Xbox quietly brings cancelled game back from the dead

Somehow… Captain Blood, formerly known as Age of Pirates: Captain Blood, has returned.

I’ll be honest with you, this one wasn’t on my 2024 bingo card. I actually forgot this game even existed. In fact, if you tell me you remember this game I would assume you’re either a liar or you’re close to the age of retirement.

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Age of Pirates: Captain Blood was announced back in 2003 with developer Akella (probably best known for their work on the Postal and Sakura Wars games) at its helm.

Work on the game then reset at the end of the year when it swapped project leads… and then reset again at the end of 2004 when it was decided that it should take on a darker tone.

Yeah, maybe starting to see why this game never came out now.

Honestly, you could talk about the developmental nightmare behind the scenes of this game for a solid twenty paragraphs so I’m gonna skip ahead a little bit.

After being in development hell for over seven years, Age of Pirates: Captain Blood’s publisher Playlogic declared bankruptcy in 2010.

That would be the last we’d hear of the title until the early 2020s, as a build of the entire game - which seemed to be pretty much finished - leaked online.

At one point, in between all of this, Russian publisher 1C Company was supposed to publish the game until a lawsuit blocked them from following through.

And now, we find ourselves here in 2024. A game that was supposed to come out on the Xbox 360 has resurfaced, and oh boy does it look like a Xbox 360 game.

In a weird kind of way though, I personally dig it.

Captain Blood looks like the type of thing you would have found in a charity shop for £2 back in 2008, but now it’s going to be released on basically every modern platform imaginable.

It looks… pretty fun, honestly. The trailer is very tongue in cheek and its story and combat look relatively basic, but at least they’re owning it.

Publisher SNEG Ltd. plans to bring the title to Steam, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch and Xbox consoles sometime towards the end of this year.