jericho_cross

This game looks a little too cartoony for my tastes but maybe others here will be interested? It already has an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam so they must be doing something right.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3124540/Far_Far_West/

Finally, a broadway musical based on the 1987 movie Lost Boys. That's what we've all been waiting for, right?

Well, I did it. I was able to come up with more than 10 posts for this arbitrarily defined genre of mine. And that's all I can find. This community can now wither into obscurity like so many ignored Lemmy communities. At least now I have someplace I can post to if I ever find more.

As one final post, here's a clip from a South Park episode with the members of KoRn explaining pirate ghosts (ghost pirates?) like it's a Scooby-Doo episode.

3 months ago was the reveal trailer, now we have a teaser trailer. And I'm even more excited for this game. Best of all, it isn't a roguelike! I didn't think that was possible anymore!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3574750/The_Dark_West/

The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure (2022) is a Korean movie where they obviously watched a Pirates of the Caribbean movie and said "we can do that!" This movie has the same style of action and comedy as a PotC movie. And yet, there are no fantasy elements at all. While gravity (and physics in general) might only be a suggestion at times, there aren't any specific fantasy elements. No magic, no monsters. Which is a shame because otherwise this movie would've been a perfect example of what I'm looking for. Oh well, it's still a fun pirate adventure.

Here's a trailer. You can watch it on Netflix.

Ha, right as I'm running out of things to post to this community, a new board game expansion is announced with dark fantasy pirates! Yes!

Zombicide: Dead Men Tales is a new game in the Zombicide franchise. It's only just been announced and they'll be crowd-funding it on Gamefound. Of course, being a new entry in a popular board game series, I'm sure this crowd-funding will be successful.

I knew there wouldn't be many works I could post to this community when I first created it, and I'm already starting to run out of the things I can find so far.

The Flying Dutchman is basically an old ghost story from the late 1700s. It's the most famous example of a ghost ship in sailor superstitions. Most versions of the story don't include pirates (so it doesn't exactly fit this genre) but it's not like there are any hard rules with superstitions so sometimes pirates are included in this myth.

The wikipedia page for it is pretty interesting. It's basically a myth about an old ship named the Flying Dutchman that was cursed to sail the seas without ever reaching port. In the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Davy Jones is the captain, but I think they just wanted to use a famous ship name for the movie.

Anyway, I don't really have anything to say about this myth. I'm just trying to document every example of Dark Fantasy Pirates I can (because I can't find many) and this almost fits. So this is your indicator that I'm almost done posting to this community.

The Secret of Monkey Island is a point & click adventure game from 1990. It also launched a series of sequels. And it should be everything I'm looking for in this genre. It has pirates and it has ghost pirates, and that's all I should need. And yet, when I think about this genre, I'm drawn to the horror elements. I like the unique elements that sea monsters can bring to a story (as opposed to the "land" monsters of the Weird West genre). Unfortunately, this game leans into the comedy aspect and that's where it loses me. I'm not against point & click adventure games in general but this aesthetic is just too silly for me. Don't get me wrong, replacing sword combat with insult battles is a clever idea for a point & click adventure game, I'm just not here for the jokes.

The series is about a random person who starts the first game by declaring "I want to be a pirate!" and then proceeds to do just that. Along the way he crosses paths with a ghost pirate who kidnaps his girlfriend so he has to rescue her. The creators of this series have said their primary inspirations were the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland and the novel On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers, so it should fit perfectly in this Lemmy community. And while I won't argue with anyone who loves this game or has fond memories of this series, it just isn't for me. So I felt obligated to include it here even though I've never played any of the games.

If you're curious about it though, you can play the game for free in your browser at archive.org (and plenty of less-reputable sites too).

Mark of the Deep is another video game that really scratched my itch for dark fantasy pirates. It's about a pirate crew whose ship sinks and they wake up on a cursed island full of sea monsters. And the main character is the only one who can rescue everyone and break the curse!

This game is a zelda-like in that it's a top-down action game where you explore various dungeons. There's also a bit of metroidvania in there since the map is a series of interconnected areas and you need to unlock abilities to reach the next area. And then there's the souls-like aspect where resting at checkpoints refills your health and potions but also re-spawns all defeated enemies. And the story is told through obscure pieces of lore that you can easily miss, just like in a souls-like. However, this game does a couple things to make the souls-like aspect much more bearable in my opinion (as someone who's terrible at souls-likes). First, there is no corpse run. If you die, there's no real consequence other than restarting from the last checkpoint. This also means all game state is preserved when you die. If you unlock a door or flip a switch, that door is still open and that switch is still flipped if you die. This makes everything so much easier. Also, there is no parry in this game. You can only dodge roll, but you're invincible while rolling. So you don't have to dodge to escape an enemy's reach, you only have to be rolling while they're attacking and you're safe.

This game is still difficult though, mostly in figuring out where to go next. The only map available is an overworld map showing you which regions are connected to which other regions. But within any given region, it's a labyrinth and there is no map. Sometimes it's very difficult to remember where you were when you last died after being thrown all the way back to a checkpoint. The game does a good job of unlocking shortcuts along the way so you don't have to backtrack too much after a death, you just have to remember where you were.

Because each region is a labyrinth, there are a lot of branching paths. And there are some paths you can't access immediately. This means after unlocking a new ability you have to figure which path led to (what you thought at the time was) a dead end. This is the most frustrating part of the game to me. And it's compounded by the fact that this game isn't very popular so there aren't any walkthroughs. Well, there are video walkthroughs on youtube but those are impossible to use when you just want to figure out where to go next. Fortunately, the few times I actually got stuck, the Discussions page on Steam always had someone explaining what I needed. Without that, I probably would've given up on this game because it just isn't worth exploring every branch in an area, especially when some are hidden and non-obvious.

Overall though, I fully enjoyed this game. The gameplay was fun enough to keep me going and the aesthetic was exactly what I was looking for. I really think it's worth playing and I wish it was more popular (so someone could write a decent walkthrough).
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1933370/Mark_of_the_Deep/

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/39950657

I love the idea of vampire pirates, that's such a fun premise. I just wish there was a more "mature" version of this series where there's actually blood and death, rather than a couple 12-year olds on an adventure. Of course, being interested in vampire pirates in the first place probably means I have a 12-year old's opinion of what's cool...

I'll admit I've never read this series and I should probably give it a chance anyway. Maybe borrow them from the library or something since I really don't need to be spending money on these. Here's an amazon link in case anyone else is interested though.

Also, I tried checking steam to see if there were any vampire pirate video games (since that'd probably scratch my itch just as well) but all I found was an upcoming game called Vampirates which is decidedly not what I'm looking for. It looks more like a social game like R.E.P.O. than vampire pirates hunting at night. Oh well, I guess I'm stuck reading a book series intended for 12-year olds.

Have any of you read this series? Does it still hold up if you aren't 12 years old but apparently seem to be 12 years old at heart?