Age of Booty

Age of Booty (formerly known as Plunder) is a somewhat casual XBLA, PSN and PC title being developed by Certain Affinity, a company started by Halo multiplayer guru Max Hoberman after his split from Bungie in 2006. Age of Booty is a real-time strategy title that aims to eliminate some of the complexities common with other entries in the genre. While the gameplay may initially come across as somewhat shallow, there's a fair amount of depth in the ship customisation and resource management that may entice some of the more seasoned RTS buccaneers to try their hands at sailing Age of Booty's seven seas.

The game is played on an area divided into hexagonal tiles and populated with towns and obstacles. The objectives for each game will be based around capturing a set number of towns. Each town produces one of three resources (gold, rum or lumber) that can be combined to either upgrade your ship's defence, speed or offensive abilities, or your town's defences. Other methods of acquiring resources such as floating debris exist but towns will be the main source of your income. All of your upgrades will be performed at your main base which doubles as an active volcano and respawn point.

Players will each have a single ship that controls by simply moving your cursor to where you want to go and clicking. Your ship will automatically attack any adjacent ships or towns it comes in contact with and that's about the extent of your involvement with the controls - no micromanagement here. The depth of Age of Booty comes into play when you start capturing towns and find yourself having to manage your resources and upgrades. The resource pools are separate for your ship and towns so you won't have to worry about a spree of upgrades to one area impacting the effectiveness of the other.

Make no bones about it, Age of Booty will be a primarily multiplayer experience, supporting up to eight players online and four locally. A singleplayer mode will be present but will be pretty bare bones and serve as a tutorial for the multiplayer game. There's only one online mode available (the aforementioned 'capture X amount of towns') but with 25 maps at launch and plans to release two a week afterwards as DLC, there should be sufficient mileage in online play. Age of Booty will also feature a robust match making system that, according to Certain Affinity, rivals that of Halo 3's.

Would-be swashbucklers have only a small wait ahead of them as Age of Booty is set to release on the PC, PSN and XBLA sometime around late September, until then keep it locked to NZGamer.com for any Age of Booty news or updates. Yarr.

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