Corsair Cove

Corsair Cove is a city builder set as the Golden Age of Piracy nears its end under pressure from the Crown’s pirate hunters. You begin on a deserted island with the wreckage of your ship and its surviving crew. Build a safe harbor for pirates, grow your settlement into a fortress and arm a fleet to fight the Crown and keep the Jolly Roger flying.

Build your cove

You can build across cliff-faces and hilltops, making use of scarce flat land and precariously perched pathways. Expand from living quarters and taverns to piers, cannon foundries and defensive fortifications, and use bridges, ziplines and other contraptions to move goods across the island’s heights and chasms. Spread your buildings to reach distant deposits of iron, copper, lumber and fiber, while managing the growing challenge of keeping travel and deliveries efficient.

Production chains connect raw materials, buildings and distribution hubs. Manufacture over 50 types of goods, from hard tack, turtle soup and roast bird to clothes, jewelry, prosthetics, booze and guns. Your settlement also needs to supply its ships, whose more powerful crews require increasingly advanced equipment and specialist goods.

Keep your crew supplied

Your population grows from drifters awaiting assignment to fetchers, builders and workers of varying skill levels. Each population type has its own needs, and pirates may leave if those needs go unmet for too long. Bread and booze can sustain a crew for a while, but more capable pirates expect finer provisions.

Small ships can be crewed by pirates content with stew, ale and rum. More powerful vessels need specialists such as bombardiers, navigators, marauders and renegades, supplied with goods including spyglasses, medicine and sabers. The most formidable ships require elite sailors, from descendants of the first buccaneers to veteran corsairs, who expect tobacco, pistols and eye-patches.

Sail and fight

Build ships, hire and equip crews and captains, and send expeditions around the map. Raid nearby islands for resources you cannot produce, including grain, coin, whale blubber, silver and wine. Explore uncharted waters, find treasures and aid others rebelling against the Crown; your voyages can also bring you face to face with monstrous whales, vicious krakens and otherworldly threats, or help you recruit legendary pirates.

Events across the archipelago include helping smugglers move their wares, searching ancient temples for treasure, and gambling, raiding or attacking enemy forts and fleets. Their outcomes depend on your crew’s ability and the resources you are willing to spend. You might give black powder to arm a distant rebellion at the cost of your own defenses, or leave sailors behind to train locals and reduce your camp’s productivity.

When enemy ships approach your island, intercept them in turn-based combat. Your ship, crew and captain, along with your tactical choices, determine the fight. You can also build fortifications and gun towers at strategic points to fire on ships that come too close; these defenses are your last line of protection when your own vessels are away, and need regular supplies of cannonballs and black powder.

Choose your path

Pursue quests at your own pace and develop your society across four dimensions: Notoriety, Empire, Seafaring and Wealth. Advancing in each unlocks tools, buildings, production chains and more powerful ships. For example, you can pursue the Entertainers’ Guildhall to boost productivity in an area or unlock ziplines to speed pirates along their routes.

Questlines lead you toward defeating the Crown, confronting legendary beasts and powerful strongholds, and pursuing your targets through dangerous waters. These challenges require preparation and present combat encounters shaped by your ship, crew, captain and tactical decisions.