Designer Diary: Pirates of the 7 Seas, or Two Humans vs. Forty-Four Dice

The theme for Pirates of the 7 Seas came about after inventing an interesting engine for a battle system that involves an unusual use of dice. It allows you to realize truly massive and spectacular battles in an elegant way. Both preparing and determining battle results takes little time, and it adapts easily to the number of participants in the fight. This mechanism has evolved into the "3D Dice Battle System", which was already licensed by another studio for that other project.

The appropriate theme was chosen almost instantly: grandiose sea battles involving dozens of ships. This was exactly what we needed, so we started to develop this game. This was in 2013, and its development was combined with one of our other projects, Mysterium. Maybe you have heard something about that one.

From start to finish, we created seven full-fledged versions of this game! I can't say that it was always easy, but it was interesting, for sure. You know, it's quite hard to create something with consistent balance if you have 44 dice. We wanted the player to always have a chance to win, regardless of his luck. It's not easy with one die, and when you have such a large number of them — well, it's a real challenge for designers. Of course, the quantity of dice rolling could help align the results in some way, but wait, these are dice, and they are unforgiving!

Symbol

The final version is number 7.7. This is very symbolic, naturally, as the game is Pirates of the 7 Seas! In fact, this numerical figure pursued us consistently during the entire development. It kept appearing here and there as an optimal number. Soon, we realized that it was a sign, so we stopped resisting and decided to put "7" in the title of the game.

Spirit

But development is not just dry data! How would we describe the creative process behind Pirates? First, the project had its own spirit. We wanted to capture the most fun and "explosive" pirate moments and pack them into the box. Simulation games imitate the most realistic moments of the pirate voyages — such as the economy of the time, or the nuances of pricing in the Caribbean — but we wanted to manifest all things fun, dynamic, and juicy about the pirate life. There was no room for boredom and routine — only adventures!

We chose our direction for the game like a musket shot. Perhaps the closest thing to Pirates is the unforgettable video game Sid Meier's Pirates! from the great maestro of game designing. Yes, his game is far from historical truth — you can hardly find a bit of realism — but it is about precisely those pirates that everyone would like to be at least once, if not more often. (And I think that most pirates dreamed of such a life: incredible treasures, saber battles, meeting the governor, and the opportunity to cross the Pacific Ocean — what a joy.) But we also wanted to add some intrigues, confrontations, and challenges to our game. Actually, each pirate is a mercenary, vain and mean, and this game will encourage you to be like those pirates.

Prototype

Brotherhood

First of all, the battle engine was better for cooperation, but the game is pirate-themed. We didn't want to make a cooperative pirate game, but we realized semi-co-op could work. We've all heard about the pirate brotherhood, but a pirate has no right to call himself a "pirate" if he doesn't love gold more than anything else, even more than friends. The continuous opportunity to backstab is meant to be a leitmotif, a recurring theme in the game — and there has to be only one winner.

World

The world also has to live. Something always happens there. In the beginning, the role of our "living world" generator was played by a banal deck of event cards. The top card decided what would happen in this world. It didn't seem like a bad idea because there were elements of unexpectedness and it was easy to implement, but in practice this old-fashioned solution wasn't good at all. After a few tests, we realized that it had its drawbacks.

The main drawback was that the deck wasn't connected with all those things that were happening to players. A trade ship could appear on the horizon, and players don't have any ships. The prices could be changed, but players have nothing to sell, which means this can't impact them in any way. Or the time to pay wages might come when there was nobody to pay. It means that these events won't engage the players — there's no emotional connection to events that are disconnected from the situation in the game. Of course, sometimes it happens to work anyway, but not very often.

Thus, we decided to give full control to the players so that they could decide which adventures they wanted to go on and when those adventures would take place. We liked this idea a lot. It reminded me of the revolution in video games that was made when high-speed internet became common. After that time, the whole world dipped into online games, allowing humans to play video games against humans, whenever they wanted. You can polish an artificial intelligence for years, but bots (at least at this stage) are no comparison with human ingenuity and deviousness!

Of course, this requires a certain level of mastery, but that's a good thing! As players become more skillful, the game world becomes more interesting and harder with each new game session.

In that way, players themselves create the plot for their games by choosing adventures for themselves and for other players, at the most appropriate time for the concrete event, but neither earlier nor later than that time.

Working on the box art

Dice

I'll mention it again: Because the game is full of dice, it was difficult to balance the battle system, so we brought in such elements as corsairs. It's highly thematic and implemented perfectly.

It's impossible to completely conquer all dice, and each game creates a new situation. Sometimes all players become richer, and they are thus focused on the economic path. But at other times, you are barely alive and fighting for every chest of gold. This is essentially a good reflection of different times of the "Pirate Era", which really existed in the Caribbean.

I think we found a good solution of how to combine your gained experience (XP) and the luck on the dice. I think you'll like the solution, especially those who aren't lucky when rolling dice. The more you lose while others are becoming richer, the stronger your desire to learn, and the game allows you to do that. You'll become a more powerful pirate with better opportunities than others.

Dice-ships are carrying booty

Actions

The last thing is the sequence of performing actions. Major events happen simultaneously to all players. It's nearly eliminated that pesky problem in games called "downtime" — and actions that affect only you don't take much time since they are very simple.

But the order for resolving actions of the same type has a huge impact on the game. We had a few options for a solution to this problem, but they were all difficult and uncomfortable. The easiest way is to move clockwise after the first active player. But there is a problem, and this problem exists in almost every game with such a solution: During the game, when players forget to pass the first active player marker, it results in confusion.

We couldn't solve this problem for quite some time. We tried different things, and we almost despaired of finding a simple and interesting solution. Once during our testing, my co-author Oleg Sidorenko offered a double or triple bonus for playing your characters rationally, playing almost all your characters before taking them back into your hand. We liked the idea, but we decided not to use it because it could make the game longer. It must be mentioned that if you are the only one who chooses a certain action this round, you get an extra bonus. That's why the moment of determining which cards other players will play is very interesting, and you wait until each card is revealed with some kind of trembling and excitement.

The next day, I was waiting near our office for a postman with two important letters. I didn't want to miss him because we needed those letters right then — and that waiting was my inspiration. I had had thoughts about how to draw attention to the first player marker, perhaps punishing those players who forget about it (but it's not always the solution) or encouraging those who didn't. But we couldn't find any such appropriate reward as it would always be too little or too much. And I nearly shouted out loud with joy when it hit me: Oleg had suggested this solution even without knowing about it. It was so obvious!

The solution: If you have the first active player marker, and you are the only one who chose your action, your bonus will be multiplied by two. This helps serve as a reminder to pass the marker. This solution was a real relief, and players got a new interesting choice because sometimes it is more profitable to play some certain action simultaneously with the current active player to prevent him from getting some great bonus. I'm sure you can see how the player with the marker would be glad if he managed to get the bonus and upset if he didn't. The bonus is great, but you have to make some effort and consider everything thoroughly to get it. It was the thing we’d been looking for.

Art for adventure cards in progress

Game

The development of the game was long and sometimes arduous, but looking back at the process and at the exciting results of our hard work, we are very happy with what we've got. We in IGames hope you enjoy our game. I am eager to take a copy of the new box and give it a whirl. We are going to set off soon to face adventures across the seven seas. We are looking for some booty, friends! It is time for pirates!

There were a lot of changes. We added things, we removed others, and then we returned to the old version! And, of course, it was accompanied by a huge amount of tests along the way. I think it was the most exhaustive testing process we'd ever been involved in.

I'd like to say thanks to all our testers, families, and friends for their understanding, patience, and support. We couldn't do anything with those stubborn 44 dice in the tin box without you. I'd like to say special thanks to Oleg because the work was not so easy. We spent a huge amount of time being nervous, along with weekends without our families. I am proud to work with such a professional. We fought and argued. Sometimes our office looked like the eye of hurricane when we tried to defend our points of view, but it was because we really liked the game. I hope he doesn't stay angry with me because of that, and that he'll allow me to get the double bonus for the first player marker...at least sometimes.