Paper Pirates News

Today, we’re super excited to share Patch 2.1, the Portraits Update, with all you scurvy sea dogs setting sail on the Paper Pirates oceans! This update includes a fancy new feature for makin’ portraits of your pirates, perfect for sharin’ with your mateys. We’ve also got a round of bug fixes and balance changes, to ensure your games play to the pirate code. Check out the patch notes in full just below deck!

[h2]The Photo Booth[/h2]
A new addition to the Captain’s Log, the Photo Booth, let’s you pick from your pirate templates, and prepare a custom snap all ready for sharin’! You can prepare your pirate in a whole range of poses, put them on different backdrops, pick a foil, and even add an adornment - such as a nameplate, a rosette, or some words of wisdom, to make the perfect picture. Hit the save button, and your pirate’s picture will be exported, ready for sharing with all your friends! We’d love to see your best #PiratePortraits, so why not share them with us on Twitter at @IterationGames.


[h2]Expand your Booth[/h2]
Looking to add more poses, backgrounds and foils to your photo booth to make the ultimate portrait? It’s now not only hats that you can unlock with achievements, but your photo booth will grow over time as you unlock achievements! Make sure you visit the photo booth when you’ve had a particularly exciting game to see if you have any fancy new decorations for your pirates - you might find a new favourite.


[h2]In-Game Patch Notes[/h2]
Look out for the “Patch Notes” button from the title screen, to view a quick summary of the latest changes to Paper Pirates in-game. Handy if you need to find out about the latest bug fixes and balance updates before setting sail!

[h2]Steam Cloud[/h2]
A few updates ago, we added pirate templates, so that you can save your pirate appearances for names you use often. Now those appearances will be saved to the Steam Cloud, so they’re all safely backed up, along with some of your preferences, configurations, and stats data - as a bonus, they’ll also travel with you from computer to computer if you play Paper Pirates on multiple PCs!

[h2]Menu Improvements[/h2]
We’ve revisited some of our menu screens to improve the general user experience of Paper Pirates. Our options screens in particular have been revisited, and for the first time you can access some options directly from the lobby - so you no longer have to back out of a game to tweak your settings!

[h2]Balance Updates[/h2]
We’ve been reviewing the way that secret objectives play out in scored games and we’re making a few small adjustments to some secret objectives to ensure that they’re fun and to make sure everyone feels like they have a chance at earning some coins in each game.

[h2]Scored Games[/h2]

• The Pacifistic secret objective has been removed.
  
• The Diplomatic secret objective has been added! A Diplomatic pirate scores coins based on how many pirates haven’t been thrown overboard at the end of the game - we’re sure that a diplomatic pirate is bound to make an enemy of a ruthless pirate where both objectives appear!
  
• The Ambitious secret objective has been reworked. Instead of only awarding coins if you end the game as the captain, you now earn a number of coins based on how high your rank is amongst the crew.
  
• The Zealous and Spiteful secret objectives have been reworked. Instead of only awarding coins if your target pirate ends the game as captain/stowaway, you now earn a number of coins based on how high/low their rank is amongst the crew respectively.
  
• The number of coins available for completing the Dependent secret objective has been decreased.
  
• The number of coins available for completing the Ruthless secret objective has been decreased.
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Occasionally, pirates with no hat were assigned Blackbeard’s Beard upon starting a game. Pirates with no hat will now remain hatless once the game commences.
  
• Pirates created in the lobby for a game that is aborted before it’s started will now still be saved as templates.
  
• Rarely, when a bot foresaw an event through the Magic Lamp event, the event chosen wouldn’t actually take place. It should now always happen - watch out for those Shipwrecks!
  

As always, don’t forget that you can join us every Saturday at 8pm BST on Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/iterationgames) for our weekly dev stream, or pop by our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqi1SJHkkB4a5h9Q-YJjLWQ) to see Let’s Plays of Paper Pirates, How To videos and more!

• Fixed issues with "No Hat" being overridden by the Blackbeard hat once unlocked.
  
• Fixed issues with some hats being behind the ocean in the title screen
  
• The Blackbeard hat now actually has flavour text in the Captain’s Log
  
• The “Treacherous” secret objective should now score correctly
  
• Resizing the game should now look a little less glitchy
  
• Mac users should now have a regular sized cursor
  
• Balloons should now float a distance relative to their character’s scale
  
• Fixed colouring issues with smoke particles
  

[h2]Additions[/h2]

• The Stats section in the Captain’s Log now has some stats to look at!
  
• Pressing Ctrl+C+M will now toggle a cinematic mode that turns off display text, the skip intro button, as well as the options button
  

We’re really excited to introduce Paper Pirates 2.0!

Headline features include fast mode, the Captain’s Log, and perhaps most excitingly, a whole new game mode with an entirely new way to play Paper Pirates! Without further ado, let’s get into the patch notes....

[h2]New Game Mode: Scored Games![/h2]
Our new game mode completely changes the way that you sail on the seven seas! Paper Pirates is team-based, it’s true, but in a Scored Game, each pirate earns coins depending on how well they play. To unlock scored games, just play one game of Paper Pirates, and then the Scored Game and Custom Game buttons will be available to you in the main menu!


[h2]What do points make? Coins![/h2]
In a Scored Game, pirates earn coins depending on how well they play. Vote to throw a ghost overboard as a human? Coins for you! Achieve your victory condition? Coins for you! The more coins you have, the better you’ll rank at the end of the game. Coin totals are hidden until the end of the game, so you never know quite who’s in the lead until the dramatic finale.

[h2]Secret Objectives[/h2]
In a Scored Game, each pirate also has their very own secret objective, earning coins for meeting their objective as they progress through the game. Secret objectives are unique to you, and only displayed on your device, so don’t be sharin’ them with yer crew! Objectives range from trying to finish the game as the captain, to gaining bonus coins every time you throw a targeted pirate overboard, so they’re sure to mix up your usual style. But watch out! One player might be demotivated, earning a bumper crop of coins if they finish the game as the stowaway…




There are fifteen different objectives, and once you’ve unlocked scored games you can read all about them in the brand-new Captain’s Log. Once you know what they are, you’ll need to look out for any pirates who are behaving suspiciously… Try to achieve your secret objective, but don’t let anyone else get theirs to stay ahead of your crewmates!
[h2]Fast Mode[/h2]
We’ve heard your requests for a fast mode, for those of you who are seasoned sailors. If you’re looking for a speedier game of Paper Pirates, head over to the options screen and enable ‘Fast Mode’. In Fast Mode, fewer dialogue boxes will be displayed, and there’s less time spent waiting for animations. Don’t panic, we’ll still share important information, like when events are happening, so don’t feel like you need to know Paper Pirates inside out before you try it out. You can even turn it on in the middle of a game using the options menu!
[h2]Captain’s Log[/h2]
Lookin’ for info on all the secret workings of Paper Pirates voyages? The new Captain’s Log is for you! It holds the secrets of all the objectives, events, hats and bots in the game. Events won’t show up until you’ve seen them in a game, and hats won’t show up until you’ve unlocked them, so hunt them all down to reveal them in the log!



[h2]Emotes[/h2]
Brimming over with piratey feelings? Your pirates have learnt a whole new way to communicate! When you pop open the chat box, you’ll now see four new emote buttons that will prompt your pirate to express their feelings through the medium of animation. Feeling joyful? Your pirate can cheer with a heart! Feeling surprised? Your pirate can show an exclamation! Why not use emotes in combination with emoji to really show how you’re feeling when your crewmates have turned against you and are all voting to throw you overboard!
[h2]Bot Improvements[/h2]
For those of you who play solo or like to throw in a bot or two for a bigger game, we’ve made improvements to our bots to make them more seaworthy.
[h2]Bot AI Improvements[/h2]
We’ve tweaked our bot AI so that they’re a little smarter. They should now have a better understanding of event outcomes, and identify their vote targets a little more keenly, and may even send a chat message if they find out some secret information! Does that mean it’s a little bit harder to win against the bots? Maybe! Good luck out there pirates, you’ll need it.



[h2]Bot Identities[/h2]
Each of the bots now has their very own fixed appearance and personality, so you can spend a little bit of time getting to know them. There are eleven bots for you to know and love, and we hope that over time, you’ll welcome them into your games with a hearty yo ho ho! Have a favourite bot? Why not let us know in the comments!
[h2]Player Templates[/h2]
Finding that you’re spending ages in the pirate customiser, setting up the perfect pirate look every time you play? We’re introducing pirate templates! When you customise a pirate, it’ll be bookmarked using your pirate’s name. Next time you join a game hosted by the same person on the same PC with the same name, you’ll default to the same appearance! Don’t worry, you can still edit it and it'll update the template, so you’re never stuck with the same hat for too long.
[h2]Expanded Custom Game Options[/h2]
When starting a custom game, there are some new options to keep your games fresh. You can choose to play either Paper Pirates Classic, or the brand-new Scored Mode, and all customisation options are available to you whichever you choose. You can now also choose whether to fill your missing spaces with bots or not, perfect if you’re not sure how many pirates are coming aboard! Finally, you can now break the ghost slider apart, and choose a minimum and maximum number of ghosts - that means you’ll get a random number of ghosts in your game! In a random ghosts game, you don’t find out how many ghosts there are at the start, for that added layer of deductive difficulty.
[h2]Balance Updates[/h2]
To keep things fun and fair, and to always meet the pirate code, the following balance changes have been made to events:

• In the Election event, the stowaway is no longer eligible to vote and cannot be elected captain. The captain, on the other hand, is now able to vote!
  

[h2]A Few Other Things[/h2]

• A small number of new options have been added to the pirate customiser
  
• Idle on the title screen for long enough, and you might see some of the bots dropping in for a surprise visit!
  
• The appearance of the aura, indicating how many times a player has played into rounds successfully or unsuccessfully, has been improved
  
• The distance track has been revamped to more clearly indicate your progress
  

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• The Stowaway event outcome now displays correctly in the Round History.
  
• Clicking in the Round History no longer accidentally mutes pirates hiding behind the history window.
  

Finally, don’t forget, you can join us every Saturday at 8pm BST on Twitch for our weekly dev stream. We love when the audience joins in, so please feel free to swing by and play a few games with us!

Version 1.4 of Paper Pirates has just gone live, and dare we say it, this might be our biggest update yet. We’ve added new achievements (and you know what that means - new hats!), added new events, fixed as many bugs as we could find, and added some new features that make sailing the seven seas easier than ever before. Read on for all the details!

Pirates be aware, this update includes some major new content, and as such you may find that older versions of Paper Pirates stop working! Please make sure that you have updated to the latest version through Steam to ensure smooth sailing.
[h3]New Events, Event Names and Categories[/h3]



We hear all the time that events are one of your favourite parts of Paper Pirates, but we heard loud and clear that you wanted more of them. So that’s what we did! Not only that, but we’ve revisited the way that events happen, to ensure that every trip is fun and fair, no matter whether ye be pirate or ghost.
[h3]Brand New Events[/h3]
What’s that, MORE events? We’ve added thirteen brand new events to the game, which means there are twice as many events as before! New events include all sorts of pirate adventures - will you find a magic lamp and be granted a vision into the future? Will you take the chance as the Cook to poison the soup of your greatest rival?
[h3]Event Titles[/h3]
Can you never remember which event is which? When an event occurs the dialogue boxes now display the name of the event. We hope that you’ll enjoy getting to know the events, learning their names, befriending them, and building strategies to cope with each one. This also means the audience members know which events they’re voting on, too!
[h3]Event Categories[/h3]
Events now fall into three types - sailing events, treasure events, and wildcard events. This means that if things are going a bit too well for the humans, we’ll try to give you an event that might just save the ghosts! If your ship is starting to look more haunted than shipshape, we’ll get you back on track with an event that’ll make your time at sea a breeze! No matter how bad things look for you, a well-timed event can always turn the tide of the game, so never give up hope!

[h2]End of the Game Clarity[/h2]
[h3]Round Summary[/h3]


Need to settle an argument between crew members at the end of the game? Nobody willing to own up to being The OG? When you reach the end of a game, you’ll have a new option to view a Round Summary, which shows you what happened on every day of your voyage on the seven seas. You can check who played in (and whether they obeyed or disobeyed!) each day, when everyone was a ghost, and which events happened and when. For the forensic analysts of you, there’s a lot you can learn here about the shady behaviour of your friends. Just don’t spend too long at the end of the game summary before jumping into your next adventure!

[h3]Personalised End of Game Screen[/h3]
Each pirate will now receive an end of game screen on their device, letting them know which victory outcome the crew achieved, and whether they personally won or lost the game. This adds some additional clarity, especially to the stowaway - that’s right stowaways, you always get a little message telling you that you’ve lost! Hard luck this game, but there’s always next time!

[h2]Achievements, Hats and Pirate Customisation[/h2]
There’s nothing a pirate loves more than being fashionable. Well, there’s probably a few things actually, but let’s say being fashionable. To help ensure our pirates are at the peak of their fashion game, we’ve added new hats - and of course, new hats, means new achievements! Whether you’re nearing the completion of your achievement collection, or you’ve only just started, there’s plenty to play for in the Great Hat Race.
[h3]New Achievements and New Hats[/h3]
We’ve added seven new achievements, ranging from achievements for cleverly using the new events to winning the game as ‘The OG’. Of course, each new achievement also unlocks a new hat, so that means there’s seven new hats available for your pirates to strut their funky stuff in!


[h3]Pirate Customiser[/h3]
Until now, your pirate’s look was at the whims of fate. Your only trade-off for getting the hat you wanted was sacrificing the amazing hair you had, and you ended up with a moustache you resented. Not anymore! You can now customise your pirate with much more precision by clicking the palette in the top right of your device when connected to a game lobby! Select from any of the outfit options, choose your hat, or go for that double peg-leg!
[h3]New Looks[/h3]
To celebrate the addition of the new outfit customiser we’ve also added even more designs and colour combinations - your pirate has never looked more unique. You can create your very own pirate look, and once you’ve found your favourites, have a pirate look that is all your very own.

[h2]🌊🌊🌊 Emoji Support 🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️[/h2]



We’ve added 😊 support to 🦜 names and 💭 messages, allowing you to be more 😜 when 🗣 who you think is a 👻! With great 💪 comes great responsibility, so please obey the 🦜 code when naming your ☠ and 💬 with other players!
[h3]New Graphics Options[/h3]
We also heard some people were asking for the ability to resize the game and toggle between windowed mode and fullscreen, so we added it! You can now find a fullscreen toggle in the main options menu. Not only that, but you can resize the window as you see fit in windowed mode! Nice!

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed a bug where audio playback would sometimes end prematurely.
  
• Fixed a bug where players could sometimes be connected to a game lobby twice.
  
• Renamed ‘Clear Sailing’ to ‘Plain Sailing’ for clarity and improved messaging.
  
• The ‘votes needed’ message no longer displays off the top of the screen in games with many pirates.
  
• The voting threshold line now appears behind the audience count.
  
• Votes no longer disappear behind the ‘last command’ reminder message.
  
• Reconnecting during job selection now displays the appropriate screen.
  
• Player’s names no longer obscure a pirate’s legs and feet in the lobby.
  
• The Stowaway has learnt to correctly wear their barrel, and as such it should no longer appear at a jaunty angle.
  
• The exorcism event has received an improved animation effect.
  
• Audience event selection has been improved so it cannot be manipulated as easily with a small number of pirates in the audience:
  
• Audience votes are now weighted against existing events.
  
• Events the audience vote for are always more likely to appear, but not guaranteed.
  

Unfortunately, because of the ongoing COVID-19 situation, we’re not currently able to get new voice lines for all the added dialogue for this update due to lack of access to equipment :( As soon as we’re able, we’ll be revisiting all the new text boxes we’ve added, and our regular narrator will be back to add his usual pirate flair to all the new text in the game.

Don’t forget that you can join us on Twitch every Saturday at 8PM BST for a developer stream. This week we’ll be hoping to see some of the new events in action, so we’ll be playing some games with high event counts - anything could happen!

The latest update for Paper Pirates has just gone live, and with it, we bring you a host of bug fixes, quality of life improvements to improve rejoining a game in progress and to help deal with rowdy pirates, and a new feature that lets you chart your own courses - that’s right, custom games with a host of custom settings!



[h2]Custom Games[/h2]
Gotten used to your regular Paper Pirates voyages? Looking to mix it up a bit, and try something more adventurous? The new ‘Custom Games’ option lets you change a number of settings to customise the game to your liking. Not only that, but there’s a brand new achievement for completing a custom game - there’s no excuse not to try one!
[h3]Number of Players[/h3]
Custom games raise the maximum player count to ten! Stranded on a desert island and not got enough mateys to join you? Whatever number you set here is the number of pirates you’ll have aboard your ship, so if you don’t fill up the lobby with fellow sailors, we’ll throw in some bots to set sail with you!
[h3]Number of Ghosts[/h3]
More players means more ghosts! Custom games allow you to set how many ghosts come aboard your ship at the start of the game. How spooky are you feeling? Remember that the stowaway can’t start the game as a ghost, so you can never have a full ghostly crew!
[h3]Distance from Shore and Number of Treasures[/h3]
Hoping to sail home in time for tea? Perhaps chart a longer voyage for maximum chaos? In a custom game, you can set how much booty your boat starts with, and how far away from shore the boat starts.
[h3]Event Frequency[/h3]
Do you love events? Do you wish they happened all the time? Now they can! With a custom game, you can set how many events occur in your game. Should you decide that you’re more detective than pirate, you can even turn events off completely to significantly reduce randomness in your game.
[h3]Custom Games and Achievements[/h3]
To keep things to the pirate code, some achievements aren’t obtainable through custom games. If you’re looking to score one of the following (and its associated hat), make sure you play a regular non-customised game:

• X Days at Sea
  
• Treading Water
  
• Greedy for Gold
  
• Ocean Pacifists
  
• Pieces of Hate
  
• Sworn Loyalty
  

[h2]Quality of Life[/h2]
[h3]Rejoining a Game in Progress[/h3]
Been thrown overboard a little too violently and found yourself disconnected from the game? We’ve made some improvements to make it easier to reconnect to a game in progress. Players who have been disconnected will now try to reconnect automatically without needing to refresh their page, and in instances where a manual reconnection is still necessary, players will bypass the room entry page removing the need to re-enter a room code.

What’s more, if you reconnect to a game when you’re expected to vote, you will still have the option to cast your vote in that round!
[h3]Muting a Rowdy Pirate[/h3]
If you’ve got a pirate aboard who’s not playing by the rules, and you need to give them a temporary gagging order, you can now click on them to mute them. Any messages they send from their device will not be displayed while they’re muted. Think they’re ready to be trusted again, or mute them by accident? Simply click them again, and they will be unmuted!
[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Audience player vote buttons now appear in the same order as pirates appear on screen
  
• Fixed a bug where the game doesn't end if the stowaway/hostage event occurs with one distance/treasure left respectively
  
• Fixed a bug where the captain job selection screen sometimes doesn't change to the captain truth/lie screen
  
• Fixed a bug where exiting to the main menu would sometimes not close the server connection cleanly
  

Don’t forget that you can join us on Twitch every Saturday at 8PM BST for a developer stream. This week we’ll be celebrating the update by trying out some custom games - come join them, or join the audience and help pick the events and vote for who you think is a ghost!