Sky Pirates

Strategy games have the power to keep players occupied for hours on end, especially if the gameplay mechanics are engaging enough and the challenge is worth the effort. Turn-based strategy games are a separate category, and they can cause even more damage to your spare time. Granted, it’s much more difficult to create something worthwhile in the TBS genre.

Sky Pirates is a turn-based strategy game in which your sole purpose is to defeat the other player and use your flying ships to cause as much damage as possible along the way. It’s not a very complex game, but it has enough variety to keep you busy for an afternoon, at least until you grow bored with the ships and the maps. On the other hand, the game was not designed to be sold or compete with the best of the genre anyway.

The gameplay mechanics are as straightforward as possible, especially if you are familiar with turn-based strategy games. In essence, the map is actually a hex grid, and your ships can only move a certain number of spaces every turn. Once you get near enough, it’s also possible to attack the enemy ships using your weapons, and you can build more of them if you have enough resources.

There are two factions to choose from, namely the Pirates and the Empyrean Republic. The differences between the two are minimal gameplay-wise, but everything else changes from one side to the other, including colors, ship design and the special abilities you can use during combat. Hence, whether you place mines or deal more damage with your attacks, it’s quite interesting to toy with the different options.

On the other hand, the fun is very short-lived, given the fact that there’s a severe lack of content. Granted, this is merely a prototype to present the main idea, so it’s only natural that it doesn’t feature a campaign or more maps to choose from. As for the graphics, they are not exactly bad either, but the level design is barren and not very creative.

In the end, Sky Pirates is a nice idea, especially if you enjoy turn-based strategy and wacky pirates flying airships. However, it needs more work and content before it can keep people busy for more than a few minutes.