Staff Blog
The 1-Upper: Cursed Winds
posted by dominic mercier
I spent hours and hours of my life as a child holed up in my parents’ basement playing games like Sid Meier’s Pirates! and The Secret Monkey Island on my Tandy computer that I was very excited to stumble across Cursed Winds the other day. The game takes one of my favorite parts of Pirates!, the ship to ship combat, and adds lots of fun twists, like an upgrade system that adds crew members, more cannons, and artillery support (where was the artillery when I kept dying trying to take on Black Beard back in 1988?).
Cursed Winds uses the arrow keys to control your movement in the water as a fleet of ship descends from the top of the screen, much like a maritime Space Invaders. Your job is to maneuver around, jamming on the spacebar as your cannons slowly reload. After you weaken your enemy’s defenses, move in close for a little hand-to-hand combat, and, if victorious, loot and sink the ship. You’ll get the chance to move on to more difficult levels and upgrade your ship if you can take on the stage’s flagship.
Be forewarned, the games moves at nearly the same pace as a real ship, so set aside some time if you want to play. You can find Cursed Winds here.
