Curse of Pirates

Introduction

Curse of Pirates, released 7 September 2026 by Funky Parrot, grafts Vampire Survivors-style horde survival onto Hades-style character-driven build variety, wrapping both in a pirate theme: sail from island to island, gather a crew of distinct captains, and fight endless waves of sea monsters and rival pirates while assembling increasingly chaotic combinations of abilities. The game entered Early Access in April 2026 before reaching its full 1.0 release five months later, both within the same calendar year, and it sits Very Positive with a sample of 53 reviews. Reading widely through that sample reveals a genuinely enjoyable core loop reviewers describe as addictive in the specific way the best entries in this now-crowded genre manage to be, sitting alongside real, specific complaints about balance, controller support, and a handful of design choices several reviewers find actively unfair.

A genuinely addictive hybrid, done well

The clearest, most consistent praise across this sample concerns how well the core hybrid concept actually works. Reviewers repeatedly describe genuine enjoyment in the moment-to-moment loop of gathering crew members, each contributing distinct powers in the Hades tradition, while surviving increasingly overwhelming waves of enemies in the Vampire Survivors tradition. One detailed reviewer frames it directly as a worthwhile alternative for players tired of "endlessly farming gold in Vampire Survivors" or "waiting for dialogues in Hades," praising the specific combination as delivering exactly what it promises. Ship variety draws its own specific, enthusiastic comment, with reviewers naming individual favourites and describing meaningfully different handling between them, and the pirate theme and tone draw consistent appreciation, with reviewers singling out specific enemy designs like flying crabs and thieving parrots as genuinely funny rather than generic.

Real balance complaints from experienced players

Set against that praise, this review found a specific complaint carrying real weight precisely because it comes from a reviewer with substantial invested playtime rather than a first impression. That reviewer describes the game as not ready for any release given how severe balance issues remain, reporting deaths within three minutes even after extensive time invested, citing enemy over-spawn and a lack of adequate treasure or resources to keep pace. This isn't a complaint about difficulty in the abstract — roguelites are supposed to be hard — but a specific claim that the current balance doesn't give committed players a fair path to compensate for early mistakes or bad luck, which is a more serious design concern than simple difficulty.

A broken promise on controller support

A separate, specific and well-corroborated complaint concerns controller input. The store page lists controller support, but multiple reviewers report it currently malfunctions, with specific accounts of unresponsive buttons, joystick scrolling that doesn't register, and controller-unfriendly menu navigation, including reports from Steam Deck players explicitly asking for a dedicated update. This review treats this as a meaningfully more serious issue than an isolated bug report, given how many independent reviewers raised the same specific input categories without prompting one another.

No way to skip repetition, and unfair obstacle design

Two further specific complaints round out this sample's more critical side. At least one reviewer specifically refunded the game over the inability to skip chest-opening animations and dialogue text, arguing directly that this is a serious problem for a genre built around frequent, rapid repeated runs — asking players to sit through the same unskippable animation dozens of times across a session works directly against the roguelite structure the rest of the game clearly embraces. A separate, detailed reviewer criticises specific obstacle-collision design choices, describing dead ends that mean instant death and movement friction that doesn't reward skilled navigation the way comparable genre titles typically do — a complaint distinct from simple difficulty, since it targets specific level and collision design rather than enemy strength or number.

A developer reviewers credit with active support

It's worth reporting directly that a meaningful share of this sample credits the developer with visible, ongoing post-launch attention. Multiple reviewers specifically welcome the return of a previously-removed meta-progression system, describing genuine relief and gratitude that a requested feature was restored. That pattern — specific, positive acknowledgment of developer responsiveness sitting alongside specific, unresolved complaints about balance and controller support — suggests a game still actively settling into its final shape even after formally exiting Early Access, a pattern this lane's research has now documented across several titles that transitioned between the two states within the same calendar year.

Reading fatigue against genuine early enjoyment

A final, more structural pattern worth naming is how several reviewers describe genuine early enjoyment giving way to fatigue after an extended run of sessions, with one specifically noting the fun holds for roughly the first several dozen individual runs before repetition sets in. This review reads that pattern as consistent with the genre generally rather than a specific failure unique to this game — horde-survival roguelites built around escalating chaos commonly face exactly this tension between immediate addictiveness and longer-term staying power — but it's worth flagging directly for buyers weighing this specifically as a long-term time investment rather than a shorter, more contained experience.

Final Verdict

Curse of Pirates succeeds at a genuinely difficult creative task: combining two well-loved but distinct roguelite formulas into a pirate-themed hybrid that reviewers describe as addictive rather than derivative, backed by real ship and crew variety and a visibly responsive developer. What holds this score down is a specific, well-corroborated cluster of problems: balance complaints serious enough to concern even experienced players, currently broken controller support despite the store page's promise, no way to skip repeated animations, and obstacle-collision design at least one reviewer finds genuinely unfair. Worth it at this price for mouse-and-keyboard genre fans; controller players, including anyone hoping to play on Steam Deck, should wait for a patch given how consistently that specific complaint recurs across this sample.