Best online games about pirates

The theme of piracy is inextricably linked with maritime romance, old sailing ships, treasure hunts, as in the famous novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, and vivid images of captains, be it Blackbeard from «A General History of Pyrates» by Daniel Defoe or Jack Sparrow from «Pirates of the Caribbean». The golden age of maritime robbery, when privateers and buccaneers terrorized the entire Atlantic, has long since sunk into oblivion, and a quite respectable gentleman could engage in such a lowly craft — as, for example, William Dampier, who contributed to the study of ocean currents and was the first in history to circumnavigate the globe three times. These days, books, films, and, of course, online games help us remember the adventures of these people. Let's talk about projects where you can pirate together with friends.

Let's start with an MMORPG completely dedicated to wooden ships of the 17th-19th centuries, since it was during this time that piracy became most widespread. The game from Thera Interactive offers not just sailing the seas and oceans, but also delving into the nuances of sailing ship management. You will, for example, learn to distinguish the foremast from the mainmast, find out what a sprit and a brail are, understand the difference between a ship's armament and naval artillery — in short, you will learn the intricacies of rigging. And this will add many points to understanding the romance that permeates Stevenson's books. The game also allows you to choose your role in the virtual world — you can become a trader, fisherman, or robber.

It is also noteworthy that the developers have recreated dozens of historical sailing ships in detail, among which there are also pirate ships. In the game, you can take control of «Queen Anne's Revenge» — the flagship of Edward Teach, better known by the nickname Blackbeard. He was a former naval sailor who, in the early 18th century, organized his own gang of bandits and stole the French slave ship «La Concorde», later renamed «Queen Anne's Revenge». The vessel could carry up to 40 guns, which was a serious force in those times. Using it for his own purposes, Teach terrorized the coasts of Carolina and Virginia, and additionally besieged the port of Charleston. However, the ship eventually had to be run aground, where its rotted hull was discovered in 1996.

The authors of Sea of Thieves don't go into detail, but they get to the heart of the matter. From pirate romance, they took the most interesting parts: adventures under sail in tropical latitudes, daring boarding actions, battles with sea monsters, treasure hunts, and clashes with ghosts. In this sense, the game is more similar to the «Pirates of the Caribbean» series than to a serious excursion into the history of naval battles. Nevertheless, here you can gather a team of loyal friends and board a ship with them to go in search of legendary treasures. And what awaits you on the waves depends on luck and a favorable wind. Some, acting together, defeat enemies and find treasures, while others are sent to the bottom by a kraken rising from the depths, or a squadron of ghosts appearing out of nowhere.

The game takes place in the Sea of Thieves — a mysterious part of the ocean that can only be reached by landmarks on a map. In the open world, everyone is free to sail wherever they please and land on dozens of islands to replenish supplies, complete a quest, find shelter, or start a brawl. Sea of Thieves combines both a cooperative mode and traditional multiplayer. On the one hand, you and your companions distribute roles on the ship: one steers, the second shoots, and the third, for example, patches the hull. On the other hand, there are plenty of gamers on the water, and you are allowed to both unite with them and fight them. That is, both PvP and PvE are available here, along with mechanics for developing a sailing ship and a rating of the best pirates. To succeed, you need to discover islands, search for treasures, and fight.

This underrated multiplayer game from Mastfire consistently gathers good reviews on Steam. However, there are few of them, although the project has existed since 2020. At the same time, it is available for free, and the gameplay feature is that we have a first-person shooter. Yes, here you look at the virtual world through the eyes of a pirate who himself repairs sails, fires cannons at enemies, and fights hand-to-hand if he needs to take someone else's ship by boarding or defend his own from attack. Other hallmarks of the genre are also present: you can encounter a kraken at sea and share a strong drink from a cloudy bottle with friends. Interestingly, the crew of one vessel can consist of thirteen people — nothing prevents you from gathering a large company.

And up to 54 gamers can be active on a single location. And they are free to fight among themselves, using a rich selection of firearms or simply swinging sabers. The game world features a day-night cycle and weather conditions, so in a storm you will have to take in the sails, and in good weather — catch the wind. Battles on the waves are reduced to three modes. In one, you simply fight team against team, in another one crew takes a fort by assault while the second defends the fortress. The third is called «Capture the Loot» — in it, gamers undergo a test for the title of best sea robber. Every treasure hunt will require attentiveness from its participants, because here you can fail both from a bullet and from a hull pierced by an iceberg.

The game's name speaks for itself. Here you will have to pirate in the Caribbean Sea alone or in the company of friends. The principle of the game is simple: every gamer is the captain of one ship, and there are twenty classes of sailing ships, so you can choose whatever gameplay style you like. In addition, a role-playing system is presented — from improving the vessel to leveling up captain's skills. You can invest experience points in naval abilities, trade, or combat. The better these branches are mastered, the more chances you have to emerge victorious from a skirmish. Equipment also plays an important role: the number of crew, cannons, gunpowder, and cannonballs of different types, but you can't go overboard with supplies, because each class of vessel has a tonnage that cannot be exceeded.

The world in Caribbean Hunt is open — you can sail under canvas in any direction. For some, the free route leads to death, for others it makes them kings of the Antilles. Both PvP battles and PvE activities are presented, and of different formats — from boarding at sea to sieges of fortresses, which requires people from participants for landing and installing mortars on decks. And between battles it makes sense to establish settlements on island shores to replenish supplies and extract resources there. There is also a story campaign, which is generally rare to find in a naval online shooter. It is also important to know that the game is available for free — to install it on a computer you only need to have a Steam account. In short, lovers of the pirate theme will not be left out.

Studio Instinct Games is known for having participated in the development of the survival simulator ARK: Survival Evolved, where primitive warriors ride dinosaurs and shoot enemies with automatic weapons. And in their free time from such extravagant fantasies, the employees of this company tried to catch the trend and do something in imitation of Gore Verbinski's films. The pirate MMO game ATLAS offers everyone to live through their own adventure, and its action takes place not only at sea, but also on land, where many activities await gamers. You create your own sailing ship from scratch at the shipyard, starting with a vessel like a raft and ending with a powerful galleon capable of single-handedly opposing a small squadron.

But a ship needs a crew. And here you can act differently — hire NPCs controlled by artificial intelligence or unite with friends, distributing all roles on board. The game's open world occupies an area of about 45 square kilometers, with more than 700 islands with resources, secrets, and treasures. You can establish your own settlements or rob other people's fortresses, and in addition there is a mechanic for creating companies — like the East India Company, which once existed in England. Of course, with an adjustment for the fairy-tale setting, since a kraken can emerge from the depths here, and captains who have already mastered working with modifications are free to build whatever they want. In general, there are plenty of ideas, but the technical implementation of the game, alas, limps, and in addition it is paid.

The main advantage of «Naval Battle» is its simplicity and accessibility. You don't have to pay for the game, and it is originally designed to run in a browser, so it will work even on a computer without a graphics card. Nevertheless, the pseudo-three-dimensional MMORPG offers a full genre set: battles with sea monsters and gentlemen of fortune, a story campaign, leveling up the hero and his team, duels in arenas, and estate development. Although battles take place on grid fields, the virtual «Naval Battle» has little in common with the board game. You don't need to choose coordinates for a strike against an enemy here — it's enough to simply accept or issue a challenge. Nothing prevents you from putting navigation on automatic either: you set the course — and the ship sails by itself where you need it to.

At the same time, there is no open world in the game. Instead of an expensive solution, the developers chose an economical one: they divided the map into locations based on the degree of danger of enemies in them. And then the user decides for himself — will he be able to handle battles near that island and in that bay, or not. For the same reason, there are no real-time naval battles — instead there are turn-based ones, with a choice of target and method of attack. This somewhat resembles strategies from the «Heroes of Might and Magic» series, only on one side of the field your small flotilla is lined up, not skeletons with gorgons and dragons. Otherwise, the game is similar to many other free MMOs — there are even dungeons («Sunken Bay») and boss raids («Doomed Sea»). Fans of such entertainment should like it.

Another free browser-based MMORPG, which is often called the most popular online game about pirates on social networks. If you use VK or «Odnoklassniki», you have surely come across its advertising. Although Russian developers present their project as a reflection of the «golden age» of piracy in the Caribbean Sea, in reality there is a noticeably strong influence from «Pirates of the Caribbean» — with fantasy elements inherent to this setting, battles with monsters and ghosts. Battles in the project are turn-based, but not on a grid field, but in a more traditional style: you have a window where your characters stand on the left, and enemies are on the right. So each side attacks and defends in turn.

Between battles, heroes visit the tavern, where you can learn local rumors and take on a quest, while the captain meanwhile gets the opportunity to improve all role-playing characteristics. In a normal situation, leveling occurs automatically — the algorithm chooses whether to increase agility, strength, or health. The improvement of passive skills such as shield mastery, fencing, or bomb use is arranged in a similar way — levels are added as these skills are used, as in games from The Elder Scrolls series. But the user is allowed to do this manually as well, if they invest virtual currency — piastres — into leveling. Also not forgotten are PvP mode (an arena familiar to genre lovers), fishing, crab catching, and pearl diving.

Everything genius is simple. So the company Iceberg Interactive decided to achieve great results with simple methods. In the online game Blazing Sails, the 3D graphics are quite uncomplicated and the controls are intuitive, without complex leveling systems and ship tuning, but it offers a mass of modes and a rich selection of pirate appearance customization. Here you can create a truly unique character, apply any emblem to the sail, and arm yourself with the most incredible guns — suffice it to say that the arsenal of robbers includes hybrids of muskets with crossbows and rifles with telescopes screwed on instead of sights. But the modes presented in this multiplayer shooter arouse even more interest.

You can fight on land and at sea, race to search for treasures, capture ships and islands in «Conquest», as well as participate in a «battle royale». Its rules are not quite ordinary. The fact is that a squad here — is a ship's crew. Therefore, only part of the team is directly engaged in shooting and close combat, but someone must at the same time stand at the helm and patch holes in the hold. Victory goes not to the most accurate, but to the most coordinated gamers, ready to miss all the fun, working in the darkness under the deck for the sake of success. But during boarding, when the enemy's guns are silent, everyone must take pistols, sabers, and move over to the enemy vessel. In short, the game is worth trying if you are ready to shell out a modest sum for it.

Who said that a good pirate adventure is impossible without sailing frigates, firing from bronze cannons, a parrot on the shoulder, and a bottle of rum? If you let your imagination off the leash, you can recreate the atmosphere of «Treasure Island» even in a fantasy setting — the authors of the Disney cartoon «Treasure Planet» will not let you lie. The action of Age of Water takes place not in space, but on Earth after a worldwide flood that swallowed up all the land, as in «Waterworld» with Kevin Costner. People who survived the catastrophe were forced to master seafaring: on boats they travel, fight, trade, and generally live, assembling floating islands from all sorts of junk. The hero controlled by the player becomes one such «sailor by force».

A beginner starts on a flimsy little boat, but as they explore the open world, they collect more and more resources to add details to their ship. In the end, you get an armored machine, with which neither a storm nor a clash with another captain is frightening. A selection of hundreds of types of parts and weapons allows you to assemble a boat of the most exotic appearance, as if invented in the Fallout universe. Pirate raids with such ships look especially colorful, and when the soul craves peace, it makes sense to engage in the development of your own base — this is a peaceful location where there is no PvP at all, but here you can make any parts and supplies. If you are looking for an unusual online game about pirates and are tired of parodies of Jack Sparrow, it's time to take a look at the project from studio Three Whales.

And what multiplayer games about pirates could you recommend?