Over the Christmas break, I was home in New Orleans with limited computing resources. Tucked away in the back of my mind was Mike G’s mention of an online game called Puzzle Pirates. I visited the website and within minutes was hooked on this bloody madness.

Puzzle Pirates is a full-blown MMORPG with a large user base, elaborate economy, in-depth ranking system, vast game environment and puzzles out the wazoo. I have a true weakness for anything remotely pirate related and if there’s a game where everyone’s walking around talking like pirates, I’m on board. The graphics are cartoony but don’t be fooled, there’s some serious work behind the scenes of this thing.

The game is played by joining up with a crew of other pirates and sailing the high seas looking for other pirate crews to plunder. Once on board a vessel, you man a station (carpentry, bilge, sails, cannons, etc.) and the way you perform your duty is to play these puzzles. Should you board another ship to plunder, a swordfight breaks out between crews which takes the form of this badass team tetris game with a twist. When somebody gets knocked out the game goes “Yarrrrr!” I declare this awesome.

I also learned something new by playing this game. While walking around yelling random pirate jargon to complete strangers, I strolled up to a couple of guys and yelled “Avast!” They replied by asking me what it was that they should stop doing. All this time I thought avast was just something pirates yelled when they entered a room like when I walk into a meeting and yell “What’s up, sluts?” Apparently it means something else.

I’m going to give this game a big thumbs up and get this: you can download and try it for a month without even giving a credit card number. Go buy a parrot, purchase some rum and give this one a try.

http://www.puzzlepirates.com/