Pirates: Naval Combat

About

Sid Meier's Pirates! is a 1987 action-adventure strategy game designed by Sid Meier and published by MicroProse for the Commodore 64, later ported to many other platforms. Pirates: Naval Combat is a top-down naval battle game for the browser, inspired by the ship battles in Sid Meier's Pirates!. It is written in TypeScript on HTML5 Canvas with no game framework and runs entirely in the browser. Players choose from three ship types and three difficulty levels, and wind direction affects sailing speed.

How it differs from the original

It recreates only the naval combat part of Pirates!, as a standalone battle between two ships. As in the original, your ship is always under sail and you only steer, firing broadsides to the side.

Getting started

It can be played in the browser on the project's GitHub Pages site. Pick your ship, the enemy's ship and a difficulty with the number keys, steer with the arrow keys or A/D, fire a broadside with Space, and press R after a battle to return to ship select.

Additional notes

Roadmap

Planned additions include chain and grape shot, boarding when ships collide, and sound effects.

Difficulty

Difficulty only changes how well the enemy captain reloads, aims and sails; every cannonball always does 1 damage.