Cloud Pirates

GENRE: Free to play Shooter MOBA
PLATFORM: Windows
DEVELOPER: Allods Team

OVERVIEW

Cloud Pirates is a fantasy themed team armada shooter set in the shattered world of Sarnaut; the world broken apart and now fragmented into thousands of floating pieces of land players take the role of the pirates that roam these skies in in their flying ships. Free to play the game offers PVP content with multiple modes and battle maps, ship customization and action packed strategic gameplay.

KEY FEATURES

- Multiple customizable flying pirate ships
- Intuitive controls
- 5 Modes and maps
- Unlock achievements
- Free to play

GAMEPLAY

The game focuses on team based combat, whether fighting against AI or against other players, the matches are 10v10 battles over different maps and modes, in which players control a single ship that they can customize in various ways or purchase new ships altogether. The 3D graphics are extremely well done and compliment the level design where players will have to learn to navigate the hundreds of floating island rocks as they fly around them, over them and under them in full 360 aerial combat.

CONTROLS

Controlling your ship is extremely simple and consists of WASD movement to fly your ship forwards (W), backwards (S) or steer it left (A) and right (D), also players are able to elevate their ship (Spacebar) and make it descend (Shift) to try and position themselves tactically and outmanoeuvre opponents. The game utilizes control of the ships various cannons by assigning a firing arc that covers the front for the forward guns, and the sides for port side and starboard cannons; if the mouse cursor is aiming forward then when firing (Left Mouse Button) the forward guns are shot, if aiming to the left or right of the ship then the corresponding side battery cannons will fire.

GAME MODES

There are multiple modes that focus on PVP and earning the most points before the match time limit is up; including classic team based Deathmatches where points are earned by killing the enemy, Point Capture where teams must occupy different areas and protect them to capture the point, Escort where teleporter portals must be captured by both teams to summon their own ally AI controlled convoy ship that must be escorted to another portal, and more. With every match players earn Experience Points and Gold based on how well their team did; these go towards improving ships and purchasing new ones for their fleet.

RESEARCH

By spending Experience Points players are able to improve a ship through its own personal Research Tree; a series of different technologies that by spending XP are unlocked allowing players to buy new gear that will improve their ships. For some of the higher end technologies various pre-requisite technologies must be purchased first, these later technologies typically give a ship more functionality as opposed to simple passive buffs; including extra skills, homing torpedoes, healing abilities and many more things.

DEVELOPMENT

Whilst improving a ship is one option, another is to simply purchase a new ship altogether! There are two primary Development trees in the game, which break down the dozens of ships into different Tiers; starting with the lowest Tier 1 ships at the top of the tree. The ships are interconnected through the branching tree and in order to get access to higher Tier ships players must be experienced with the lower Tier/pre-requisite ships that link to the better models. By taking a particular ship into combat players earn Ship Experience for that ship, players have to earn a set amount of Ship Experience in a Tier 1 ship before they can unlock the Tier 2 ship it may link to, then play in the Tier 2 before unlocking the Tier 3, and so on.

ACHIEVEMENTS

During matches players unlock various achievements through their actions, beyond a simple K/D ratio and “Damage Done” stats, which are also available at the end of a match, the Achievements are quirky unlocks based on other actions such as getting revenge on an enemy player that killed you or the “Seven Shall Die” achievement if you manage to inflict damage to seven enemies during one life.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENT

O/S: Windows XP
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.1GHz
RAM: 2GB
HDD: 2GB
Video: NVidia GeForce 8600 GT, 256MB