Developer's Blog


The UI Update of 2018

Posted on January 8th, 2020 by Peter Robinson

Right out of the gate, it was clear that the most challenging part of playing Pirate Code was dealing with the battle screen’s user interface. It took up a lot of space at the bottom of the screen and still managed to hide many important bits of information behind tabs.

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Pirate Code is on Steam! What’s Next?

Posted on May 7th, 2018 by Peter Robinson

Several years ago Pirate Code was approved by the powers that be on Steam’s Greenlight. When that happened I sat down and worked through all the ideas I had for Pirate Code and decided what needed to go into the Steam version. At some point in March of 2018 I actually finished all those features and on April 24th I released Pirate Code on Steam. Although Pirate Code wasn’t met with fanfare, I’m proud to say that I’ve made it and feedback is generally good. So now the big question is: what’s next?

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Almost There

Posted on March 14th, 2018 by Peter Robinson

I just finished reading my previous post from a year ago. It’s a little depressing to know how much more I really needed to do to cross the finish line. Like watching a movie where you know something bad is about to happen to the main character, but you can’t warn them. It was true, a year ago, the game seemed very close to done, but there were things – major things – left on my to-do list. Today it’s a different story. The game is done.

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So It Begins!

Posted on May 10th, 2017 by Peter Robinson

It has been over a year since my last blog post, and admittedly, I could have sailed around the world in that time. However, I was busy trying to accomplish something much more difficult: completing Pirate Code! At this moment, it remains unfinished and unpublished, but I’ve decided to break radio silence and start the process of showing some of the awesome features that have made their way into Pirate Code. Here we go!

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Pirate Swag!

Posted on March 12th, 2016 by Peter Robinson

To prepare for Steam, Pirate Code has been undergoing a wave of changes! At the heart of these changes is the inventory. When first released Pirate Code had no visible inventory. The game actually did keep track of the items that you collected during missions, but you couldn’t buy or sell items. More importantly, you couldn’t actually use any items. All that has changed in the last few months! Let’s take a look at the Pirate Code inventory system.

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Gold and Bombs

Posted on October 28th, 2015 by Peter Robinson

In my last blog post I mentioned that Pirate Code is coming to Steam. That was months ago. Since then we’ve been hard at work moving Pirate Code to the latest technology. To get ready for Steam we’re also making a number of important changes based on feedback that we’ve received since Pirate Code was originally launched in 2013. But this month I need to backpedal and talk about the changes that went into our last release.

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Balancing Challenge and Reward

Posted on May 31st, 2015 by Peter Robinson

Once a game reaches a certain level of complexity with the main game mechanic, the focus of the game designer shifts from designing the main game to creating a balance between challenge and reward. That’s where we’re at right now with our game, Pirate Code.

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