Cursed Crew News

Yarr, mateys! Only 4 days until Cursed Crew releases in Early Access!

We're looking at some of the bosses and the enemies you'll encounter in the Early Access release of Cursed Crew.


[h2]Sea Witch[/h2]
The beautiful sea witch is a mini-boss. She flies around your ship, seeking out crew members and attacking with orb-like projectiles and flying skulls. She switches between hovering and taking a melee stance where she summons knives from her hair to spear you with.


[h2]Flying Dutchman[/h2]
The legend is true: The Flying Dutchman has come to take your souls. This massive ship is fast, merciless, and manned by undead souls. Armed with devastating triple repeater cannons and skull cannons, the ghost ship can rapidly overwhelm and sink any vessel.

In the future, we plan to add abilities for the Flying Dutchman to dive down into the water and reappear at different locations, as well as allow for ghost crew members to phase onto the player's ship.


[h2]Walking Sharks[/h2]
These toothy fellows are not your friends. They board your ship by jumping out of the water, and they walk! They attack by leaping up and slamming their body weight against an area, potentially hitting many people at once. They're quite slow-moving and there's an opportunity to strike back when they've flopped down and need time to stand back up.


[h2]Flying Skulls[/h2]
Horrifying projectiles fired by skull cannons. Upon landing, they transform into a living, floating skull that harasses crew members by chomping on them.


[h2]Ghosts, Skeletons, Ratmen, and Humans[/h2]
You can read about these crew member types in our previous blog here!

[h2]Crabs[/h2]
These charming crustaceans can be hostile, neutral, or friendly! If crabs appear on your boat, you can feed them to make them into friendly chums who will defend your ship. If left alone to starve or attacked, crabs will become hostile - their claws are sharp and they can lash out while jumping!


[h2]Pale Reaper[/h2]
Did you play the Next Fest demo? This wicked vessel comes in three versions!
- Grapeshot and sniper cannons designed for taking out your crew
- Cannons and fire grapeshot cannons with incendiary projectiles that can quickly set your ship ablaze
- Heavy-duty cannons designed to breach your ship's hull and sink it

Just 4 more days until release, mateys! Please join us for our release by following the links below!

[h3]- Join us on the Cursed Crew Discord - chat with players and devs![/h3]
[h3]- Please wishlist Cursed Crew![/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1839760/Cursed_Crew/

- Roel, Phil, & Oskar

Ahoooy! Cursed Crew releases in Early Access in 5 days!

Today’s dev blog covers the crafting mechanics in Cursed Crew. Early in development, there wasn’t a lot to do between combat encounters, and the next steps were to add crafting to make sure you had things to do and work on.
[h2]Crafting[/h2]
We designed crafting with the philosophy that we wanted to make the survival experience outside of combat just as exciting as combat itself. We wanted to give the player plenty to do with crafting so there are a lot of strategic choices to make and things to work towards.


Start by building a crafting bench, this will allow you to craft ropes, bandages, reinforced planks, as well as weapons and bombs for combat. Next, you’ll want a smithy to let you build additional cannons and their cannonballs. And don’t forget your stove - your crew members can eat things raw, but they'd much prefer a delicious, homecooked meal. A stove lets you combine ingredients into fresh or hearty meals, or slop.

At the start of a run, you’ll only know a few recipes, and you must sail further to acquire schematics to learn new recipes for items. These schematics can be found through story events, from traders, and from ships you loot after a victorious battle.

[h2]New materials[/h2]
Materials are your ingredients for crafting! During development, we reworked some old materials and added a couple of new ones.

• Wood: Used for fixing your ship’s deck when it’s damaged, crafting reinforced wood and certain weapons
  
• Metal: Used for repairing cannons, crafting refined metal and mechanical parts, as well as cannons and certain weapons
  
• Fabric: Used for repairing sails, crafting ropes and bandages, and building hammocks
  
• Ropes: Used for repairing damaged sails and crafting bombs and hammocks.
  
• Refined metal: Used for crafting more advanced weapons and cannons.
  
• Mechanical part: Used for crafting ranged weapons and cannons.
  
• Reinforced wood: Used for specific weapons, barriers, and fully repairing the deck.

[h2]Gunpowder and barriers[/h2]
During development, we encountered a design problem around cannons. Previously, cannons worked magically when you loaded them with a cannonball - no gunpowder needed. We found that this wasn’t very immersive, but we were concerned that adding gunpowder would make cannon combat very tedious and micro-intensive. What we ended up doing is allowing the player to STORE up to 10 charges of gunpowder in a cannon, so you only have to refill the gunpowder every 10 shots. This means you can load your cannons up with gunpowder before a battle begins, instead of during a battle.

Gunpowder wouldn’t be gunpowder if it didn’t explode. We made sure that if a stray cannonball was to hit a gunpowder storage, it would result in a massive explosion, dealing damage to the ship and anyone that happened to be nearby! In order to protect your gunpowder storages, we added craftable barriers - these tough structures are made from reinforced metal to stop projectiles. Barriers can also be used by your crew members as cover during battle to protect them from gunfire.

Both gunpowder storages and barriers can spawn on enemy ships. They should be a lot of fun for you to shoot. :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1839760/Cursed_Crew/

There are only a few days remaining until release day, check back soon!

[h3]- Join us on the Cursed Crew Discord - chat with players and devs![/h3]
[h3]- Please wishlist Cursed Crew![/h3]

Sincerely,
Roel, Phil, & Oskar

Hello, captains!

Shiver me timbers - Cursed Crew releases in Early Access in just 8 days!

We’re counting down the days with dev blogs covering the game’s features and sharing stories from development. Today, we’re looking at the different crew members you’ll encounter at sea, including humans, ghosts, ratmen, and skeletons. Each crew member type has their own characteristics that sets them apart from the other types.

You can encounter these crew members through story events. Perhaps you agree to transport strange-looking passengers, or your ship becomes haunted, or you spot an enemy ship full of horrible creatures in the distance.

[h2]Humans[/h2]
Humans are the best at ship operations with their excellent hand manipulation. (Those fingers come in handy, unless the scurvy got ‘em…) Humans operate the cannons faster so you’ll want them on the deck, and they’re quicker to fire and reload ranged weapons. Overall, they’re your go-to well-rounded sailor to have aboard!


[h2]Ghosts[/h2]
These poor souls are caught between life and death. They shift between their physical and ghost forms, materializing when it’s the right time to attack. They’re quite slippery and their health regenerates over time, making them dangerous when forgotten about.


[h2]Ratmen[/h2]
These subspecies of humans are cute in their own horrifying way. They live in large packs and they’re wickedly fast, but quite feeble in battle. They tend to win by overwhelming their enemies with sheer numbers.


[h2]Skeletons[/h2]
These gruesome beings are afflicted with an undying curse that continues to resurrect them over and over again. They sail the seas in agony, looking for their next victims. They have no mercy and cannot be reasoned with, so blunt damage and explosions will quickly dispatch them. (Until they rise again!)


There's more to come as we move steadily towards Early Access! See you in the next blog!

[h3]- Join us on the Cursed Crew Discord - chat with players and devs![/h3]
[h3]- Please wishlist Cursed Crew![/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1839760/Cursed_Crew/

- Roel, Phil, & Oskar

Yo ho, there’s only 10 days until Cursed Crew releases in Early Access!

In anticipation of Early Access, we'll be doing a series of countdown dev blogs. In each post, we'll discuss features of the game, share stories from development, and answer your questions!

In today’s blog, we’re discussing the survival experience in Cursed Crew. As the captain, you’re responsible for both your wellbeing and your crew’s! Taking care of both a ship and a group of scallywags is no small feat. But that’s why you’re the captain.

[h2]Hunger[/h2]
You and your crew are living, working beings who get hungry, so keep an eye on everyone’s hunger status! You’ll encounter many different types of food, all of which can be eaten raw, but it comes with a penalty. Consider building a stove, collecting raw ingredients like cabbage, eggs, and meat and using them to cook delicious meals. Meals are better than raw ingredients because they provide buffs like health regeneration and improved morale.

In the crew menu, you can assign your crew members’ rations. For example, you might want to impose certain policies like “only eat raw food when hungry” to ensure your crew won’t eat the ingredients you need for your meals, but still have something to eat in harsh times. Your crew will automatically cook and consume the food you assign them to, so there’s very little micromanaging needed on your end.


You can acquire food through story events, traders, loot from enemy ships, and by building fishing spots on your ship to fish at!

[h2]Morale
[/h2]We wanted to make your crew members feel like real human beings, so we added a morale system. When good things happen, like victorious battles, a good night’s rest, tasty meals, crew members get a boost in morale. But when bad things happen, like death, losses, sleep deprivation, and starvation, morale drops. A resentful crew member is a problem: they might ignore your orders, throw destructive tantrums, lose all motivation to work, or even start a mutiny against you!

Remember! Your crew is an asset—so long as their morale is high.
[h2]Sleep[/h2]
After a long day at sea, your crew will get tired. Provide them with sleeping spots to rest at, or build a cozier hammock if you have the resources! A decent, uninterrupted sleep is important to keep your crew happy and alert.

These resting spots are also crucial for wounded crew members. Once they lie down, they’ll begin to recover from their injuries. Healing can also be sped up by using bandages on the injured crew member.
[h2]Weather[/h2]Weather effects have been in the game since its earliest development days, but they were only isolated, visual effects without much gameplay impact. We’ve since developed a comprehensive weather system that occurs naturally in the game and reworked the original weather effects. There are a variety of weather types, including sunshine, rain, fog, windstorms, and thunderstorms. When the weather shifts, you’ll know from the clouds rolling in, the wind howling, the waves growing bigger and more violent…



Cursed Crew is a crew management roguelite, and it was important to us that survival goes beyond combat. We implemented our survival mechanics with the intention of making the world feel more immersive, dangerous, and impactful.

We’ll be back soon with more blogs on the game’s features! Please remember to wishlist Cursed Crew if you haven't already, it really helps us! And please join us on the Discord if you'd like more updates.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1839760/Cursed_Crew/

See you soon!
- Roel, Phil, & Oskar

[h2]Ahoy! We’re so pleased to share that Cursed Crew releases in Early Access on February 26![/h2]

Steam Next Fest has ended and we hope you had fun with the demo! We received excellent feedback and great bug reports and more from our players. You helped us identify key features that we're now improving, including:

• There are a lot of tutorial windows popping up with a lot of information which results in the player not getting enough time to apply the concepts they just learned. We want to change the focus from "learn by reading" to "learn by doing"! We'll also make sure that the difficulty of the game ramps up slower in the early game so that players have more time to get used to the mechanics in the game.
  
• Not all of the controls are intuitive, such as giving commands to crew members. We're working on simplifying melee combat's controls, reorganizing commands so they can be easily toggled, and reducing the number of right-click context menus so that your crew members can interact with some things instantly.
  
• Ship maneuvering during combat doesn't offer enough freedom and can be slow at times. We're currently working on a completely overhauled system that allows you to steer in any direction during combat. We have the foundations of this new system working, and we're currently assessing if it's ready to be added to the release.
  
• Close combat can be chaotic, which can make it difficult to understand what's going on. We'll make it easier to give orders during close combat, where it only takes one key press to do so, instead of you having to navigate through multiple buttons. Ranged weapons will be more viable, and we're completely changing melee attacks so they're both more predictable and easier to execute by the player. We're also adding clearer enemy animations to make it more obvious and responsive when they've been hit.
  

We're already working hard on implementing these changes and we aim to address as much feedback as possible before we launch the Early Access version, but given the short timeframe some issues might need to wait a little longer. We'll keep you posted!

We've also decided to keep the free Cursed Crew demo up if you'd like to help us with future bug reports and feedback on the game!

Keep an eye out for seafaring content from us as we approach the release date on Feb 26.

[h3]- Join us on the Cursed Crew Discord - chat with players and devs![/h3]
[h3]- Please wishlist Cursed Crew![/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1839760/Cursed_Crew/

Yarr!
- Roel, Phil, & Oskar