Raft Pirates (iOS) Review

Raft Pirates is essentially a PvP MMO game in which players craft armed rafts to send into one-on-one duels with each other. If you're picturing galleons manned by swashbuckling adventurers and scoundrels, well, you've got the wrong picture. These pirates are little robots that resemble beans with arms and legs and their rafts are quite literally rafts. However, that doesn't mean that they don't take joy in attacking each other with the hopes of coming away from the battle with a nice haul of plunder.

Every player begins their career with a simple raft built around a crane with a diver on the end of its hook that is essential to their ambitions to be the scourge of the game's seas. Drop the diver into the water and he'll pop-up a minute or so later with salvage materials that you can use to add more sections to your pirate raft and place plenty of weapons on them. If you want to help the diver out, you can play a mini game in which you move him left and right as he descends, picking up gears while dodging mines. Succeed and you'll collect some bonus resources on your dive. Each subsequent dive takes a bit longer than the last, but the number and variety of resources gets better. You will eventually tap out a dive location and have to move on to the next, though.

Once you've got some resources you can spend them to build some weapons. When placing weapons on a raft section there are a few considerations that you'll have to take into account. The first, of course, is the cost of the weapon and whether you have enough of each of the various resource types it costs to purchase the weapon. The next consideration is where to put the weapon. Each raft is divided into a grid and each weapon takes up a certain number of squares in the grid. Getting the most weapons onto a raft is a little like playing a game of Tetris, although the game won't let you rotate the weapons before placing them. Each weapon is rated in terms of its power, too, so you'll also need to make sure that you pack each raft with as much power as possible.

Once you've got some weapons in place, you can sail out into pirate waters and try your luck against other players' rafts. Each game map has safe areas in which you're free from attack by other pirates, but the resources gained from diving are far better in pirate waters than in safe waters, and the clock that determines when it's time for you to gain a level only runs in pirate waters. When you move to a spot in pirate waters a battle will begin if another pirate is already there, if not, then you can do some resource gathering while the coast is clear. If you want to actively seek out a fight, then sonar power-ups are available that will let you see where other players are currently located and how strong their rafts are compared to yours. When two pirates occupy the same spot on the map, a battle ensues.

When a battle begins that attacker decides how to position the rafts, as long as at least one raft section from each players' rafts are touching. Battles are resolved in much the same way they are in the board game Risk. The total strength of your raft determines the maximum number of dice that you can roll each round, and once the dice are rolled they're sorted from highest roll to lowest and matched up against your opponent's rolls. The higher roll in each match pair scores a hit for the player that rolled it, with ties going to the defender. The battle continues in this way until one player's raft is destroyed or the attacker attempts to break off the attack. The winner of the battle is awarded resources based on the original strength of the loser's raft, and is given a grace period free from attack in which to dive for more resources.

Raft Pirates is a free-to-play game, and it shares a lot in common with other games in the genre. Everything from building new weapons to earning additional moves is timer based, and everything on a timer can be rushed if you're willing to spend some real money on power-ups. Real money can also be used to unlock new weapons sooner than they would normally be available or to purchase premium weapons. Players who spend cash will be at an advantage because the game balances the PvP based on total raft strength, so a player with a lot of raft sections and normal weapons may be rated at the same strength as a player with just a few powered-up raft sections. And since battles are determined by the comparative strengths of individual raft sections rather than of the entire raft, paying players' rafts are inherently stronger.

Raft Pirates has a goofy vibe to it, some inherent pay-for-advantage imbalance, and simple and shallow play mechanics, but in spite of all of that it still manages to provide some entertainment. Designing and growing your raft, upgrading it when new weapons become available, and testing it against other players' designs are all enjoyable and compelling enough to keep you engaged for a while. Challenge quests and boss fights that must be won to open new maps add to the fun. If you have the patience to deal with the slow pacing and the temptation to pay for boosts and upgrades, then it's worth checking out.

Final Rating: 78%