Seagulls, lighthouses and a first mate named Catherine

• Posted by Lillian2611 December 17, 2010
• Recommended for Gamers

Maybe I'm missing something.

The game is adorable. The little characters are cute as hell, the voices are funny, the graphics are wonderful. The sound effects are compelling and realistic, the music is fun for about a minute and the game's got the best break-away transitions I've ever seen whenever there's a pause to load a new scene.

I love that I can send email messages from within the game to invite friends to play with me; I can even connect my Facebook account and recruit other Captains to make leagues. Coolest of all is the option to take screenshots and post them to Facebook.

The game is designed to keep you playing. It comes up with tasks and jobs and assignments one after another and it's easy to lose track of time accomplishing everything. Instructions are super clear and I believe my soon-to-be-five-year-old niece could handle them if she had a little help with the reading now and then.

But I don't think even she would find this game interesting for long. I can't be sure, because I've got to admit this isn't my kind of game. I want to be challenged by a game mentally, not digitally (i.e. all I do is tap, tap, tap with my finger, aka digit).

There's one feature I find particularly impressive, though it might not seem so to you once I've described it.

Each task has a time frame for completion. The quickest is 15 seconds, so after I've sent out my little pirate to do her thing, she's back in that time with the goods and I just have to pay her with root beer to keep her happy so that she keeps working for me.

Right now I've sent my only male pirate, Sean, out to "ambush scurvy dogs". It's going to take him two hours. Literally. So while he does that, I can send the others on shorter tasks to keep myself busy ... or I can use that time to send email, play on Twitter, write a review on Appolicious.... You get the drift.

Well, it turns out I've made it to Level 4 - Drunken Bilge Rat - and I've opened up Treasure Island, where I'm supposed to go bury something. I'd best get on that.

I'm not really getting the point of Lil' Pirates yet, but I've gotta say you should probably get it for yourself. If you do, find me on Game Center or Facebook. Maybe we can pillage a village together.

EDIT: I've just upgraded the review to four stars.

It started when I heard a weird little voice say, "I'm back." I looked at my PC, expecting one of those awful emoticon ads somewhere, but no, it wasn't that. I was back in the kitchen working on dinner when it hit me.

It was the game.

More specifically, it was my newest crew-member, Sean, back from the two-hour adventure I'd sent him on.

Sure enough, there was a push message on my phone. Sean was back with whatever he'd plundered.

Nice touch, Lil' Pirates. Nice touch.