It is way, way too early to dignify Seven Seas: Adventures by calling it a "spiritual successor" to Sid Meier's Pirates!, widely regarded as the best pirate game ever made, but I gotta say, I toyed around with its new Steam Next Fest demo and it sure does scratch a very specific itch.
Sid Meier's Pirates! is explicitly a "huge inspiration" for developer Concept Games, and although I love Sid Meier's Pirates!, I approached the Seven Seas demo with trepidation. I've always considered the 2004 Pirates remake untouchable and as close to perfect as you can get, so the idea of a follow-up never made much sense to me. That said, Seven Seas isn't a sequel, remake, remaster, or in any way associated with Sid Meier's Pirates!; it definitely follows a similar template, but it takes place in its own distinct world and tells a different, although similarly open-ended, story.
Admittedly, I think Seven Seas' art style is what convinced me to give it a try. In contrast to Sid Meier's cartoony color palette, Seven Seas looks a lot more muted and elegant, with a painterly quality to its presentation and rich, dynamic colors, intricate textures, and pretty clouds. I mean, just look at this thing:
Anyway, games like this, of which there aren't many, aren't really about the story or graphics, they're about player freedom, agency, and the consequences that come with that. You've got an open-world sandbox you traverse to get between ports, and at those ports are various facilities driving a robust and fluctuating in-game economy. In Sid Meier's Pirates!, you can uphold your nobility by choosing to build wealth solely through legal trading, or you can fully embrace the pirate life by pillaging the seas, capturing ships, and taking over cities. You can also blend the two playstyles, with the world around you reacting to your decisions appropriately.
That system is very much carried over in Seven Seas, giving you several options when encountering other ships in the seas and when docking into ports. Its character creator lets you pick a Culture to identify with, although the demo limits you to Britain, and asks you to choose a Family and Trade from lists including Governor, Navigator, Merchant, Surgeon, Farmer, Carpenter, Master Gunner, Captain, Musician, and Cook. These don't limit your gameplay choices, but they do determine your main questline and give you some valuable perks, so you'll want to build our your character in coordination with your preferred playstyle.
With only a limited time in the demo, I wanted to get my figurative money's worth, so I haphazardly created my character, rushed through the first few quests, played some blackjack at the tavern, tried and failed to sink a ship, tried and succeeded to sink a ship, and then tried way too early to take over a city. It did not go well.
Seven Seas is still in Alpha, and I only played the demo, which means this writeup is in no way comprehensive. That said, what I experienced was a Sid Meier's Pirates!-like and a seemingly worthy one. Naval battles are laborious and require precise timing and patience, as they should. It's shockingly polished, runs great, looks great, and seems to afford you the same level of freedom as its inspiration. I'm not ready to call it a spiritual successor to anything just yet, much less one of my favorite games ever, but I'm absolutely on-board to play the full game when it releases in Q3 2025.
