Crimson: Steam Pirates Review

In June 2011, Bungie, the developers of HALO, announced a new venture to help small independent developers launch their social/mobile games. This past week saw the release of the first game from this venture, Crimson: Steam Pirates. Crimson was developed by Bungie Aerospace and Harebrained Schemes. Harebrained Schemes is the latest company from game industry veteran, Jordan Weisman (FASA, Wizkids).

Crimson is a free iPad (iOS) turn-based strategic naval battle game following the exploits of Thomas Blood as he begins his notorious career as a pirate. The world of Crimson is set in a steampunk version of the Caribbean of 1888. As Thomas Blood, you will work through 8 missions that make up the first chapter of his story. At launch, the game has an additional chapter of 8 missions available for download for $1.99. A third chapter is planned, but not yet available.

The game uses the iPad touch interface well, giving you the opportunity to choose each ship and move your finger to direct where the ship will move or to give specific instructions. Each ship has multiple special actions that can be taken each turn based on the abilities of your crew. Actions like full steam, increased speed and movement, or the lash, increased rate of fire. During a mission you can also select your ship to see more of its weapons and details on the specific crewmembers. The crew actions and the size and number of ships at your disposal vary from mission and can include both naval and sometimes air ships. The missions move you along the engaging plot of Thomas Blood’s journey to become a notorious pirate.

The game is beautiful and plays very well on an iPad 1. The first chapter of Thomas Blood’s saga will take you about 2 hours to play. There is some replay-ability through trying to improve your score on missions or playing one of the two “pass-and-play” multiplayer missions. You can also connect to Bungie.net for stats and leaderboards. The only minor downsides for the game are the relative ease of the missions in chapter 1 and the short amount of gameplay for each chapter. I assume chapter 2 will be harder and it does promise additional ships and actions to try. Hopefully it will be a little longer as well.

For an iOS game and a free one to start, Crimson: Steam Pirates is great. Beautiful, intuitive and with a good story as well. I highly recommend you pick it up and play even if you never download chapter 2. I give Crimson: Steam Pirates 4.5 Mick Happies. Arrr, download on iTunes, me matey.