Christophe De bont 
09/09/2020Ahoy land lubbers! Uncork your cannons and load up on bottles of rum (or something along those lines) for today is a glorious day for people that love a wooden leg and parrots with funny accents. Yes, the exciting pirate battle royale Blazing Sails from our proud member Get Up Games is setting course for Steam Early Access later today. Victory is but a few cannon balls to the face away!
Before you let out a yelp of pain at the sight of yet another battle royale: shush your mouth lest ye walk the plank! While our general battle royale experience can be summed up by sprinting in mortal fear hoping to find some decent gear for a couple of minutes, only to be ruthlessly taken out by someone who’s infinitely better than us, Blazing Sails luckily doesn’t end when you’re on a one-way trip to Davy Jones’ locker. As long as you keep your ship floating, you will live to fight another day.
You can try to blast the living daylight out of your enemies, or you can try to sneak aboard and remove their cork, flooding their meticulously upgraded ship in no time. You see, the devs have carefully studied classic pirate battle strategies and have spent a lot of time recreating classic pirate weaponry, such as the shoulder cannon or the fish gun. If you were still in doubt: this is a game that puts fun first, and cartoon violence second.
Next to combat on the high seas, there’s plenty of loot to be found on the surrounding islands. Chances are you’ll run into a skirmish or two while hunting for the best treasure and ship upgrades, but that’s a dice you’ll have to roll. Or, failing that, you can simply be the better gunman.
During early development, the team has taken a lot of feedback on starboard (sorry) from its lively Discord community. Hoping to follow this course, they opted to make the game available in early access to gather more feedback and finetune the game to the wishes of even more swashbuckling seafarers.
Looks like there’s plenty of pirate supporters that could steer further development in the right direction as well. According to Iceberg Interactive, Blazing Sails is the most wishlisted game in the publisher’s history, so that must count for something. We wish Get Up Games the best of luck with the release and are looking forward to jam a sword through your skull on the high seas. No hard feelings.
