Plunder Survivors

About the game

Plunder Survivors takes the idea behind games like Vampire Survivors and puts it on the sea. You do not aim and you do not press fire: your ship shoots on its own at whatever gets close, and all you do is decide where to be. The ghosts come in waves and every wave is bigger than the last, from a few dozen to hundreds, so staying alive is a matter of keeping your distance, your angles and your nerve.

Across the map there are islands with chests. Collecting the gold and bringing it to a treasure stop is how you pay for upgrades, and the shop between waves is where the game gets interesting: more cannons, cannons that pick their own targets, faster sails, thicker armour, faster cannonballs, more stops to hand in treasure, and a barrel of questionable rum. Each run is on a five-minute clock.

Plunder Survivors was made for js13kGames 2023 by Matt McKenna, who also made Entangolf.

Playing it here

Click Play, then click Starrrt plunderin' to begin. The keys are the four arrows, so give the game focus by clicking on it first. The map is generated again for every run, and nothing is saved between visits.

Controls

A few things worth knowing

Keep moving. The ship shoots for you, so standing still only lets the ghosts pile up. Circle around the swarm and let the cannons work.

Gold is your real score. Every trip to a treasure stop is a purchase waiting to happen, so plan routes that pass by chests when the sea is quiet.

Early upgrades compound. More cannons and faster cannonballs make the early waves safe, and that gives you time to fetch more gold.

Credits and licence

Plunder Survivors was created by Matt McKenna and is released under the MIT licence. The licence text is linked from this page.