Top-down naval roguelite. You are the captain, and the ship is yours to build — survive the return.
Out Now on Steam
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The game
Pirate Twist puts you in command of a modular sailing ship on the wrong side of a hostile coastline. Every expedition is a one-way push into unfamiliar water — fight, forage, salvage, then survive the run back to port before the storm catches up.
Your ship is a hull with slots, and what you bolt into them is the whole argument — plating, cannons, storage, a repair station, a ram prow, bracing. Lose a slot to cannon fire and you lose the system that sat in it. What you bring back upgrades what goes out next. What you don't, doesn't.
Then pick who sails it. Five captains with their own passives and their own signature hands, six crew roles trainable through tiers, and a build that has to agree with both. A gunner-heavy deck under Sable plays nothing like heavy plating under Voss — that combination, not the map, is what makes a run its own.
Key features
- Modular ship building. Hand-placed slots. Real trade-offs. Every loadout reads differently in combat.
- Expedition-based runs. Push deep, decide when to turn back. Bring home enough to upgrade — or don't make it home.
- Tight top-down combat. Broadsides, ramming, pursuit, weather you have to read. Choose your shot, pick your moment.
- Directional damage. Rake a stern, tear a sail, break a crew's nerve. Where a shot lands decides what it takes.
- Persistent captains. Ships are rebuilt; captains endure. The skills a captain earns carry from run to run — a lost expedition costs you the ship, never the captain's hard-won edge.
- A crew that compounds. Six roles, trained up a tier at a time. A gunner lifts every broadside for the rest of the run, and stacks with the captain skills pointing the same way.
The voyage ahead
Early Access is a heading, not a finish line. Follow the monthly course from launch to the 1.0 horizon — and help steer it.
Made by one person
BTG Labs is a solo developer and publisher. Pirate Twist is built, balanced, drawn and shipped by one person — which is why the roadmap moves in visible steps, why the patch notes read like someone's actual week, and why what players say in Discord tends to turn up in the build.
If something in the game feels off, there is exactly one person to tell, and no committee between you and the fix.