Sometimes you just want to be a swashbuckling adventurer searching for guts, gold, and glory. Pirate shenanigans always make for a good time. Captain Blood, developed by Seawolf Studio and General Arcade, and published by SNEG, brings that piratey action goodness to your Xbox.
Captain Blood was originally announced in 2003, offering hack and slash gameplay based on the 1922 adventure novel by Rafael Sabatini, but fans have been waiting for this high seas pirate adventure for over a decade.
There was ample hype for the pirate adventure set to be developed by Akella (Sea Dogs, Pirates of the Caribbean), with Captain Blood showing up at E3 in 2004. However, it didn’t take long for development hell to rear its ugly head, and the game was bounced around between various publishers and developers. Captain Blood found itself in a cycle of restarts and was even the subject of a lawsuit before eventually receiving a 2006 release date for PC and Xbox. That release date would not come to fruition, unfortunately.
More delays followed, and new plans for a release on Xbox 360 before Captain Blood found itself lost to time when its expected publisher filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Unwilling to let the dream of Captain Blood flounder, former Akella developers reunited to form their own publishing entity and revived the pirate hack and slash adventure for a new generation, and finally brought the game to launch on May 6.
The newly released adventure puts players in the shoes of the titular Captain Blood, a fearsome grog-drinking maiden-swooning pirate slashing his way across the Spanish Main in the 17th century. After being hired to save the magistrate’s daughter from kidnappers, Blood and his ragtag crew of pirates work their way through intense battles with hordes of enemies in true hack-and-slash fashion.
A variety of era-appropriate pirate-y weapons like cutlasses, pistols, muskets, and even throwing knives are available at players’ disposal to quickly dispatch enemies with combos and finishers to fulfill the “guts” requirement of “guts and glory.”
We hope players everywhere will enjoy and appreciate their work and show their support for the preservation of more cancelled gems like Captain Blood in the future.
Artem Shchuiko and Oleg Kapovskiy, SNEG Cofounders
Captain Blood’s campaign is structured in classic missions, which creates an opening for intense hand-to-hand combat sequences against enemy pirates on the ship deck and battles utilizing your ship’s cannons to come together for plenty of ass kicking action. It’s classic 360-era gameplay offers quick time events, a linear story, and a cartoonishly gruesome retro art style.
The game’s audio, which was originally recorded in the 2010s, further builds upon its nostalgic vibe even as the game has been revitalized and restored for new generations.
The release of this long-awaited game is the culmination of 15 years of effort from the developers and publishers involved. “The original developers put years of hard work into this game and never got the credit for their efforts or to see gamers playing it. Today, this launch is for them. We hope players everywhere will enjoy and appreciate their work and show their support for the preservation of more cancelled gems like Captain Blood in the future,” said Akella alum and SNEG co-founders Artem Shchuiko and Oleg Kapovskiy in a joint statement.
“When we first learned that the game wouldn’t be released, it felt devastating — like all our hard work had vanished into thin air,” said Sergey Makeev, former project lead for Captain Blood at Seawolf Studio.
Makeev called the recent release of Captain Blood “a moment of pride and joy for the entire team.” If you’ve ever been gut-punched by the cancellation of a much-anticipated game, Captain Blood should give you hope that a revival is always possible. While you wait, pick up Captain Blood for yourself on Xbox and take out your frustrations on some grubby pirates.
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