Casual Explosion's My Game Space page: Explosionville!!!
6.6 extra fun
Everyone has a favorite pirate anecdote. Mine involves me sitting in my car one hot summer afternoon, reading about Lettereo the pirate (he operated in the Mediterranean in the early 1700s). Because of the heat, I had rolled down the car windows. Suddenly, a big dog tried to jump through my window!
A Pirate's Legend, by Abduction Studios, is a match-three game comprised of all sorts of things that a pirate might have lying about his galleon quarters. But it's not the typical "swap two pieces and make a match" or "click on a group of three or more to make a match" or "offset an entire row or column to make a match" type of match-three game.
The game screen is made up of a view that's common enough in the life of a pirate: looking out from a white sandy beach at the horizon, with a gridlike pattern of parrots, bananas, sea turtles, pistols, anchors, jewels, skulls, rum bottles, swords, etc. floating magically in the air before you. Behind some of these items are gold doubloons. Your goal in each level is to collect all the doubloons by making matches. To make a match, you click on neighboring items, drawing a line from one like item to another. Items can touch horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. The longer the line (and therefor the bigger the match), the more points you get. More importantly, any gold doubloons inside the match will be freed and sent flying into your treasure chest, located conveniently just to your right on the beach. New random items will take the place of those in your match, so new matching opportunities might also appear. Collect all the gold floating over the beach, and you'll move on to the next level.
"Story Mode" in A Pirate's Legend involves you searching the deadly, mysterious, (gorgeous, tropical, white beached) southern isles for the ten buried treasures of the infamous pirate Crimson Jones. I heard that Crimson Jones is such a scurvy degenerate sea dog that if you speak his name over a glass of milk, the milk will curdle into cottage cheese! Luckily you have a map given to you by a mysterious stranger in a bar. No, not a partial map of the location of your long-lost sister - instead, it's a map of the southern isles with red Xs marking the spots where Crimson Jones buried his ten treasures. Yarr!
You'll notice right away that this game includes recorded pirate speech. (If you play the game in a small room, like I do, you might be startled because it sounds like the pirate speech was also recorded in a small room.) Don't worry, young children and your pets won't jump up in fear for their lives at the sudden sound of a pirate's voice, because this pirate is no Robert Newton. He isn't bad, but he needs a few more September 19th practices under his ammo belt. I was greatly amused to hear him congratulate me on my gameplay. He sometimes says things like, "Nice match ye greedy pirate!" and my favorite, "Arr, that be some cutthroat matchin'!"
Interesting fact: Since the 1800s, global warming, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other natural disasters have increased just as the number of pirates has decreased. Ramen.
As you advance through the southern isles, you'll find more and more treasure floating above the beaches. Not only gold doubloons, but silver real de plata pieces. Behind each silver piece is a gold doubloon, so you have to match these silver pieces twice: once to collect the silver, and then again to collect the gold.
Each level is timed. At the left of the beach is a powder keg (jokingly labeled "Menu" by your crew) with a long attached fuse slowly burning down. (Who lights the fuse? It's probably the dread ghost of Crimson Jones.) If you don't collect all the treasure afloat over the beach, the keg will blow sky high and your quest will be lost. What happens if you just can't make a match? Do you give up and just wait for the deadly boom? No, of course not. You have two cannonballs that you can use to blow apart any piece in the grid. If you're lucky, it will change to a type of piece you need to complete a match. Another tool is your trusty pirate spyglass, which you can use to shuffle all the pieces on the screen.
As you may have read, pirates whip themselves into a frenzy during battle, becoming crazed fighting machines. Oh wait, that's barbarians. In this game every time you make a match of four or more items, your Jolly Rogers pirate flag will rise a bit higher on the onscreen flag pole (next to the "Menu" keg). And it will slip down if too much time passes without any new matches. Get it to the top of the pole and it will unfurl, and you will go into a pirate frenzy! All the pieces in the floating grid will change to doubloons, and you'll have ten seconds to match them up.
One big problem with A Pirate's Legend is that it isn't very good at keeping up with your mouse movements. You can draw a match faster than it can draw the line through the pieces. This is only really annoying when you're trying to get all the doubloons in a pirate frenzy. I started trying to avoid pirate frenzies because with the laggard mouse pace it just wasn't worth the frustration.
The graphics and music are nice, but not as impressive as the recorded pirate speech. (Unless you live in Australia, this game may be your only chance to hear an Australian pirate.) As you progress through the southern isles, day changes to night and back again, and you get to see the beach adjust accordingly. At the fifth level, and every ten levels thereafter, a minigame pops up. You might play a game of memory, or try to open treasure chests without hitting a booby trap. (I hit a booby trap on my very first click.)
