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Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is a computer game played over the Internet. The player takes the role of a pirate, having adventures on the high seas and pillaging money from roaming enemy ships (human- or computer-controlled). Over time, pirates can join a crew, progress in rank within that crew, buy and run sailing vessels and shoppes, and perhaps even become captain of a crew, or royalty within a flag.
The game is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, with mechanics driven by puzzles. That is, players accomplish various piratical tasks by playing puzzle games. For example, to effectively sail a ship, crewmates must play puzzles representing work at the sails for speed, pumping bilge water to remove it from the ship, and carpentry to fix any damage the ship may take. Better performance in the puzzles keeps the ship in better condition and moving faster.
Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is open-ended and community-driven. There is no way to win or lose and no ultimate level to acquire, though a tiered rating system indicates players' relative skill at each puzzle. Islands are governed and shoppes are managed not by NPCs or bots, but by players. As a result, the game has a functioning economy, with prices that fluctuate based on actual supply and demand.
As of December 2004, the cost to play is approximately US$10.00 per month: $9.95/month, $19.95 for an inital quarterly subscription and $24.95/quarter afterwards, and $74.95/year. Downloading the client and registering an account allows a player 10 free trial sessions, after which a payment must be made to continue.
Puzzle descriptions
Many of the puzzles featured in Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates bear striking resemblance to established puzzle games, with some small changes in mechanics. The following list describes each puzzle game, as well as the game(s), if applicable, each was derived from.
Multiplayer puzzles
Interpersonal puzzles can be played between two or more players. Swordfighting is also played during a Sea Battle. Tournaments, funded by players and seeded by the software, are available and commonly played; only Drinking and Swordfighting are playable in tournaments as of December 2004.
- Drinking borrows its mechanics heavily from PopCap's Alchemy (http://popcap.com/gamepopup.php?theGame=alchemy) game. Players must place pieces (alchemical symbols in Alchemy, drinking glasses and flasks in Drinking) on a board such that all pieces adjacent to the placed piece must match the piece in either color or type. Each spot is colored ("stained") a color corresponding to the player that placed the piece. When a player cannot place a piece, he must symbolically drink the flask instead. The player loses four turns if he or she cannot place three pieces in a row (and is considered to be "passed out"). Placing pieces scores points for the player; completing a row or column scores points for the player(s) with the majority of stained spaces in that line. The player with the highest score when a round is over (either when all spots on the board have been used or all players are passed out) wins that round.
- Swordfighting is similar to Puyo Puyo and its spinoffs, notably Super Puzzle Fighter. Puzzle pieces consisting of two blocks, each of one of four colors, fall into a well. Arranging pieces and destroying them sends garbage pieces to the opponent, and the last player whose well entrance has not been blocked up wins. In Puyo Puyo, pieces are destroyed when a group of four contiguous pieces line up; in Swordfighting, "shatter" pieces, of the same color and depicting the same sword as the normal pieces, initiate destruction, allowing the player to combine a large area of blocks of the same color to maximize their effectiveness. Garbage blocks sent to the other player appear as either silver blocks or large silver swords; they will eventually turn into normal blocks, but never into shatter blocks.
- Spades is played nearly identical to the original card game of the same name. Two two-player partnerships bid in anticipation of the number of tricks their 13-card hand can take. Players play one card at a time, with four cards (one per player) to a trick, and the player (and therefore partnership) that plays the highest card takes the trick. Partnerships lose 10 points per bidded trick if they fail to perform as well as they bidded, and gain ten points per trick if they reached their bid, receiving an extra point for any extra tricks but losing 100 points if they "sandbag" and get ten or more extra tricks in any three consecutive hands. First to either 300 or 500 points wins.
Craft puzzles
Two games exist that simulate production of goods. Shop owners and employees play these games to create the goods other pirates have ordered from the associated shops and stalls. Only two types of shops have puzzles associated with them as of December 2004: distilleries and apothecaries. Performance on nonexistent craft puzzles is simulated.
- Distilling bears little resemblance to existing puzzle games. Four types of marble-like "bubble" pieces rest in a distilling vat: dark, amber, light, and spicy. Complicated rules exist determining how two such pieces may be switched; spice pieces may not be moved. Every ten seconds, the rightmost column of bubbles is evaluated. If the bubbles on average are more light than dark, that column is sent to the tank to form one twelfth of the brew; if the bubbles are more dark on average, the column is burnt. Light-colored bubbles that are burnt come back into the puzzle as burnt pieces. The puzzle is complete when twelve columns have been sent upwards.
- Alchemistry (not to be confused with PopCap's Alchemy game) is also fairly original, though its mechanics bear some resemblance to PopCap's Rocket Mania (http://popcap.com/gamepopup.php?theGame=rocketmania) and the early puzzle game Pipe Dream. Tanks of dye, in either two or all three of the traditional primary colors (red, yellow and blue), appear at the top of the screen, and a large network of pipes separates the tanks from flasks, which much be filled with specific dye colors in a certain order. The player must rotate the pipes to form a path from the correct tanks to the correct flasks, and a path connected to two tanks of different colors takes on the associated secondary color. For instance, orange is formed from red and yellow (again, based on the traditional primary color set).
Duty puzzles
A number of puzzles are available only on a ship, and help to maintain that ship and increase its performance while sailing. Many crews insist on their members being well-experienced in these, if not the other, puzzles before promoting them to higher positions.
- Sailing is similar to Dr. Mario. Blocks of 2 marbles, each of one of three colors (etched gold, marble gray, and blue, representing "rope, wind and wave" respectively), fall into the well one at a time; placing 4 units of the same color (including any permanent rectangular blocks of the same color) in a straight line destroys them. The object of sailing is to place pieces on "target platforms" so that the target spots (the four corners of those squares, in one of the three colors) are filled with the correct marbles. Performing well on the Sailing puzzle causes the ship to move faster; a team of expert Sailors can make the ship move at a surprisingly fast clip, although all types of ship have a maximum speed.
- Bilge pumping is nearly identical to Panel de Pon, also known as Tetris Attack, although the particular method of regeneration of pieces bears a resemblance to Bejeweled. A well, six blocks wide, is filled with assorted blocks colored with 5 distinct patterns (as the player proves his skill, six and then seven blocks are used). Blocks can be switched only with their horizontal neighbors, and lining three blocks of the same color in a row or column causes them to disappear. Unlike other games (in both senses — most other Yohoho! games, and other games based on this formula), Bilging forces the puzzle pieces to float up rather than fall down. Performing well on Bilging also increases the efficiency of the sailing puzzle, both without and within a Sea Battle.
- Navigation, strictly a duty puzzle, is an original game. A radial playing field of 24 points (three concentric circles, with a point at the eight cardinal and ordinal compass points: North, NE, East, SE, etc.) is marked in at least one point with a certain star. Stars appear from the outer ring and fall toward the center. The player must rotate the rings (and the stars on those rings), completing lines of at least three similar stars if necessary, in order to place the indicated star(s) in the correct position(s). Performing well in Navigation multiplies the productivity of the players working at Sailing, and also allows the navigator to memorize points on the map of the game world, so that in the future he or she can plot a course along them without the aid of a chart. Navigation can only be played by members of a crew at or above the rank of Officer, unless given special permission by the ship's Captain.
- Carpentry is based on the arrangement of pentominoes. Four holes in the ship's body, each a multiple of five square units in size and of a variety of shapes, are presented, along with three random pentomino blocks. Every time a block is placed, another takes its place. Blocks can be placed such that they overlap, or lie partly outside of the required hole; the more cleanly the holes are fixed, the more effective the player's efforts become. If a hole is ignored for too long, it will either grow in size by one unit (if it has no pieces) or violently remove one piece from that hole (if there are pieces). Performing well on Carpentry repairs damage to the ship.
- Gunnery is similar to direction puzzles such as ChuChu Rocket!. The puzzle board is a ship's deck with four cannon. Blocks representing gunpowder, wadding, cannonballs and buckets of water move around the main deck, moving in straight lines and taking a 90 degree right turn whenever they hit an obstacle. The player must place these blocks in the cannon in the correct order (the same order as above: gunpowder first, wadding second, cannonball last) by placing arrows that further force pieces to go in certain directions. Water buckets clear out a cannon, and are necessary to clear a cannon that has been misloaded, or clean a cannon that has just been fired. Performing well on this game allows the captain, when in a Sea Battle, to fire the cannonballs at opposing ships at any time. This puzzle can only be played by members of a crew at or above the rank of Pirate, unless given special permission by the ship's Captain.
- The first half of a Sea Battle, also known as Battle Navigation, bears some small resemblance to chess, as it is based on movement strategy, and has also been compared to the board game Robo Rally. When a captain chooses to engage another ship, a second map screen appears on his or her screen. The two ships are placed on the board, along with obstacles such as whirlwinds, wind gusts and rocks, which affect the movement potential of both ships. Both captains are allowed a short period of time to choose what action (forward movement, turning, cannon firing, grappling, or no action) to take for each of the next four moves; once time is up, the moves are enacted simultaneously. The "tokens" available to move the ship are generated by the crew members rigging the sails; as mentioned before, the effectiveness of sailing on token generation is inversely proportional to the level of bilgewater.
- When one ship has grappled the other, a Swordfight takes place between the members of both ships, with all players starting the game with unusable garbage blocks determined by the amount of damage their ship took during the movement phase. The side that defeats all opposing fighters receives a portion of the goods on the losing ship and a portion of the in-game cash in its crew's pockets. Sea Battle can only be played by members of a crew at or above the rank of Officer, unless given special permission to navigate by the ship's Captain.
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