the Haunted Seas event, and you may find some of the regular crew replaced with new, super spooky Halloween-themed bots! They’ll only join your games during the Haunted Seas event, but each has their own dastardly personality and appearance for you to enjoy.

We’re stoked to be launching the great ship 2.4, bringing general improvements to Paper Pirates, plus a whole new way to play! Play a Daily Voyage each day to boost your coin collection, celebrate the seasons with limited-time content (including the Halloween event running from 1st-31st October!), and check out the new way to pick an objective on a Scored Game. Read on for the notes in full!


[h2]Go on a Daily Voyage![/h2]
We’ve added a new game mode to Paper Pirates, the Daily Voyage! Set sail each day with a Daily Voyage, featuring a set of game customisation options that we think makes for a really interesting Paper Pirates experience. Find whole new ways to play, and earn yourself a huge coin bonus once a day! There are over 15 daily voyages for you to discover - can you collect them all?

[h2]Celebrate the Season with Paper Pirates![/h2]
Support has been added for seasonal events, which will run at key holidays throughout the year! Seasonal events add all-new content for a limited time only - including new options in the Outfit Shop and special Events.


Our first event is the Halloween Haunted Seas Event, running from 1st October to 31st October, with a whole raft of limited-time content. Haunted Seas content will only be available during the month of October, so be sure to get spooky on the seven seas to try out some all-new Paper Pirates goodness!

[h2]Choose an Objective & New Objectives![/h2]
It’s always rough when you get the same secret objective in a Scored Game over and over again. Starting a Scored Game will now offer all pirates a choice between two of the secret objectives, which you can confirm through the black spot! You only have until the end of the first day to choose an objective, otherwise we’ll pick for you - and nobody wants that!



To keep it fresh, we’ve also added five new secret objectives, bringing the total to 20, ensuring that everyone will be offered unique objectives even in ten player games. Check out the Captain’s Log to learn more about the new objectives.

[h2]More Help for the Crew while Playing![/h2]
We’ve added a new menu you can access while playing Paper Pirates on your connected device, which houses a whole host of new options intended to make playing Paper Pirates easier and more accessible! The Game Log has moved to live inside the new menu, and joins new friends, including a summary of the Paper Pirates rules, an Event Guide, an Objectives Guide, and a Game Info screen, which lets players know what settings were used to start the game!

[h2]Revamped ‘Playing In’ Screen[/h2]
Choosing whether to obey or disobey has never been so exciting, as the ‘playing in’ screen has had a radical overhaul to improve readability and make it more visually appealing! Additionally, we’ve streamlined the process to make the rules simpler to understand: No longer does the captain tell a Truth or Lie, but chooses to Obey or Disobey - the same as the rest of the crew!



[h2]Reveal Role on Vote Overboard[/h2]
We’ve added a new option to Custom Games, which allows you to set games to ‘Reveal Role on Vote Overboard’. With this setting on, the crew will get confirmation when voting a pirate overboard as to whether the pirate thrown overboard was a human, or a ghost. This can really change the way you have to play, and works great if you have a random number of ghosts at the start of the game! Roles are only confirmed when players are thrown overboard in votes, so watch out for events that throw pirates overboard - they’re still to cause mystery and chaos!

[h2]A Few Other Things[/h2]

• We added four new achievements - which also means four awesome new hats! Check Steam to see how you can get each of these new achievements:
  
  • A Voyage a Day
    
  • Seven Seas
    
  • Big Spender
    
  • The Compass of Fate
    
• We fired the end game kraken, and hired a much more modern, sleeker, more awesome-looking one. This also means the Squid Hat has an amazing new look.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]
Custom Games with a customised event loadout would sometimes miss one of your events out. Oops! They’re all included now, which means games with only one event should again be functional!

As always, don’t forget that you can join us every Saturday at 8pm BST on Twitch for our weekly dev stream, or pop by our YouTube channel to see Let’s Plays of Paper Pirates, How To videos and more! Or if you’re looking for a crew to set sail with make sure to join our Discord!

Put on your best pirate digs, and get ready for the Fashionable Update for Paper Pirates - bringing a hundred new outfit customisation options, which you can unlock by playing games of Paper Pirates, plus a whole new way to choose your events in custom games, and much more! Read on for the full details of everything included in this month’s update!

[h2]Earn Coins as you Play![/h2]
As you sail the seven seas, you’ll earn coins as a reward. Playing a Default game will grant you a small amount of coins, and playing a Scored game will grant you coins based on the amount of coins earned by each player pirate in the game. Your total coins can be viewed from the title screen - and if you’ve already been playing Scored Games, you might find that you already have some coins saved up from games you’ve played before 2.3!



[h2]Spend Coins to Unlock New Outfit Customisations![/h2]
But what can you do with those coins? You can spend them at the all-new Outfit Shop! Sam Sherbot, the Shopkeep, has opened their brand new Outfit Shop - and is selling 100 new outfit customisation options across all categories! The Outfit Shop lets you try on new pieces, and once purchased, you can access them from the outfit customiser in the lobby before starting your game.



[h2]Events? They’re the Crew’s Choice![/h2]
Custom Games have a new option under the ‘Events’ tab, which allows you to switch your event selection mode between Random (events selected randomly) and the new Crew’s Choice option. When Crew’s Choice is chosen, each day, every crew member will be offered a selection of possible events, and will vote on the event they’d like to happen. The more votes an event receives, the more likely it is to happen - but the actual event that’s picked is all down to the Compass of Fate! Crew’s Choice adds a whole new way to play, and another opportunity for pirates to get involved in voting and discussion - we love it, and we hope you will too!



If you’re playing with an audience, an audience event will be added to the Compass of Fate every day at least one person votes, and could be chosen to really mix things up in your game!

[h2]Bot Voting Improvements[/h2]
Our bots have gotten a little smarter, and will now make more informed decisions when asked to vote in events. They’ll attempt to use any knowledge they have, such as whether they think someone is a confirmed human or ghost, to make decisions in events such as exorcism - so you should hopefully see some more sensible bot plays in games with less human pirates!

[h2]Audience Mode Improvements[/h2]
Pirates who join the audience will experience a newly improved audience flow, which offers more guidance, instructions and explanation on how audience mode interacts with the game. The audience will be able to see which events other audience members voted for, and when you’re not currently voting, there’s a prompt to let you know what the next thing you can do is.



Audience members will also have access to the game log from the point they started observing a game, and there’s a new question mark button which offers a quick overview of the rules of Paper Pirates!

Additionally, audience members will now see in-game when an event is chosen by their votes. Look out for the “Audience’s Choice” badge on the event messages!

[h2]A Few Other Things[/h2]

• Certain elements of the game (such as the lobby) have been given a revised look and feel, to ensure consistency
  
• Crew in the lobby now have a ‘Ready?’ button they can use to signal that they’ve finished customising their pirate and they’re ready for the game to begin
  
• Auto-Hide Room Code will now hide the room code in-game, but can be revealed by clicking on the room code cloud
  
• The maximum length of chat messages has been increased slightly
  
• Our new shopkeeper, Sam Sherbot, may rarely join you on a voyage as a bot. Look out for them on your trips!
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• The Immunity event didn’t always present a countdown timer to prompt the Captain to choose quickly, but the timer should now always pop-up
  
• A few very rare server crashes have been fixed, so hopefully games are more robust!
  
• Fixed an issue which could cause games to start on days that weren’t numbered 1
  
• In the lobby, the room code no longer blocks the view of the pirates in the bottom right of the screen
  

As always, don’t forget that you can join us every Saturday at 8pm BST on Twitch for our weekly dev stream, or pop by our YouTube channel to see Let’s Plays of Paper Pirates, How To videos and more!

It’s about time we introduce you to Paper Pirates version 2.2 - an adventure of an update that includes a host of new events and achievements, a new game log feature in the device client, and a whole new way to create custom games! Read on for all the details!

[h2]Brand New Events![/h2]
To keep you on your toes, we’ve added nine new events - and for the first time ever, four of these events are exclusive to the Scored Games variant of Paper Pirates! If you’re looking to complete your events list in the Captain’s Log, make sure you’ve played at least a few scored games to uncover these hidden new events. We don’t want to spoil any surprises, but one of the new events has the potential to completely warp your game!


[h2]More Customisation in Custom Games[/h2]
Bringing more excitement to Custom Games, you can now include and exclude specific events and secret objectives from each custom game you play! Hate it when a last minute Mutiny disrupts your plans? You can ban the Mutiny event from your game! Wondering what would happen if every pirate was Demotivated? You can include it as the only secret objective in your game! Now your custom games can be as different as your heart desires!


[h2]Extra Achievements![/h2]
With new events and new ways to play custom games, we’re also adding a handful of new achievements - and as always, each new achievement comes with a new hat, which you can unlock as soon as you earn the achievement. If you want to be the most fashionable pirate on the seven seas, track down any of the eight new achievements as quickly as you can, and try out the new hats before yer crew!

[h2]The Game Log[/h2]
Didn’t see who went overboard? Looked away and missed an event? Each connected device now has access to the ‘Game Log’, which tracks all the important going-ons of each game, available to each player during the game. Use the new Game Log button to access it, and you’ll be able to recap whether the job each day was a success or failure - and who played in, which events happened each day and what they did, and who voted to throw a pirate overboard. Additionally, any chat messages sent will be logged in the Game Log too! Great for cross-referencing when someone claimed to be a human with what their actions showed.


[h2]Audience Experience Adjustments[/h2]
We’ve made some general adjustments to the audience experience, for a smoother overall experience. Audience members will now see a short description of each event when choosing which to vote for, and events voted for by the audience should now be slightly more likely to appear too. The audience flow has been adjusted, so audience members need to keep an eye on their devices so they know when to vote!


[h2]Performance Improvements[/h2]
We’ve tightened a few things up under the stern, making sure everything’s ship shape and ready for sailing. You may see some general performance improvements, particularly with certain graphics cards and drivers.

[h2]A Few Other Things[/h2]

• We’ve added How To Play guides, accessible from the title screen for both Default and Scored games. Just click the “?” button, and they’ll pop right open, detailing all the rules of Paper Pirates for you to browse!
  
• Some older events have been given new animations - see if you can spot them all!
  
• Each day now has a day/night cycle, to help impress upon the crew the passage of time.
  
• Buttons linking to the Iteration Games Twitter, Discord, Twitch and YouTube communities have been added to the title screen. Please visit us to talk about Paper Pirates, we’d love to hear from you!
  
• Pirates can no longer join a game using the name of a pirate who is already in the game.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• The Just Desserts achievement wasn’t being properly credited, but this is now fixed - Evil Chefs, get your soup at the ready!
  
• We’ve made the reconnection process a touch more robust, so you should now have a greater chance of reconnecting to a game when you’ve disconnected.
  

As always, don’t forget that you can join us every Saturday at 8pm BST on Twitch for our weekly dev stream, or pop by our YouTube channel to see Let’s Plays of Paper Pirates, How To videos and more!