Originally posted by JorReno:

Haven't seen any updates since July last year... and the dev has a new game in the works.

Hello!
Thank you for your concern, the game is not abandoned, I am a one man team with a full time job outside of game development with 4 kids under the age of 10 years old, so my time on this project has been very slow moving but I'll fill you in on what I've been working on and hopefully address your concerns.

First of all, Offworlders (my "new game") is a project I actually started several years before Shores of Plunder. It is an ambitious project and something I am super passionate about. Once I reached a certain point in development I felt like since my background at the time was more in 3D modelling and media, I had a lot more to learn in terms of programming, marketing, and the business side of game development. Because of which, I paused development on Offworlders and started a smaller scope project which ended up being Shores of Plunder.

Once I released Shores of Plunder in to early access I learned everything I needed to learn about programming, game development, and a lot about marketing, particularly mistakes in marketing, which is why I decided to make the Offworlders Steam page as early as possible. I have always been simultaneously working on both projects but there was a period of about a year where I only worked on Shores of Plunder because I really wanted to get it out to the public as quickly as possible.

I never expected Shores of Plunder to do particularly well in sales since sales was never my objective and poor sales won't deter me from working on the game, after all this was a learning experience for me and I really do love the project, my kids really love it as well and that keeps me going.

One of the big updates I've been working on is something I am really excited about and will complete the main gameplay loop that I want for the project. It's a new game mode which leans on tower defense mechanics. Players will be able to spend their plunder on traps then trigger a raid event. They'll have to protect the ship and survive waves of attacks. A good source of inspiration for this new system would be Orcs Must Die/Plants vs Zombies.

Where I am currently at with this system is as follows.
- trap catalogue system - complete
- placement system - complete
- enemy wave system - partially complete
- trap models - partially complete
- UI for new system - partially complete

What's next after this system? (Some of these are in no particular order or priority)

1) The biggest priority will be to complete the two remaining character models and animations; Cthulhu and Treasure Lord.

2) Following that I'd like to add several more weapons, I have a blunderbuss that's complete but am not happy with the animations. There are a few more weapons I have in the works but will need to go through the modelling and animation pipeline which I am sure you can understand costs both time and money.

3) A popular request has been to add a fishing mechanic which I would love to add and honestly shouldn't take more than a day or two to complete.

4) I'd like to add physical sailing of the player's ship and also rowing the skiff.

5) Completion of the shark! You may have noticed that the shark swims around the map but currently it does not attack the player. I'd like to add a treasure chest in the bay and have the shark add a threat to the waters.

6) Complete the emote system. Currently the player can unlock sticker emotes but I'd like to expand on that by having dances/gestures added to the same system. I have everything I need to complete that and shouldn't require a lot of time.

7) Add the leaderboard back in to the world. Originally there was a leaderboard but I removed it from the menu and plan to add as a physical leaderboard next to the main hall in the pirate cove

8) Controller remapping. This is high on my todo list as it was a fairly popular request.

In addition to that there are lots of little quality of life updates will make their way in to the game over time. You're more than welcome to hop in our Discord and talk to me any time, I am happy to chat about the game.

I hope that puts some of your concerns at rest. Like I said my schedule is chaotic and I wish I had a lot more free time to work on this game but between the kids and my full time job time has been very limited lately. Like I said before please feel free to join our Discord if you ever want to talk about the game or follow along development with both of my projects. I assure you while it is slow moving I have no intention to abandon this game, it's a passion project of mine and I am not motivated by sales.