Mastfire Studios announced on February 29th that the multiplayer competitive FPS “Blackwake”, which was originally distributed for 520 yen including tax, is now free to play. The supported platform is PC (Steam).
“Blackwake” is a multiplayer competitive FPS with a naval battle theme. It supports play with up to 54 people. Players take on the role of pirates, captains of the Royal Navy, and members of crews. The captain steers the ship and gives instructions to the crew, which can accommodate up to 13 people. The crew repairs the ship and fires cannons at each other. In this way, you will be able to destroy your opponents and engage in battles over forts. The captain can be decided by voting. The captain can also be replaced if the crew agrees.
The game also features three game modes: Team Deathmatch (TDM), Siege where players attack and defend forts, and Capture the Booty where players compete for treasure chests. As you play the game, your rank level increases and you can customize the appearance of your character and ship.
This work has been crowdfunding on Kickstarter since 2015 with the aim of acquiring 10,000 Australian dollars (approximately 1 million yen, current rate). This is the second attempt at a Kickstarter campaign that failed in 2014, and raised 171,422 Australian dollars (approximately 16.6 million yen, current exchange rate), approximately 17 times the target amount, in about a month. I was collecting.
After multiple playtests, early access distribution began on Steam in 2017. After its release, the number of concurrently connected players reached a peak of 6,159, showing excitement (SteamDB). After that, we fixed bugs and added content based on feedback from users, and finally released it officially in 2020.
After the official release in February 2020, the number of concurrently connected players, which had remained at around a few hundred, at one point exceeded 3,000, and it became popular again. In terms of user reviews on Steam, at the time of writing, 81% of the 24,533 reviews were positive, giving it a “very positive” status. The game was well-received for its unique system in which multiple people work together to move a ship, and for its interesting naval battles that revolved around voice chat. However, it has not been updated since the June 2020 hotfix. The official website for this work and Mastfire Studios has already been shut down.
This work is now suddenly available to install and play for free. At the time of making the game free, Mastfire Studios only commented in the official news on Steam that “Blackwake is now free to keep!” The background behind the game being made free is unknown. is.
However, the number of players is increasing due to the free game. According to SteamDB, the number of concurrently connected players, which had previously hovered around 30, increased to a peak of 487 after the game became free. Although it has previously been offered at a low price of 520 yen, there may be players who started playing after it became free, or players who started playing again after hearing the news.
By the way, on Steam’s official forum for this game, in October last year, some players expressed their enthusiasm for “paying the developer $5,000 if it becomes free.”exist. It seems that there were fans who wanted to increase the player base by making the game free, even if it meant spending money. In December of the same year, the same user reported that he had used his savings for other purposes and that there were no transactions.
In any case, this time, the highly rated naval FPS “Blackwake”, which had not been updated for a long time, suddenly became free to play and is starting to become popular. Since it’s free, you can feel free to try out the game. Those who are interested may want to take this opportunity to venture out into the ocean.
“Blackwake” is available on PC (Steam) is being distributed for free.
