StoneTide: Age of Pirates

Okay we were asked to review this game by the developer, Since "The Crystal Pirates" loves all things Pirates...

Right out the gate, the game has no IN-GAME Tutorial, No Quest system to help point you in a general direction. Instead they have a button on the main screen that takes you out of the game to a web browser to view the "wiki" on gamepedia. is uses windows shell commands to do that (Highly Risky Behavior) As I am a visual/hands on learner this constant swapping is never gonna work to learn the game play.

I should also point out that my "High Security Settings" catches a blip every time as I start the solo play their game fires up a "Innocent" vbs script to open a port to their servers, in that folder there is also a removeport script but my security has not detected that being ran....

We were given 2 copies of the game to try out the Multiplayer aspects as well... While playing multiplayer we encountered a Bug that crashed the game... yes its expected in an early access game, but we were still fumbling around trying to figure out what to do.

The graphics are simple yet elegant, and pleasing to the eye. Although they are 8-bit in some places and nicer in others it gives it s little disjointed look.

The Audio track in the main menu was pleasant. The environment audio in-game was not annoying like some games...

As we did not get far into the game as there are other technical bugs we encountered, the game does look promising and hope that it improves with age... We may revisit this game in a couple of months so our review may change...

For now even how much we love Pirates we can not recommend this game until there is at least an IN-GAME Tutorial to point one in a general direction and teach users how to use the controls...

1.3 Hours At time of 1st Review

Update: April 4th 2019 - Although some bugs have been squashed, the developer maintains that the game does not need an "Intro" quest or in-game system for pointing you where you need to go. "We have a wiki"

The game still makes use of WINDOWS Command Shell (means it uses your windows cmd.exe) to open scripts and call the web browser, this is indicative of novice developers.

I still can not endorse this game, It should be further along before being presented as Early Access, I do understand that early access means not a full game. But when you want people to just come and love it, they want to experience the game not go read a wiki that shows the games intentions for 3 hours and then come back and have the game not behave the way the wiki says, or have the game crash, or die every 2 mins...

The Crystal Pirates will come back in a couple of months to check on the development then...