Platform:
Rift, Quest, Vive
Publisher:
Singer Studios
Developer:
Singer Studios
Release:
2024
When you think of pirates, history mainstays like Blackbeard might come to mind alongside the fictional Jack Sparrow. An important but often forgotten name, however, is Cheng Shih. Not only is Cheng Shih one of history's most successful pirates, but she's also the woman who took over her late husband Cheng Yat's pirate armada after his death, putting her in indirect control of 40,000-plus pirates for a nearly decade-long stint in Chinese waters in the early 19th Century. While Cheng Shih's story can be found on pages of books and elsewhere, Singer Studios aims to bring her story to life in VR.
Taking place across a single night – the night Cheng Shih came to power, paving the way for her to create a code of laws for men and women to be treated equally on her ships – The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend puts players in the shoes, errr boots, of Cheng Shih in PC VR devices and Meta Quest 2 next year. During a private game demo, I get a taste of this VR experience, which goes the escape room-esque route of VR gaming rather than the guns-blazing, setpiece-heavy one. Its quiet and methodical approach to gameplay is enticing, even without being in a headset to experience it myself. I'm especially interested in the team's focus on Cheng Shih's story and setting this VR game within a single night in her life. I'm told not to expect massive, pirate-filled battles but instead the emotional intensity Cheng Shih might have experienced that night.
"We come from film, so VR is a nice stepping stone for us," Singer Studios CEO and creative director Eloise Singer tells me. "Each level has an escape room aspect; we wanted to lean away from being a shooter or combat game, challenging you to be as smart as she was, using her intellect to outsmart everyone."
That intellect and the fact that Cheng Shih's story is largely unheard of in the world of piracy attracted Singer and Singer Studios to the idea of The Pirate Queen. This story is one Singer has been thinking about for six years.
Singer Studios released The Last Rifleman, starring Pierce Brosnan (007 Tomorrow Never Dies, Mamma Mia) just last month, and Rare Beasts, starring Billie Piper (Doctor Who, Penny Dreadful) and Lily James (Cinderella, Baby Driver) in 2021. It's worked with companies like Amazon on projects and others, too. The Pirate Queen began its life at Singer Studios as a film idea, but after meeting with now-former PlayStation London Studio boss David Ranyard, that changed.
"He was like, 'This would make an amazing game,'" Singer says. Notably, PlayStation London Studio is the team behind PlayStation's VR Worlds and Blood & Truth on VR – it's easy to see how The Pirate Queen became a VR game. But Singer says she never imagined trying to make a game, shelving the idea for a bit. After the pandemic hit, though, at a time when movie productions worldwide came to a halt, Singer called Ranyard and said she wanted to turn The Pirate Queen into a game. The team got funding to create a prototype, grew to include additional staff, and won awards, including "Best Debut" at the Raindance Film Festival.
From there, Singer Studios showed the prototype, which I'm told was a single-room experience with light puzzle elements, to Meta. The company loved it and, on the first call, told the studio it wanted to make it a full project. The Pirate Queen will debut on Meta Quest 2 and other PC VR devices next year, more than four years after its development began.
Creative director Eloise Singer and lead actress Lucy Liu
When I ask Singer why The Pirate Queen needed to be a VR experience, her answer is simple: "I've always wanted to be a pirate."
"So selfishly, I'm just like, 'I want to make a pirate game because I get to be a pirate,' and it feels like our whole team is like that," she adds. "But I think at the same time, when I first heard her story, it was one of those, 'I'm so shocked that I didn’t know about this piece of history,' and I just felt really compelled that everyone should know more about this period of history and how important this woman was. And it's not even just the fact that she was a pirate, but she was the most powerful pirate of all time actually, and quite literally paved the way for equality.
"The more I looked into it, the more I was interested in this story, and I just felt it could make an amazing game. I really wanted to tell it, and I think when you feel there's a fundamental belief for you wanting to tell the story, that's kind of your driving force for wanting to create anything."
Singer says initially, her target audience for The Pirate Queen was women, perhaps in the bracket of 16 to 35 years old. But as more and more people played and tested the game, that age gap widened from smaller children to the elderly, and the gender disappeared. "It's for everyone," she says. "It's a really beautiful project because it feels very inclusive in that sense."
On a similar note, Singer tells me the team has taken a lot of time to ensure it's as culturally sensitive and accurate as possible, learning about Chinese culture, 19th-century China, consulting and working with people of Chinese heritage, and more. Working with Chinese experts is why The Pirate Queen features properly displayed red lacquered wood aboard ships, era-specific art, time period-accurate calligraphy, and properly woven mats on ship floors.
Lead artist Will Brosch describes The Pirate Queen as a brains-over-brawns experience. "You are outmaneuvering your opponents in a diplomatic sense, but that doesn't mean you don't get your hands dirty in other ways," he says.
That's clear from the 20-minute demo I watched. There aren't swords clashing and gunpowder explosives lighting the horizon – Brosch says there isn't any hand-to-hand combat in the game, although he does tease the use of cannons – but instead, bite-sized puzzles to solve. One example is a door with a lock in the captain's cabin aboard the ship that used to be Sao's. Various symbols mark the lock, and after throwing some rocks at some pottery on top of a cabinet, the player discovers more symbols on the wall. They line up the symbols on the lock with those on the wall to open it and move through the door.
"There's a lot of cognitive puzzle stuff," Brosch explains. "The script is quite narrative, linking back to our film background, and it's about finding gameplay that fits within the script."
This highlights Singer Studio's story-first approach to The Pirate Queen, which is vital because Cheng Shih's story is important to tell in a landscape drenched with male-driven piracy, be it games, movies, TV shows, or books. Singer tells me that approach helped the team land actress Lucy Liu (Kill Bill: Volume 1, Charlie's Angels) as an executive producer and the voice of the titular pirate queen.