A new game sets sail on Funeratic

It is my pleasure to announce a new game on Funeratic: Pirate Paradise, in which you'll send your motley crew of pirates into battle in search of riches and fame! Rob merchant vessels for easy money, but beware of the royal navy and ghost pirates who will attack you on sight. If you keep your wits about you over a prolonged campaign of battle, you can win the game as the richest pirate ever to sail the seas with ten million gold coins. This game is available to all users of Funeratic.

If this game feels like "Rock Block 2.0," that's very much by design: This is intended to replace the music game, which will be retired from the site in a few weeks. While Rock Block has been a major success, it has one fatal flaw, which is copyright. I didn't come up with the core game mechanics, nor do I have permission (or the funds necessary to get permission) to use the likenesses of the many performers in the game. To solve the problem, I have created a whole new game that should feel very much like Rock Block without posing any legal challenges.

Pirate Paradise represents a new direction for the site, and this is your chance to be a part of it from the beginning. Give it a try, and let me know what you think of the new game. Here's to the many fun battles to come!

-Scott Hardie, January 1 2012

Improvements over Rock Block

If you are already familiar with Rock Block, these are the key differences in the new game:

• You have an objective for success, which is the acquisition of 10 million gold coins. The game will end in victory if you reach this amount, and the players who accomplish it will be celebrated permanently on the site.

• Instead of capturing adjacent cards depending on four values representing the four sides of each card, your pirates do battle with four combat skills (cannon, fist, pistol, and sword), and inflict damage on adjacent pirates, allowing for more complex and nuanced strategy. If you inflict more damage than an enemy pirate can withstand, he or she will be removed from the fight. You'll win the battle (and the wagered gold) if you finish with more pirates remaining than your foe.

• You have much greater control over your pirates than you've had with your rock bands. Name them yourself, rename them any time, and control which combat skills increase when you promote them.

• Techniques (formerly called "play rules") must be unlocked by defeating an AI-controlled ghost pirate who will use them against you. Some techniques will be drawn from Rock Block, but many more will be original in Pirate Paradise. This battle against a ghost pirate is initiated by achieving a feat in the game.

• You can choose to fight fair, in which you'll have the same techniques and level as your opponent. Or you can also choose to fight dirty, in which you can bring any conditions you like to the battle, and your opponent can do the same. In dirty battles, you can even use techniques that your opponent hasn't unlocked yet.

• Rather than a random chance of a free card each day, you can expand your crew any time you like, by spending more money to hire additional pirates. You can use the same pirates in simultaneous battles, so it's possible to thrive with a small crew.

• Too lazy to challenge other players often? Set an option that will make the site automatically generate battles for you against other willing opponents, on fair terms, with real wagers.

• If you'd like to end a fight early, you can voluntarily forfeit and give up your wager.

• Instead of having to check a page each day to see if you're a random recepient of a free bonus, the site footer (and Dashboard if you set your subscriptions) will notify you if you are one of today's random winners of a chance to sack a merchant vessel for easy money. Beginning players will have many chances to fight merchants; accomplished players will have few.

• Email notifications, for those players who subscribe to them, are now presented in a daily digest format at midinght, rather than a separate email every single time it's your turn.

• Rather than being dependent on luck and the group vote to see your cards promoted, you can promote them yourself. You'll earn the option to promote based on how often you play, and each promotion will cost you money.

• There's now a convenient way to search all player-vs-player battles since the beginning of the game. You can filter by winner, loser, challenger, defender, or any combination thereof.

• The code and database that run the game have been significant optimized for speed and simplicity, eliminating systemic problems that affected Rock Block such as slow load time of complex pages.

• Most importantly, the game will grow and evolve over time. I am committed to the introduction of one new technique each month, and I have plans for a series of upgrades and new features over time. Rock Block enjoyed this kind of improvement during its early years, but new features (including new play rules) stopped being developed in early 2010 when planning began on Pirate Paradise. I look forward to seeing this new game get better and better with time.

What happened to...?

If you're a Rock Block afficianado, you may be wondering what happened to some of your favorite game elements in the transition to the new format. Here's a breakdown:

• Heaven and hell: You now have a random chance of facing an easy opponent (merchants) each day, which is a great source of practice as well as treasure; keep your eye on the site footer daily to see if one is available. Hard opponents (royal navy and ghost pirates) will challenge you on their own terms; they can difficult to defeat, but offer an even bigger reward.

• Card exchange: There are no more daily free cards, since you can generate new crew members any time you like. Swapping pirates with other players has been discontinued.

• Taking cards from defeated enemies: This will be the subject of advanced techniques in the future.

• Summer tournaments: Starting in summer 2012, there will be an annual all-player event in Pirate Paradise that recalls the kind Rock Block players have come to enjoy.

• Themed concerts: Sorry; there's no direct translation of this element. Since you can now use the same pirate in multiple simultaneous battles, there's no more need to play with cards that aren't yours. If you enjoyed the quick-start aspect of themed concerts without filling out the complicated form, you can set your game options to generate battles for you automatically.

• Rock blocks: The music game was named for the special achievement in which you captured the entire board. Since Pirate Paradise works differently, there's no direct translation of this element, but expect to see feats just like it become part of the unlockable techniques system. As for exclusives, you already have an exclusive copy of each of your pirates, especially if you name them creatively.

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