World Of Watercraft: Freebooter
I'm reclaiming the RPS 'piracy' tag. Look at all those posts that have nothing to do with cannons or scurvy. We're gamers! We should know all about balls and vitamin deficiency! I want happy stories about fun games, not sad stories about an industry trying to deal with people and the internet. I'd guess that part of the problem is that there aren't many games about the life of a pirate, but Freebooter is hoping to change that. It's a procedurally generated open-world pirate game that's just popped up on the horizon Kickstarter. Pitch below.
Freebooter follows the Elite model of giving the player a starter ship and a world to explore, finding trade routes between the islands, dodging pirates, helping cities expand and contract via resources. Everything from islands and empires, to quests and weather will procedurally generated. I like the subtle details in the video: look closely at square swells of water pushing the boats up and down while the ships blast chunks from each other. Ah, the magical world of cubes. There's talk of the art-style being changed, but I'd like to keep the tiled swells.
If you prefer your Kickstarter pitches without stilted developers staring directly into your souls, here's one with nothing but the game.
There are plenty more videos of the game in action on the developer's Youtube channel, and they're slowly winning me over.