Somalia: Pirate Waters

Three crates of dinner, one borrowed skiff and a hull with opinions about both. In Somalia: Pirate Waters you run a small, overconfident crew out of Lantern Bay, taking the jobs nobody else wants and arguing about room for one more crate while the deck quietly fills with water.

Lantern Bay sits in Monsoon Reach, a fictional archipelago along an imagined western Indian Ocean coast where food, spare parts, fuel, forecasts and repairs all move by sea. Asha Warsame runs the harbor's contract board and wants the dock to stay independent, though she still cannot persuade anyone to label a fuel can. Nura Ali keeps your boat running and names its least reliable parts after their previous owners. Idris Hassan, known as Receipts, has a document for every dispute, the rival captain Rafi Vale rehearses his own legend, and the big ships belong to Meridian Freight, whose captain Farah Dhoore just wants his workers paid.

Every voyage starts at the board: read the job, the cargo and the pay, then carry each crate aboard and strap it to the deck. Out on the water you choose a short, exposed passage or a longer sheltered channel marked by green buoys. Weight slows the skiff, the exposed stretch can spring a leak, and someone has to stop steering to bail and patch before you limp into the landing. Back in port, the settlement shows exactly what arrived and what it paid, and the next voyage is waiting.

Every load matters. Cargo takes up real space, adds weight and forces a choice between profit, speed and room for people. Deliver one crate, two or all three; a partial delivery still pays for what made it, and an emergency tow brings the crew, the skiff and its secured cargo home to try again. The comedy comes from your own decisions and the boat's reactions: the mechanic's questionable warranty, a rival's self-important radio call and a deck full of rolling cargo.

The first release is built around Lantern Bay and three repeatable contracts: a food delivery to an island landing, a salvage recovery, and boarding a guarded merchant ship to get its cargo back to your boat. You sail a four-seat skiff with three cargo slots, designed for solo captains and for crews of up to four who split the steering, loading and bailing between them.

Completed contracts pay out at the harbor, and the launch plan ties renown and a handling upgrade for the skiff to the jobs you finish. Behind that first harbor, the full design of Monsoon Reach grows into six regions, from Lantern Bay to Last Light Reach, six factions whose trust moves from wary to allied, characters who remember what you did for them, and a sixteen-mission campaign in four acts.

Somalia: Pirate Waters is in development for Roblox.