Pirates VR: Jolly Roger (2025)

Two of my favorite things in games, Virtual Reality and Pirates get combined in Pirates VR: Jolly Roger! An exploration and interactive pirate adventure that lets you feel the rush of being a pirate exploring and battling undead. Every once in a while a game comes along that feels like it was tailored just for me, and Pirates VR: Jolly Roger is one of those games.

Pirates VR: Jolly Roger was shown off later in 2024 with a demo of all things (something we rarely see anymore). I immediately downloaded it, played a couple minutes and closed it. Why? Not because I didn't like it, but instead because I knew immediately that I was going to buy it and I didn’t want to spoil myself. It’s exactly what happened when I played the Bioshock Demo in 2007, where I loaded up the first few minutes, closed it and then went to the store (the game store I ended up owning) and purchased it.

The story started off with walking out of a cave onto a beautiful island setting with a couple pirate ships run aground and half sunk. A parrot quickly became my companion on my adventure, as he squawked at me on how to climb rocks, vines and slide down ropes. The opening of the game was a tad confusing mostly because I couldn’t tell where my birdbrained sidekick flew off to, as I was too busy looking and exploring off the beaten path.

The gameplay itself is fairly standard for VR, and implemented some great climbing sections with even some rope, vine and log climbing I was not expecting. I ended up really enjoying the more green moss color instead of the normal yellow paint to indicate climbable surfaces too! I thought that was a great creative touch that really does go well with the environment. Several times I found myself finding items that were used to solve simple environmental story beats; using a log to pry a boulder loose to scare away some jaguars, or even finding a pickaxe handle and head to combine to break apart large boulders.

After getting out of the tutorial level, the game became a bit of a spelunking expedition as I went into dark and dingy caves to explore. Managing to find pieces to a puzzle while using my magic lantern to light the way, quickly the threats became much more scary as walking skeletons tried to devour me.

The environment quickly changed to a dungeon crawler as I started to encounter enemies. Combat was one of the things I saw criticized in some posts from early players, but I was not only thoroughly frightened by the encounters, but enthralled with how exciting they were as well. The fights were paced well with skeletons that sprinted at me like zombies from 28 Days Later and I found myself frantically fumbling around to fill up my lantern to blast the skeletons away or later on using my pistol.

The pistol quickly became my dominant weapon of choice as the lantern became more secondary and used to light my path more than dispatch of the walking dead. Near the end of the game, I came across a secondary pistol that allowed multiple barrels to be attached. These barrels were items I found along the game in treasure chests and stored in my inventory. I ended up using the upgraded four barrel pistol (more like a shotgun) to kill the main boss easily and efficiently with only a few shots.

The boss fight was over so quickly I even got an achievement for defeating him in less than 5 minutes! While I don’t strive to get achievements in games much anymore, I did feel a sense of accomplishment to get a pretty interesting and unique achievement on my first playthrough.

As I neared the end of the game, I found myself feeling more confident with the swarm of enemies the game threw at me and I learned a couple strategies that worked out well, like running backwards and refilling the lantern to use as a staggering blow. I really enjoyed the reloading mechanic on the pistol, which required moving the pistol to the bullet bag on my belt and tapping it, which automatically reloaded the single shot gun.

A developer jumped into my stream at the very end of the game and even gave me a quick tip on finishing up the last section. As the credits started to roll a big smile was on my face as I completed the second game of the year on the stream.

The story, while not explained in dialog or narration or collectable written diaries, reveals itself through the environment. The main character isn’t silent and occasionally talks about what is happening, and the parrot sidekick isn’t constantly talking so much that you want to shoot it. If there ever is a sequel, I’d like to see more interaction with other characters and make it more of a full blown pirate adventurer, as the pirate motif was only surface level beyond Dave Jones and undead pirates at the end. It’s a VR game that hopefully gets the recognition it deserves as a very well made experience that hopefully won’t end up as buried treasure.