Ron Gilbert reveals Scurvy Scallywags, a musical match-3 pirate RPG for iOS

Adventure game designer Ron Gilbert, who exited Double Fine Productions last week, offered details on his new iOS game, Scurvy Scallywags in The Voyage to Discover the Ultimate Sea Shanty: A Musical Match-3 Pirate RPG, on his personal website today, explaining how the puzzle role-playing game will work.

Gilbert, who's co-developing the game with Clayton Kauzlaric, says the game builds upon some match-3 concepts and a board-collapsing mechanic the duo explored in a previous title, Beep Industries' Realm of Gold, and games like Puzzle Quest.

"Unlike Puzzle Quest — and just about every other match-3 RPG that sprang up after it — in Scurvy Scallywags you actually move your hero/pirate around the board and position her/him next to enemies to do battle," Gilbert wrote. "It creates this new layer to the matching that is a lot of fun."

On the RPG aspects of Scurvy Scalleywags, Gilbert promises a great deal of puzzle pirate customization.

"We have close to one hundred different hats, shirts, heads, swords, etc you find and use to dress up your pirate," he wrote. "There are also ten different ships to build, plus a sea shanty you collect that is sung by real life pirate singers (they work for grog, quite inexpensive)."

Scurvy Scallywags in The Voyage to Discover the Ultimate Sea Shanty: A Musical Match-3 Pirate RPG will be out in the coming months for iPhone and iPad, Gilbert says, with an Android version being considered.