News
Dispatches from the build — launch, updates, and what's on the horizon.
September 9, 2026
A permanent price cut to $4.67, and a thank you to everyone who paid more
Pirate Twist is $4.67 now, for the rest of Early Access. Not a sale, not a weekend thing. I had settled on $4.99, then asked my kid, who has watched this game get built at the kitchen table for a year, what the number should be. The answer was $4.67. You probably know why the 67. Kids these days. The honest reason behind the cut is less charming: every piece of art and every note of music in the game right now is mine, and I am neither an artist nor a composer. I am about to commission both properly, and until they are aboard the price should match what is actually on deck. When the commissioned art and new music land, the price rises again, and once more at 1.0, so come aboard cheap while it is rough and keep every update that follows. Nothing about your copy changes when the price does. To everyone who bought at $8.99: thank you, and I am sorry. You are the reason there is money to pay an artist and a composer at all, and you paid nearly double what the next person will. Steam owns the payment side and I have no way to hand anyone the difference back, so I will not pretend otherwise. What I can do is put your name in the game: come and say so in the Discord and you get a Founding Crew role, your name in the credits under the crew who were here first, and a spare Steam key to hand a friend. None of it is tied to reviews. Leave one, don't, change the one you left: it makes no difference. Play on Steam.
September 4, 2026
Update v1.4.3: the sea has weather
The sky moves now. I drew four cloud shapes by hand, cut them to silhouettes, and hung them over the whole sea, and they drift on the live wind: the same line you steer by is the line they follow, and the harder it blows the faster they run. Watch a shadow cross your deck and you are watching the wind you are about to sail into. A dead calm has none at all, just flat light on flat water, which is its own kind of warning. Islands stopped crowding each other too, so there is real open water between shores instead of two of them reading as one wall. Two fixes in this one came straight off the Steam discussion board: your bow and stern rakes were swapped, so the payoff raking is built around had been landing on head-on shots and the hard stern shot underpaid. Both ends are right now, and that cuts both ways, because enemy captains work your stern on purpose. The combat zoom stopped pumping through every duel, and it has a switch in Settings if you would rather it sat still. This also carries the quiet August pair, v1.4.1 and v1.4.2: you can ram a fire ship and pay for it in fire, pirates keep the rule of the road, and enemy hulls are solid in every state instead of going soft depending on what the captain was thinking about. And the free demo was rebuilt from the keel up into a guided voyage that asks whether you want guides at all. Play on Steam.
August 21, 2026
Six captains, six ships — Update v1.4.0 is out
This is the drop I've been most excited to hand over. I make Pirate Twist on my own, in the evenings, so the work lands in waves rather than a steady drip — and today three of those waves come ashore at once. From the playtest right through launch, every pirate lord you fought has been the same sloop wearing a different tint, and it bothered me a little more each time one sailed on screen. Six of them now have hulls of their own: a horned figurehead, a ram's skull, a blood-red raider. You'll know which one is bearing down on you long before you can read her name. The whole fleet is repainted in layers, and sails furl now when a ship turns into the wind's eye — you can finally see a hull lose the breeze instead of guessing from the speed bar. I stared at that one for an embarrassing amount of time. I also rebuilt the tutorial so it stops the world for every lesson: I'd been asking people to read a paragraph while a pirate closed on their stern, which is a ridiculous thing to ask of anyone. And the torch-lit Sea Cave and the reworked storms, which the playtest crew has been sailing for weeks, reach the main game today. The Codex here is generated straight from the game's own source, and it's rebuilt for this update — so what it tells you about a skill, a storm or a hull is what the build actually does. Play on Steam.
Playtest · v1.3.0
Learn the ropes, then read the sky
The biggest teaching-and-weather drop yet, now with the playtest crew. A new guided tutorial replaces the old text cards — it walks you through sailing, the wind, every ammo type, raking fire, ramming, and the whole port, hands-on. And storms got rebuilt from the sky down: drifting cloud decks that ride the actual wind, squalls that darken from pale overcast to a black ceiling — the darker the deck, the harder the lightning — and thunder you hear rolling in from upwind before the first bolt falls.
August 11, 2026
The First Sea is free — demo out now
Pirate Twist has a free demo: Captain Rourke and the full First Sea — pirate fleets, the torch-lit Sea Cave, a five-wave port siege, and a named boss captain finale. No time limit, no locked systems, the complete loop from broadside to Port refit. It's the link to send the crewmate who's been on the fence. Grab it on the store page.
July 15, 2026
Pirate Twist is OUT NOW in Early Access
The wheel is yours. Pirate Twist is out on Steam — the full core loop, the four-track combat, and the three-sea campaign, 15% off through launch week. You are the captain, and the ship is yours to build. Early Access is where the community takes the helm: your runs, your feedback, and your reviews steer what comes next. Play on Steam · Read the launch announcement.
Playtest · v0.2.1
The Scourge joins the fleet
A combined-arms elite that reads the fight and switches its hand mid-engagement — round shot, fire, or a ram straight into your hull. It shows up more often the deeper a campaign runs. Sharpen your positioning; this one punishes a lazy broadside.
Playtest · v0.2.0
Combat overhaul — choose your shot
Cannons reshaped from the keel up. Pick your ammo, read the wind, and pick your moment — a broadside isn't free, and neither is the reload. Rake a stern for the high-skill payoff, or ram bow-first and set up the point-blank return.