Hey gang,

It’s been a while since our last playtest, and we know people have been waiting to hear what’s going on.

For the past few months, we’ve been pretty heads-down. A lot was changing at once, and vague “things are moving along” updates didn’t feel worth posting until we had something real to show.

So here’s the real update.

There was a version of Golden Tides we could have put in front of players months ago. After spending more time with it, and after going through the feedback from earlier builds, the team felt pretty strongly that it needed more work.

Those early builds taught us a lot. Some parts were working, some were close, and some clearly needed to change. Players gave us a better picture of what was confusing, what felt good, what still had friction, and where the game wasn’t fully living up to what it wanted to be.

So we went back through huge parts of the game and rebuilt them around what Golden Tides has become.

The next build should feel different from the one many of you played before. New content is part of that, of course, but a lot of the work has been deeper than adding more stuff. The systems are cleaner, the feedback is better, there’s less friction, and the foundation is much stronger for everything we want to build next.

One of the first things you’ll notice is the UI.

The login screen, main menu, hero select, in-game UI, and shop have all been rebuilt. The old UI had real problems: some things were too hard to read, important information could get buried, and the shop and build screens weren’t as easy to use as they needed to be during an actual match.

That mattered because Golden Tides already asks you to track a lot. You’re thinking about your hero, talents, items, ship, enemy crew, map, objective, boss, route back to your ship, and probably some pirate trying to ruin your day from off-screen.

The UI needs to make all of that easier to understand. That’s what this pass is about.

Combat has changed a lot, too. There are new animations, tighter timings, better hit feedback, and more clarity when abilities land.

This kind of work is hard to explain in a blog post because you kinda just have to experience it. It’s the difference between an ability technically working and an ability feeling good when you press the button: the timing of an animation, the impact of a hit, the feedback when you connect, and that moment where you land something and immediately know, yeah, that hit.

Golden Tides is a PvP game, so combat needs to feel responsive and readable. Big moments need to feel big. We’ve made a lot of progress there.

We’ve also been reworking how you get stronger during a match.

The goal is for every match to ask you to make real decisions. The first major piece of that is talents.

Every time you level up, you get a talent point. Those talents can change how your hero’s abilities work instead of only making the numbers go up. Take Helios: one talent can make Frostbolt pierce through enemies in a long line, while another can make it explode on impact and hit enemies nearby.

You’re still playing Helios, but the match can push you toward a different version of him. That’s the kind of choice we want more of: looking at the match you’re actually in and deciding what your hero needs right now.

The item shop is changing too.

We moved away from flat stat items, the kind where you buy something because it gives you a chunk of attack damage or health and that’s basically the whole story. The new version is more about thresholds and meaningful passives. You spend gold, hit important milestones, and make decisions that shape how you play.

Maybe you need anti-heal because the enemy team is sustaining too much. Maybe you want a defensive option that shields you when you drop low. Maybe the match got weird and you need something else entirely.

Golden Tides is at its best when the match creates problems and your crew has to solve them.

Four new pirates are joining the roster for the next playtest. Some details may still change, but the shape of each hero is there, and they all bring something different to the game.

Eassa is a tank built around death, healing, and resurrection.

She uses Soulfang, a massive weapon that lets her cleave through enemies and heal herself as she fights. Every time she heals herself, she builds a resource called Wake of Death. When that bar fills, she activates a pulsing damage aura around her.

The longer Eassa stays alive in the middle of a fight, the more dangerous she becomes.

She can also engage in a very Eassa way. Phantasmal Shift lets her dash forward in phantom form, moving through terrain and players. Grip of the Grave snares enemies in a cone and pulls Eassa to the furthest enemy hit, which means she can dive deep into a fight and force the enemy backline to deal with her.

Sadie Sixx is a marksman with dual pistols, six shots, and a strong commitment to making fights extremely annoying for whoever she’s shooting.

Her passive is Ignition Point. Every shot stacks on the target. Hit six stacks and the target explodes.

Her mobility comes from Slide, a short dash that resets on kills. If Sadie is rolling through a fight and picking people off, she can keep moving, keep firing, and keep chasing the next target.

Dymora breaks time.

Her basic attack hits in melee range, and a copy of the same attack also lands in front of her at the exact same moment. She’s hitting two places at once.

Temporal Rejuvenation lets her dive in, deal damage, then teleport back to where she was four seconds ago.

Her ultimate, Echoes of the Past, snapshots the health of every player nearby. Five seconds later, everyone’s health resets to where it was when the snapshot happened. Allies, enemies, herself. Everyone.

That creates some strange fights. You’re thinking about what’s happening now, what happens before the reset, and what the fight looks like after everyone snaps back.

Dymora should be scary in the right hands.

Rycho is for players who want high skill expression and a little bit of anime nonsense in their pirate game.

He’s a dual-blade duelist. Flashy, mobile, hard to play well, and probably extremely satisfying when it all comes together.

His basic attack, Deadly Dance, is a channeled sequence where each strike steps him forward through enemies. The damage ramps with each step, so he’s cutting his way through the fight instead of standing still and trading hits.

Defensive Flurry lets him deflect basic attacks and projectiles. If he successfully deflects something, the cooldown on Keening Arc resets, giving him another big leaping slash.

His ultimate is called You’re Already Dead.

He sheathes both blades, takes a stance, and a line extends in front of him. When released, he flashes to the end of the line with both blades drawn, dealing massive damage to anyone caught in the path. The longer the line, the bigger the hit.

If you saw that name and immediately knew you were playing him day one, we understand.

Eassa, Sadie Sixx, Dymora, and Rycho all push the roster in different directions.

Eassa is a death-and-resurrection tank. Sadie Sixx is a mobile gunslinger. Dymora bends fights around time. Rycho is a high-skill duelist who wants to dance through the whole enemy team and somehow live.

That variety matters a lot to us.

One of the best parts of any hero-based game is finding the character that clicks. The one where you stop thinking “what should I play?” and start thinking “yeah, this is mine.”

Golden Tides needs a roster where different players can find that feeling.

Roster growth also changes the game around it. New heroes create new matchups, new team comps, new counters, new problems, and new stories. In a game with open islands, ship fights, objectives, bosses, talents, items, and crews constantly colliding in weird places, every new hero gives the match more ways to go sideways.

That’s a big part of where we’re headed.

Soon. We’re not putting a date out yet.

We don’t want to promise something we might miss, and we’d rather be clear about that than give you a date just because it would feel good for a moment. When the next playtest is ready, you’ll know.

The whole team is working on making this build something special. The next time you get your hands on Golden Tides, we think you’ll feel the difference pretty quickly.

Thanks to everyone who played the older builds, gave feedback, hung out in Discord, sent bugs, argued about heroes, and stuck around through the quieter stretch.

The game is better because of you.

More soon,

Psychedelic Games

Hey pirates,

we've been heads down on some major system changes, and this one's a big deal. Today we're talking about how you actually get stronger during a match, and why we tore it all down and rebuilt it from scratch. Let's get into it.

Here's something that happens in pretty much every MOBA. You queue up, you load in, and before you've even moved your character you already know exactly what you're buying. Maybe you looked it up. Maybe a plugin told you. Maybe you just memorized it three seasons ago and never changed.

And look, that's not a bad thing on its own. Those games are great. But it does mean that for a huge number of players, one of the core systems in the game isn't really a system they engage with.

We kept coming back to this question: what if your build actually responded to the match you're playing, even if you aren’t a challenger Nunu OTP? Not the match you theorycrafted for last night, but the one happening right now. The one where the enemy team is running double frontline and your usual plan isn't going to cut it.

That's what we built toward.

We broke progression into layers. Each one gives you a different kind of decision at a different point in the match, and none of them require you to have a spreadsheet open in your second monitor.

The goal was simple. Every choice should feel like a real choice, not a solved problem. And you should be reacting to what's happening in your game, not following a script.

Here's how the layers work.

As you level up during a match, you unlock Talents. These are hero-specific choices that change how your abilities actually work.

This isn't "your numbers get bigger." This is "your ability does something fundamentally different now."

Every hero has a talent tree with real branching decisions. You pick one talent per tier, and those choices stick for the rest of the match. Do you want Ashar Sharp's movement speed passive to apply to his allies too? Do you want Harrison's Flintlock Shot to deal a little less damage but have two charges? Oakfall's shield to reflect damage, or his push to slow enemies and mess with their cooldowns?

These aren't small tweaks. They change how your hero feels to play. And because you're making these choices as the match unfolds, you can adapt to what you're actually dealing with instead of locking in a plan before the game starts.

We want every player to have that moment where they find the talent combo that just clicks for them. Where you go "oh, THIS is how I play this character." And then next game, maybe you try something completely different because the situation calls for it.

Gold is your other progression resource, and it feeds into two connected systems.

Traits are your core stat growth. There are seven trait lanes, things like Attack Damage, Ability Power, Max HP, Cooldown Reduction. You invest gold into them throughout the match and your stats grow. Simple.

But here's where it gets interesting. You can't max everything. Going deep in one lane gets expensive, and spreading too thin means you're not specialized enough to make an impact when it matters. So you're always making a call: do I go wide or do I go deep? Do I round myself out or do I double down on what's working?

Masteries build on top of Traits. As you hit milestones in your trait lanes, you earn Mastery Points, which you spend on powerful conditional passives. These aren't stat boosts. They're playstyle modifiers. They reward you for playing a certain way, for reading the game state and adapting.

Most players will pick up one or two Masteries in a match. Maybe three if the game goes long. Every one of them is a commitment, so you want to make sure it's the right call for this specific game.

The key word there is "this specific game." We didn't want a world where there's a solved Mastery build for each hero. We wanted a world where you look at what's happening across the map and think "okay, given what they're running, I need this." 

This is probably the biggest departure from what you'd expect.

Items in Golden Tides are tactical. They're consumables, potions, temporary tools. They're the thing you buy because you need it right now, for this fight, for this play. Not because it's the third item in your six-slot build path.

You'll grab health potions and invisibility potions from the standard shop. But here's where it gets fun. Each island vendor across the map has their own unique inventory. Powerful items that only one player can buy per match, first come first served. And some vendors might be carrying Legendary items, gated behind boss tokens you earn from taking down the big threats on the map.

You can see from the map whether a vendor has a Legendary available. But you can't see what it is until you actually go there. Which means scouting matters. Routing matters. Controlling territory isn't just about fights, it's about access to the stuff that can swing them.

Items are how the map becomes part of your power progression. They're the reason it matters where you are, not just how much gold you have.

Here's what we're going for. You load into a Golden Tides match. You pick your hero. And from there, everything about how you get stronger is shaped by what actually happens in that game.

Your Talents evolve your hero based on what you need as the match progresses. Your Traits let you invest in the stats that matter for this fight. Your Masteries let you adapt your playstyle to what you're up against. And your Items give you tactical tools tied to where you are on the map and what risks you're willing to take.

No two matches should feel the same. Decisions you make should genuinely be responsive to the game you're in. That's the goal. Real decisions, in the moment, that change how every match plays out.

We think that's way more fun than a checklist.

More soon, 

Anomie