There is a new word to roll your eyes at with regards to the ever increasing Balkanization of the video game landscape. Games are no longer content to be just 'mobile' or 'console', nor even 'free to play'; much like the indie music scene of the 80s and 90s, if you are not some hyper-niche market, you may as well be a pop star.
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Which is to say: what exactly is Mingleplay? Because that is what Jelly Button Games' title Pirate Kings is calling itself. The free to play title, which was available in certain select regions previously, is now available for people the world over to loot and plunder with abandon on Ios and Android.
From what I gather, Mingleplay is the reason you get so many friends asking you to play this or that brightly colored, free (but ultimately costly) games via Facebook.
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The goal of Pirate Kings is simple: become the master of the Seven Seas. To do this, you must build up your island fortress, defend it from other pirates (no honor, amirite?) and pillage other player's treasure hoards. The unique mechanic is that to do all of this, you must roll a roulette wheel to determine your move. Games are built on chance, but a free to play game built on chance seems very much like a trap.
But the people love it. The game has seen an audience just under a million in the previously released regions, including Southeast Asia, Scandinavia and Israel (Jelly Button is located in Tel Aviv). In fact, the majority of those numbers have all come within the last month or so.
Today, Jelly Button has introduced a new mechanic called "My Islands". This new capability "activates islands that players have conquered, enabling their pirates to mine for "unstealable" gold to further boost a player's cash flow." The change is meant to give players more control over their own destiny and not have their lives dictated by the whims of an uncaring roulette wheel.
You can download Pirate Kings at the App Store and Google Play market today. Watch the trailer below. It does use the word 'pimp' in it, so it's got that going for it.