Pirate games feel like a perfect formula for success, but beyond Sid Meier, virtually everyone has struggled to nail the recipe. While seafaring, battling, and searching for buried treasure are all great adventure ingredients, they can also just be too much to juggle.Chantey, a piratical journey from indie developer Gortyn Code and publisher ModRetro, makes things even harder for itself by throwing rhythm into the mix.
Branded as a “pirate metal rhythm adventure,“Chanteydoesn’t cloak its unusual nature, but you’d be forgiven for not expecting it right away. The game comes on a Chromatic cartridge (usable with either a GameBoy Color orModRetro’s premium modern alternative), and it starts in a similar manner to many adventure games and RPGs of the era that inspired it. A young protagonist wakes up in his room and is quickly thrust into a conflict-filled story, which sees him race to recover pages of a pirate tome while outwitting soldiers, sailors, and backstabbers aplenty.
Engaging Exploration Can Be Uneven In Chantey
It Isn’t Always Smooth Sailing
Chantey’s gameplay loop is erratic, to say the least, but it most frequently consists of sailing around the Caribbean, wandering through the streets of port cities, and entering rhythm-based duels. While the rhythm sections might be the selling point, the exploration takes up more time.When everything’s coming together nicely, island-hopping and chatting with eccentric NPCs is a joy, and packing a big world into a small cartridge is always a little special. Occasionally, though, it all devolves into a frustrating mix of unclear objectives and unhelpful guardrails.
Done well,I adore old-school ambiguity, butChanteyoperates in a shaky framework. One relatively early mission sends you on a trip to Roatan, an island north of Honduras and west of Belize. The game doesn’t tell you it’s there, but I’m fine with a little hunting and pecking (or you could just know the Caribbean well, as real geography applies here). Even so, it’s not that simple. The destination is unmarked, nothing indicates that you can land on it, and the normal landing procedure doesn’t work.
There’s a boring trick to landing here, but it’s only vaguely alluded to in an optional conversation with a tavern owner, and not in a way that suggests its relevance to the quest. More frustratingly, you’re not allowed to return to any ports once you set sail for Roatan, so there’s no way to hunt for the tip. Individually, requiring outside information and hiding the mechanic for docking at an unmarked location could both be fun ideas.Deployed in conjunction,they miss the mark of setting up a puzzle and result in a blind missivethat ignores the game’s rules.
The overarching problem is thatChanteydoesn’t quiteknow how to be non-linear. It frequently employs this tactic of setting bounds during missions, often in inconsistent ways, andexploring in the wrong order is a crash course in unnecessary dead ends. Talking to key NPCs won’t give you any information untilChanteydecides that you’re at the right point in the story. Since this can be extremely arbitrary, I sometimes found myself searching for other solutions, only to learn that repeating a conversation would inexplicably do the trick.
Chantey’s also capable of running into bugs, and my player character and my ship both ended up in places where they didn’t belong on a few occasions. This never caused major problems for me, but losing progress or softlocking seems concerningly possible.
Within this mess,things do occasionally click, and it’s great when they do. One lightly parodic fetch quest takes on a Matryoshka-like structure, bouncing you between an absurd network of characters with petty requests. When you’re not in the middle of main story missions, you can ferry goods between islands or tease out the side quests that strengthen the bonds of your crew. An over-reliance on finicky stealth sections grows a bit old, but there are enough ideas in play to make up for it.
Chantey Is A Feast For The Eyes & Ears
A World Brimming With Briny Detail
The rhythm duels, which might beChantey’s biggest point of appeal, acquit themselves nicely. Four columns of descending notes make use of the D-pad and face buttons, a setup that should be familiar enough to rhythm fans and intuitive for newcomers.Getting high scores is far too easy, even on Hard, but keeping the beat of chiptune shanties is a pleasant diversionall the same. Fantastic arrangements, which consistently turn the hardware limitations into a powerful sonic catalyst, make a limited pool of overlong tracks easy to forgive.
Chantey’s sensory pleasures extend beyond the rhythm segments, and the strong suite of music is accompanied by a gorgeouscanvas of pixel art.Bustling towns, stalwart ships, and lively character portraits all feel richwith texture and warmth. Setting a few inert references aside, the dialogue sparkles with swashbuckling swagger, and the story that unfolds across the course of the adventure has no trouble spinning familiar tropes into a fresh yarn.
Rough Waters Don’t Sink Chantey’s Ship - 6/10
A Fascinating, Flawed Game
It’s easy to use the phrase “diamond in the rough” haphazardly, butChantey’s a textbook example. It’s brimming with fun ideas, lofty ambitions, and an endless desire to entertain.With enough playtesting, it could probably be a slam dunk. As it stands, though,Chanteyfeels too frequently unaware that a player might not do everything in the expected order or intuit its inconsistent rules, and the consequences of this disconnect range from good old-fashioned time-wasting to buggy scenarios that may necessitate resets.
Chanteyopens with a quote from H.L. Mencken, declaring that “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” In a sea of frustrating shortcomings, the game does manage to deliver on that temptation. If you love pirates, rhythm games, or old-school adventures, you’ll almost certainly love at least some part ofChantey. Just don’t expect to slit any throats until you spit on your hands and hoist the black flag with gusto.
Screen Rantreceived a copy ofChanteyfor this review and previously received a ModRetro Chromatic unit.
