Skulls & Bones – an online pirate ship combat game – which is developed by Ubisoft Singapore, is reported to have restarted development.
A spin-off from the naval battles of Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, this game was first announced in 2017 with an expected release date in 2018. However, it has since been delayed many times and supposed to have been rebooted last year.
And yesterday, gaming site GameLuster reported that the game’s development has been restarted. According to this report, Skulls & Bones was sent back to the drawing board around the same time when the managing director of Ubisoft Singapore was removed last year due to sexual harassment allegations.
An unidentified source familiar to Ubisoft’s inner workings told GameLuster that the game “had to restart development from scratch a second time just a few months ago”. As such, the game’s launch date has been pushed back yet again – beyond 2021.
I have the good fortune to play a demo of the Skulls & Bones when I attended Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) -the gaming industry premium event – back in 2017.
And I was left really impressed after trying it and was looking forward to the game. The demo I tried requires you to understand the timing of raising sails and catching the wind to manoeuvre your vessel, while trying to attack merchant and enemy ships to get your hands on their gold.
But the new reboot build is understood to be similar to Microsoft’s Sea of Thieves. It will use a first-person view instead of third-person of the demo I played.
If this is true, I will be quite disappointed to see a game with such immense potential turning out to be a Sea of Thieves clone. Especially one that is made in Singapore.
