42 Best Pirate Games on PC, Consoles and Mobile

The best pirate games have never needed a new blockbuster every year to stay alive. Sea of Thieves is still welcoming fresh crews season after season, fans keep modding Sea Dogs and Age of Pirates two decades on, and 2026 brought two big returns to the Caribbean at once: the Black Flag Resynced remake and the co-op survival hit Windrose. Some players come for boarding actions and buried treasure, others for trade routes, privateer licenses and a reputation built over dozens of hours, and some just want a night with friends where the whole crew sinks because one person forgot to raise the anchor.

If you only need a shortlist, start with the ten pirate games people recommend most: Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag and its remake Resynced, Sea of Thieves, Windrose, Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships, Caribbean Legend, Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, Sid Meier's Pirates!, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii and Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew.

Below, the list is split into new pirate games from 2025 and 2026, open world pirate games, RPGs and strategy, co-op and online games, classics, indie picks and pirate games for Android and iOS. Where it matters, entries mention whether a game is on PC, PS5, Xbox or Switch, and the FAQ at the end covers games like Sea of Thieves, pirate survival games and the best picks for each platform.

The last two years have been the busiest for pirate games in a decade. Ubisoft rebuilt the most beloved naval game of the last console generation from scratch, a small studio's co-op survival game sold millions of copies in early access, and RGG Studio sent Goro Majima to Hawaii with cannons and a pirate crew. This section covers new pirate games from 2025 and 2026 that you can actually play right now, from a big story-driven adventure to a quiet voyage across an endless archipelago without a single cannon shot.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced is a full remake of the 2013 classic, released on July 9, 2026 for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. The story is the same: Welsh privateer Edward Kenway gets pulled into the war between Assassins and Templars while carving out a name as one of the most notorious captains in the Caribbean, alongside Blackbeard, Benjamin Hornigold, Mary Read and the pirate republic of Nassau.

What changed is how the sea feels. Dynamic weather is in, storms look and behave differently, fights aboard the Jackdaw are heavier and more cinematic, and naval combat now has its own difficulty settings. There's new content too: an eight-mission endgame chapter about Blackbeard called A World Without Gold, an epilogue for Stede Bonnet and three new officers for the Jackdaw, all on top of the familiar loop of sailing up to a fort, silencing its batteries, landing and taking it by force. Newcomers should start here, while veterans get a solid reason to return without feeling like they are replaying an old save. We break down every difference from the original in our Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced review.

It also made our list of the best video game remakes and remasters.

Windrose launched in early access on April 14, 2026, and instantly became the pirate survival game everyone was talking about. Think Valheim at sea: an alternate Age of Piracy, a shipwreck after a run-in with Blackbeard, a procedurally generated archipelago, crafting, building everything from a shelter to a mansion or a fort, and a slow climb to a proper warship. You can play solo or in co-op with up to eight players, although developer Kraken Express recommends crews of four.

Land matters as much as the open water. Islands hide dungeons with bosses, Tortuga serves as a hub with factions and quests, and you'll gather workers for your settlement and resources from sulfur for gunpowder to swamp metal. At sea, things get loud: cannon duels, boarding actions with melee fights on deck and hunting down ships that carry exactly what your island is missing. It is PC-only for now and still in early access, but it is already one of the best co-op pirate games around. Our verdict is in the Windrose review.

Salt 2: Shores of Gold from Lavaboots Studios hit version 1.0 in November 2025 after a long stint in early access. It is a quieter take on the pirate fantasy: after a shipwreck you get your own vessel and sail from island to island, following treasure maps, clearing caves, pirate camps and forts, taking jobs from guilds in port, gathering materials and slowly turning your ship into a mobile base you can decorate with more than a hundred items.

Don't expect naval combat: there isn't any, and the developers don't plan to add it. This is a PvE voyage built around a compass, a sextant, notes scribbled on your map, storms and landings on unknown shores, and you can sail it solo or with up to five friends. It suits players who love the spirit of discovery more than the roar of cannons. More in our Salt 2: Shores of Gold review.

The February 2025 spin-off where Goro Majima washes up on Rich Island with no memory and, within a few hours, becomes captain of his own pirate crew aboard the Goromaru. You sail between islands, hunt for treasure, recruit crewmates and fight arcade-style naval battles with cannons, machine guns and boarding actions, all delivered with the series' trademark absurdity.

Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii happily mixes crime drama, wooden ships, an ancient treasure hunt and Madlantis, a hidden pirate island with a casino and a coliseum. Majima switches between two fighting styles, commands his crew in combat and can even summon ghostly sharks. The naval side is lighter than in Black Flag, and the whole thing plays more like a big side story than a new mainline chapter, but if you want pirates in their most purely entertaining form on PS5, Xbox or PC, this is it.

Windward Horizon is the 2025 sequel to Tasharen Entertainment's indie hit Windward. It keeps the top-down view and generates a fresh map every campaign, with biomes from ice fields to the tropics, trade between provinces and naval fights decided by wind and range. Trade is a weapon here too: back a faction long enough and it will take over a province without a single shot fired. Ships grow from schooner to brigantine and frigate, talents split into offense, defense and support, and between fights you can dive to wrecks for loot. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, including Steam Deck.

Its biggest draw is co-op: you can head out with friends and split the roles between the trader, the convoy hunter and whoever covers the retreat. Windward Horizon doesn't pretend to be a AAA game, but it delivers the free-roaming captain's career in a compact form that doesn't eat an evening just to learn the basics.

Open world pirate games are all about islands full of treasure, trade routes worth raiding, forts begging to be taken and the freedom to choose who you want to be: convoy hunter, smuggler or privateer sailing for the crown. In these games the sea is not filler between missions, it is a world to explore in its own right. Some are story-driven, others are sandboxes with no single right path, but all of them let you sail toward the horizon for hours without getting bored. For more big worlds beyond the Caribbean, see our best open world games.

Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag is the game most people name first when pirates come up. Released in 2013, it is technically an Assassin's Creed entry, but it lives in memory as its own grand adventure: the Caribbean, Edward Kenway raiding merchantmen and storming forts, and the sense that someone finally made the pirate game everyone had been waiting for.

You can spend hours sailing between islands, harpooning whales, diving to wrecks, boarding ships and listening to your crew sing shanties at sunset. The Jackdaw grows with you: new cannons, a reinforced hull, more ammo, until a leaky brig becomes something military convoys steer away from. Naval combat is arcade-style, and that is a strength rather than a flaw. The original is still widely available and runs well on modest hardware, so it remains a good alternative to the remake on older PCs and last-gen consoles. Here is how it looked at launch in our Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag review.

Assassin's Creed Rogue arrived in 2014 on PS3 and Xbox 360, followed by PC in 2015, and it has spent years as the most underrated naval entry in the series. It builds directly on Black Flag, but from the other side: Shay Patrick Cormac starts as an Assassin, turns Templar and hunts his former brothers during the Seven Years' War.

Instead of warm Caribbean waters you get the cold North Atlantic, the River Valley and the coast of Newfoundland. Shay's ship, the Morrigan, can ram through ice floes, and its arsenal adds the Puckle gun and burning oil that leaves a wall of fire in its wake. Combat is more aggressive too: enemies now board you, so you'll be defending your own deck. If you've finished Black Flag and still want more sailing, Rogue is the natural next step. The 2018 Remastered version brought it to PS4 and Xbox One, and on Switch it comes bundled with Black Flag in The Rebel Collection.

Skull and Bones was long expected to be the spiritual successor to Black Flag's naval combat, and in a way it is. Just without city exploration, without Assassins and without a big story: nearly all of the focus is on your ship, its loadout, weapon types and combat tactics across the Indian Ocean. You pick a hull, build around it, hunt trade routes, clash with other players over resources and grow your own smuggling empire.

It isn't Black Flag, and it's worth knowing that going in. But the game is very much alive: Year 3 kicked off in 2026 with new large ships like the Galleon and the Junk, seasonal bosses and deeper build options. If you want pure naval action on PS5, Xbox Series X|S or PC, with gorgeous battles and the constant feeling of commanding a warship rather than wandering around an island, Skull and Bones delivers.

Caribbean Legend is the closest thing to a modern Sea Dogs and Age of Pirates game, and that's no accident: it comes from BlackMark Studio, the team behind the fan-favorite expansion Sea Dogs: To Each His Own, and is built on the same formula. You play Charles de Maure, a young French nobleman who lands on Martinique in 1654 to help his brother, and from there it opens into a pirate RPG sandbox where naval combat is only one part of the picture, alongside trade, factions, reputation, hiring officers, governor contracts and port economies. You can build an honest career as a merchant with a letter of marque, or go fully rogue and become a menace to the whole region.

Boarding still turns into swordfights on deck, and story threads are scattered across the archipelago, easy to miss if you skip the taverns. It isn't the most polished game here, but it has something bigger productions often lack: a world that runs by its own rules, where you're not the hero by default and have to earn that status the hard way.

Corsairs Legacy is another attempt to bring back the Sea Dogs formula, this time from studio Mauris. It is set in the late 17th-century Caribbean, where smuggler Rufus Monroe, used to slipping past military patrols, finally lands in serious trouble and starts climbing from small-time runner to captain of his own squadron.

The game has been in early access since January 2024 and has grown a lot along the way. At sea there are around two dozen ship variants based on historical designs, up to a ship of the line, and boarding turns into fights on deck, in the hold and in the captain's cabin. On land you'll visit Barbados, Tobago and Trinidad, and 2026 updates added crew recruitment and dynamic fog. Right now it's more of a solid foundation than a finished RPG, but if Caribbean Legend left you wanting more and you enjoy watching a pirate sandbox add new systems patch by patch, keep Corsairs Legacy on your wishlist.

Tempest: Pirate Action RPG is easy to overlook, but you shouldn't. This compact pirate RPG from Lion's Shade offers open seas, trade, ship upgrades, more than a hundred quests and a choice between honest profit and outright piracy, with a dash of the supernatural: beyond royal fleets, the sea is home to the Kraken and the Leviathan, and you can even tame the Kraken and send it after your enemies. Up to three players can sail together in co-op or face off against each other.

It doesn't aim for AAA scale, but the loop is easy to love: leave port, set a course, fight, loot, upgrade and head back out to sea. Tempest is light on hardware and is available on Android as well as PC and Mac, which makes it a great pirate game for low-end PCs.

Not everyone wants arcade action and cannon chases. There's another kind of pirate game: slower and deeper, with character progression, factions, trade and battles that reward planning over button mashing. Pirate RPGs offer big stories and choices with consequences, while strategy games hand you colonial economies, fleets and wars over sea lanes. If you want the full pirate life with all its details, this is the section for you. Fans of the genre should also check our best RPGs of all time.

The Sea Dogs series started in 2000 and, for many players, still sets the standard for pirate sandboxes. Its most beloved entry, Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships from 2007, offers no single right path: trade between ports, run errands for governors, take privateer contracts, smuggle cargo or simply raid anything flying an enemy flag. Economy, reputation, officers, captain progression and squadron command all add up to a world where you decide who to be and how to make your fortune.

Technically, the series aged long ago. But the formula it pioneered still hasn't been fully matched, which is why it keeps coming up in forum threads, gets reinstalled every few years and lives on through mods, while fans keep waiting for someone to make the same thing for today. In March 2026 that wish partly came true: City of Abandoned Ships got an official Steam remaster called Caribbean Legend: Age of Pirates, with modernized controls and UI, no strict story timers and the option to play as Peter Blood or your own captain. That's now the easiest way into the series.

Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire doesn't look like a pirate game at first. But once you leave the first port, set sail across the Deadfire Archipelago and hire your first crew, it's clear that the sea is a core part of the experience. You command a ship, manage supplies and morale, make calls during naval encounters, pick sides among local factions and untangle a region where the pirate Príncipi, merchant companies and colonial powers share control in roughly equal measure.

At the same time, Deadfire remains a big isometric RPG from Obsidian with everything that implies: rich dialogue, tough moral choices, memorable companions and a long journey that takes many evenings to finish. Since 2020 it has also been available on PS4 and Xbox One. If you want more than boarding actions and crave a full role-playing story built around sailing, it's hard to beat.

Risen 2: Dark Waters is 2012 pirate fantasy from Piranha Bytes, the makers of Gothic, and it feels exactly like that. Forget historical accuracy: sabers and pistols share the stage with voodoo magic and sea monsters, captains look like tavern regulars you'd never argue with, and the islands are full of grimy ports, smugglers, old curses and the constant feeling that the next shore will bring trouble.

The game is rough around the edges, and its combat divided players at launch. But the atmosphere holds up remarkably well, and that's why people still recommend it. If you want to wander an island, stumble into stories and deal with the fallout, it's a great fit.

One Piece Odyssey is a 2023 turn-based JRPG based on the most famous pirate anime of all. The Straw Hat crew is shipwrecked off the mysterious island of Waford, loses their powers and teams up with a local girl named Lim to win them back by reliving "Memoria": memories of key arcs like Alabasta, Water 7 and Marineford.

Battles are turn-based but with a twist: the party is split into separate zones, each pirate fighting their own opponents, and the rock-paper-scissors system of Power, Speed and Technique matters more than raw stats. Between fights you explore using each crew member's skills: Luffy stretches to distant ledges, Chopper squeezes into tight gaps, Zoro slices through obstacles. For manga fans it's a perfect excuse to relive favorite moments, and for everyone else it's a solid RPG about a crew whose captain would do anything for them.

Buccaneers! from small British studio Skyward Digital is a 2022 pirate RPG sandbox that proudly carries the torch of Sid Meier's Pirates! and Sea Dogs. You start as a humble captain in the Caribbean after the Golden Age of Piracy and choose your own path, siding with one of four factions with their own perks, or with none at all.

Naval combat plays out in first person right from the helm, and you can even switch to VR to stand at the wheel yourself. Enemy ships can be boarded and added to your fleet, and between battles you trade, take jobs in port and recruit crew. It's a single-player game that runs on modest PCs, and it delivers the core of what makes the genre great: a Caribbean that lives its own life, where you can become anything from an honest trader to the most wanted pirate in the region.

Port Royale 4 shows the other side of the golden age of piracy. Instead of boarding parties and rum, you get trade routes, production chains, port prices and colonial economics. You build supply networks between towns, watch supply and demand, grow your businesses and slowly become the dominant economic power in the region.

Piracy is still part of the mix: you can take letters of marque, prey on rival shipping and fight turn-based naval battles, and one of the campaigns puts you in the boots of a buccaneer. The Port Royale series has been around since 2002 and stays loyal to its formula, and the fourth entry from Gaming Minds is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Switch. It's for players who want economic depth and would rather run an empire than just plunder.

Tortuga: A Pirate's Tale is a turn-based pirate strategy game from Gaming Minds, the team behind Port Royale. You assemble a squadron, hire captains, keep your crew's morale in check, choose targets for raids and fight tactical naval battles where positioning, ammo type and fleet formation are everything.

The pace is completely different from Black Flag or Sea of Thieves: zero arcade action, plenty of planning and that satisfying moment when a carefully plotted ambush plays out exactly as intended. You get 18 ship types, and morale is serious business: a hungry crew short on loot may well mutiny. It launched quietly with little marketing, yet it has more tactics than most pirate games on the market. If that's your thing, our best tactical games list has more.

Flint: Treasure of Oblivion is a tactical RPG from French studio Savage Level, released in December 2024. The first thing you'll notice is its presentation: the whole game is designed as a living Franco-Belgian comic book, with panels, hand-drawn cutscenes and lettering right on screen.

The story follows Captain Flint and Billy Bones as they sail from Saint-Malo to Central America during the Golden Age of Piracy in search of a legendary treasure. Turn-based fights take place on a hex grid, where dice rolls decide your attacks and ability cards let you tilt luck in your favor. It isn't a sandbox but a focused adventure with specific people and a specific goal, and sometimes that's exactly what you want from a pirate story you can finish over a few evenings.

A 2009 grand strategy game about the 18th century, where you lead one of the great powers on a turn-based world map: develop provinces, handle diplomacy, raise armies, build fleets and fight over colonies. Battles play out in real time with line infantry, artillery, cavalry and full-scale naval engagements.

Strictly speaking, Total War: Empire isn't a pirate game, as there's no outlaw career to follow. But it captures the era in which piracy flourished: European powers carving up colonies, trade routes stretching across oceans, and the Caribbean, India and the New World becoming key battlegrounds in a contest for money and influence.

Nothing stops you from playing dirty: cut trade routes, sink enemy fleets, strangle an opponent's economy with blockades and build a maritime empire on guns and gold. Best of all, it features some of the most spectacular naval battles in the Total War series, with ships of the line trading broadsides through clouds of smoke and campaigns often decided by a single fight in open water. More picks like it in our best grand strategy and 4X games.

The 2018 DLC Curse of the Vampire Coast for Total War: Warhammer 2 adds the Vampire Coast factions: undead pirates with ships, cannons, cursed captains, sea monsters and their own campaign for dominion over the seas.

Pirate flavor is built right into the mechanics. You can set up hidden pirate coves in other factions' ports to siphon off their income, chase treasure maps, build up infamy, deal with mutinous captains and slowly turn your faction into a nightmare on the waves.

The real highlight, though, is the army roster. Instead of regular soldiers, the Vampire Coast fields musket-wielding zombies, dead sailors, sirens and necromantically animated shipwrecks that stomp across the battlefield on giant legs. It's peak dark fantasy and probably the most unhinged pirate faction in any strategy game.

This isn't naval action but a 2003 city builder about a secret pirate island in the Caribbean. You build taverns, shipyards, warehouses, armories and prisons, then send captains out on raids for loot, captives and resources. Unlike typical city builders, your island doesn't run on happy citizens but on pirates and prisoners: the first want rum, gambling, weapons, anarchy and riches, the second need food, order and just enough to keep working.

Tropico 2: Pirate Cove looks at piracy from an unusual angle. You never swing a cutlass yourself; instead you organize the plunder, picking targets, arming crews, managing relations with European powers, stopping prisoners from escaping and keeping your own pirates from mutiny.

Pirate games and co-op are a near-perfect match, since a ship practically demands a crew. These co-op pirate games are best played with friends or against real opponents, from cheerful chaos aboard a single sloop to naval MMOs with player economies, guilds and wars over ports. Every game in this section is alive and receiving updates in 2026. For more games to play together, see our best co-op games.

Sea of Thieves from Rare comes alive with a crew. One player steers, another trims the sails, a third patches holes and bails water, and a fourth shouts from the crow's nest that there's an enemy galleon off the starboard bow. That joyful chaos is the whole point. You can sail solo on a sloop, but with two to four players you get roles, mistakes and a lot of laughter when someone fires themselves out of a cannon in the wrong direction.

It doesn't chase realism. It's about the dream of pirate life: riddle maps and buried treasure, trading company voyages, skeleton forts, battles with the Kraken and Megalodons, and the constant risk that the crew who has been tailing you strikes just outside the outpost. There are story-driven Tall Tales too, including crossovers with Pirates of the Caribbean and Monkey Island. It's on PC, Xbox and PS5 with crossplay, it's part of Xbox Game Pass, and years of seasonal updates keep pulling players back.

Blazing Sails is a pirate battle royale, and that label tells you most of what you need to know. Several crews sail into a shrinking zone, grab resources and upgrades on islands along the way, and the last ship afloat wins. Inside each crew, the roles echo Sea of Thieves: someone steers, someone mans the cannons, someone plugs leaks below the waterline.

There are no long campaigns or trade systems, just combat, maneuvering, cannons and luck. Beyond the battle royale you get Treasure Hunt and Galleon Conquest modes, and you can sail a two-player sloop or a four-player ship, from the brigantine to the junk and the bomb vessel. It works best for short sessions when you don't feel like learning an economy and just want to head out with friends and find out whose crew can hold a course under fire.

A free-to-play naval sandbox about sailing ships, trade, PvE raids and PvP that entered Steam early access in October 2025. You choose your own path: haul cargo between ports, hunt NPC ships for loot, grow your fleet, sell resources to other players or raise the PvP flag and go looking for a fight.

World of Sea Battle isn't a story-driven adventure but a living naval economy where piracy emerges from server rules and player behavior. Combat is more arcade-like than in Naval Action but more nuanced than in Skull and Bones, with round, heated and chain shot, wind angle and well-timed sails deciding the outcome. There are more than 50 historical ships from schooners to frigates, a private island to use as an outpost, guild wars over territory and an Endless Sea beyond the edge of the map. The developers ship big updates regularly under their 2026 roadmap.

Naval Action is the most hardcore naval MMO on this list. Its open world recreates the West Indies in the age of sail from 18th-century maps and charts, ships are based on historical designs, and handling sails and maneuvering against the wind takes genuine practice. Players pick a nation, such as Great Britain, Spain or France, or join the pirates, who play by their own rules.

The big events are port battles, where clans prepare fleets in advance to seize a town from rivals while forts and coastal batteries join the fight near shore. The economy is player-driven too, with clans running trading outposts and ships built from gathered resources. The community is small but loyal, and the game still gets patches. This is a game for anyone who finds arcade sailing too shallow and wants to know what it's like to hold the line against a full broadside from a first-rate ship of the line.

A pirate MMO from KingsIsle, the studio behind Wizard101, where you create your own captain, assemble a band of companions, travel between floating worlds along the Skyways, play through story chapters and fight turn-based tactical battles on a grid. The pirate theme goes well beyond decoration, with ships, ship-to-ship combat, fleet upgrades and companions who each have their own stories.

Pirate101 isn't a realistic Caribbean sim but a family-friendly online adventure that delivers pirate romance through humor, colorful worlds and a long story campaign. It's free to start and still getting new chapters, with the frozen world of Polaris and a fresh story update arriving in 2026.

Every conversation about pirate games eventually circles back to the classics. These titles set the tone for the genre, invented formulas that are still being copied and left memories people cherish twenty years later. And they're not museum pieces: most classic pirate games are still sold digitally, run on modern systems and work on even the weakest hardware. If you enjoy going back in time, our best adventure games list has plenty more timeless picks.

Sid Meier's Pirates! from 2004 remakes the game Sid Meier designed back in 1987, and its formula still works flawlessly. You're a captain in the Caribbean and decide what to do: hunt famous pirates like Blackbeard, seize prizes under a letter of marque, search for the family kidnapped by a villain, duel rival captains, dance with governors' daughters, trade or dig up buried treasure from torn map fragments.

Its charm lies in how easy it is to pick up. No bloated menus or lengthy tutorials: five minutes in and you're already at sea. Then you check the clock, realize three hours have passed and still want more. Few games have managed to recreate that feeling. It's a classic without caveats, and it will run on any laptop.

Return to Monkey Island is the 2022 comeback of the legendary comedy adventure series, with Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman back at the helm. Guybrush Threepwood is once again chasing the Secret of Monkey Island, LeChuck is once again in the way, and Mêlée Island is once again full of characters who make every conversation a small comedy routine.

There are no cannon battles here: Monkey Island has always been about puzzles, absurd dialogue and insult swordfighting. The new entry welcomes newcomers with a recap scrapbook and a casual mode, while fans of the 1990 original and Monkey Island 2 will catch countless callbacks, and both classics are still available in their Special Editions. It's out on PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch and mobile, which makes it one of the easiest ways to enjoy pirate atmosphere without heavy systems or grinding.

Pirates of the Caribbean from 2003 grew from the same roots as Sea Dogs and, in many ways, it is Sea Dogs: Akella's project started life as Sea Dogs 2 before picking up the movie license late in development. Captain Nathaniel Hawk arrives on Oxbay after a fierce storm, loses his first mate, hires a new crew and soon finds himself at the center of a war started by the French armada.

Seas, ports, trade, boarding actions, governor contracts, deck fights and the feeling that you're reading a Caribbean adventure novel while living it. It came out on PC and the original Xbox, Keira Knightley narrates a couple of its cutscenes, and today you won't find it in digital stores, only on disc. It has aged technically, but its charm hasn't faded. For many players it was the first big pirate game where you didn't just watch the world but lived in it with your own ship, crew and reputation.

LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean: The Video Game from Traveller's Tales came out in 2011 and retells the first four films, from The Curse of the Black Pearl to On Stranger Tides. Jack Sparrow, Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, Barbossa and Davy Jones become minifigures, and the most famous scenes become levels to smash into bricks and rebuild.

As in other LEGO games, you get light puzzles, tons of collectibles and local split-screen co-op, and the wordless slapstick lands better than most scripted jokes. It's the best pirate game for kids and family evenings, and adult fans of Captain Jack will still get a couple of hours of genuine nostalgia out of it.

Skies of Arcadia is a Sega JRPG from the Dreamcast era, and playing it today isn't straightforward. It came out in 2000 and later got an expanded version, Skies of Arcadia: Legends, on GameCube, but there are still no modern ports for PC, PlayStation, Xbox or Switch, so people play it on original hardware or through emulation.

What makes it special is the setting: this adventure isn't about the sea but about sky pirates in a world of floating islands. You play as Vyse and his crew of Blue Rogues, romantic adventurers in the Robin Hood mold who only rob imperial ships. You fly between islands in airships, discover new lands, hunt for hidden spots on the map, fight turn-based battles and take part in separate ship-to-ship duels. It isn't a realistic pirate game, but a vivid tale about the spirit of adventure and uncharted horizons.

Big studios don't have a monopoly on pirates. Indie pirate games often experiment more boldly than major releases, with procedural seas, turn-based roguelikes, tactical stealth and strategy games about pirate republics. Many of them are easy on hardware and can be finished in a few evenings, yet they frequently capture the essence of pirate life better than far more expensive projects. If you like randomized runs, our best roguelike games list is a good next stop.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is the final game from German studio Mimimi, the team behind Shadow Tactics and Desperados 3, and possibly their best. It's a tactical stealth game about a crew of cursed pirates aboard the sentient ship Red Marley, fighting the Inquisition for Captain Mordechai's treasure across the islands of the Lost Caribbean.

Instead of naval battles and trading, you get island raids, silent takedowns, magic and precise planning. Every pirate has a unique trick: one teleports, another drags enemies into a shadow realm, a third lures patrols away. Black pearls bring new crewmates back to life, and you choose the order in which you tackle the islands. The goal is almost always the same: slip into a guarded area, grab what you came for and leave as if you were never there. It also features in our best stealth games of all time.

King of Seas is a 2021 top-down naval action game with a procedurally generated world from Italian studio 3DClouds. The heir to the throne is framed for the king's murder, turns pirate and goes looking for the truth, while every new game reshuffles ports, trade routes, quests and enemy positions. That keeps it fresh even after several playthroughs.

The mechanics are simple but satisfying: steer your ship, dodge cannonballs, capture vessels, level up your captain's skills and your own galleon. It has none of Port Royale's economic depth or Sea Dogs' seriousness, but it's a fun pirate ride for a few evenings that also runs well on low-end PCs and is available on consoles too.

Republic of Pirates combines building a pirate base, managing a settlement and raiding at sea. You grow your own colony during the Golden Age of Piracy, set up production chains, hire captains, defend your harbor from attacks and send raids to neighboring islands in real-time naval battles. Since 2025 it has also been available on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S.

It's more of a city-building strategy game with a pirate coat of paint than an action adventure: economy and rum supply matter as much as cannons. But for anyone who grew up with Tropico 2 and wished for a modern take on it, Republic of Pirates can be seriously addictive, especially when your first squadron sails home with holds full of plunder.

Abandon Ship is a tactical naval roguelike from British studio Fireblade Software, fully released in 2019 and later ported to iOS. It looks like an oil painting come to life: waves, storms and burning ships are rendered in the style of classic maritime art, the map sits in a gilded frame and the fog of war peels back like an uncovered canvas. At heart it's FTL under sail: you guide your ship across a procedurally generated map, flee a mysterious cult and make choices that decide whether your crew survives to the next port.

In combat you assign sailors to cannons, repairs and firefighting, choose which parts of an enemy ship to knock out first and pick the right moment to board. The developers drew on FTL and Sunless Sea, and it shows: every choice on the map can end in rich plunder or a hole below the waterline, and with permadeath switched on every run feels like a genuine gamble.

Pirates feel right at home on phones: a quick naval skirmish or a run of a card roguelike fits neatly into a commute or a lunch break. These are the best pirate games for Android and iOS, from open-sea sandboxes and guild-based strategy games to a mobile MMO set in the Age of Discovery. Every one of them is alive and updated in 2026, and several are on PC as well. If you're after bigger, console-style experiences on your phone, see our list of the best PC and console games on Android and iPhone.

Pirates Outlaws is a card roguelike in the vein of Slay the Spire that started on mobile in 2019, then came to PC and, in 2023, to PS4, Xbox One and Switch. You pick one of its pirate heroes and lead them across a map of islands full of fights, taverns, merchants and treasure.

Its signature mechanic is ammo: attack cards cost bullets, and if you run dry you have to reload first. That forces you to plan turns instead of just throwing out your strongest cards. With multiple modes, from story voyages to arena challenges, it easily holds up for dozens of hours, and on a phone it shines, since a single fight takes a couple of minutes.

The Pirate: Caribbean Hunt from Home Net Games is a 2016 mobile pirate sandbox that comes closest in spirit to Sea Dogs on a phone. You get a ship and an open Caribbean full of ports and islands, and the rest is up to you: trade, smuggling, digging up buried treasure, naval battles and boarding actions.

You can grow your fleet by buying and capturing new ships, and your reputation with the colonial powers shifts depending on whom you rob. It's free-to-play with ads and purchases, but it's perfectly playable without spending if you don't mind a bit of grinding. It's on Android and iOS, and it also came to Steam in 2016, so you can take the same sandbox to a bigger screen.

Pirate: Plague of the Dead is the follow-up to Caribbean Hunt from the same studio, adding the supernatural to the pirate fantasy. You play Captain John Rackham, who uses voodoo magic to bring the captains of the legendary Flying Gang back from the dead and take on a fearsome Inquisitor.

Each resurrected captain brings a special ability, one of them can even summon the Kraken, and most of the game is naval combat: maneuvering, broadsides and different ammo types. The open world has no loading screens, a day-night cycle and weather. It's free-to-play and came out in 2017 on Android and PC.

Sea of Conquest: Pirate War from FunPlus is an Unreal Engine 5 mobile strategy game that launched worldwide in early 2024. You captain a pirate ship on the Devil's Seas: recruit a crew of heroes with unique skills, customize your ship and cabins, explore islands for treasure and build up your own base.

The real fun starts with other players, as you band together in gangs, fight over special islands in mass battles with hundreds of participants and carve up sea routes. Regular seasons change the rules and add new characters, and there's a PC client as well. Like most mobile strategy games, it's built for playing a little every day over months rather than a single long session.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Tides of War is an online strategy game from Korean studio Joycity based on the Disney franchise, running since the late 2010s. All the familiar faces are here, including Jack Sparrow, Captain Barbossa, Davy Jones, Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann, and the story revolves around Jack's lost memories.

You develop your island base, assemble a fleet, battle other players and join guilds for large-scale naval campaigns. Updates keep coming, with new seasons, events and modes, including missions to protect Jack Sparrow himself. It's the pick for movie fans who want to command a pirate armada straight from their phone.

Uncharted Waters Origin is a mobile MMORPG based on Koei Tecmo's legendary series, with a global release in 2023 on Android, iOS and PC. It's set in the Age of Discovery: you recruit admiral companions, a mix of historical navigators and fictional heroes, and set out to explore a huge world from the Mediterranean to the New World.

Piracy is one path among many, alongside trade and exploration: you can raid merchant ships, hunt other pirates and fight naval battles, or build a trading empire reselling spices and silk. There's cross-play between phone and PC, and new seasons with fresh regions keep arriving in 2026. By mobile standards its scale is enormous, which makes it a great pick if you want a pirate MMO on your phone that will keep you busy for months.

Here are answers to the most common questions about pirate games: what to play on each platform, what to try if you love Sea of Thieves or Black Flag, and which pirate survival games are worth your time.

The most recommended picks are Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag (or its remake Black Flag Resynced), Sea of Thieves, Windrose, Age of Pirates 2: City of Abandoned Ships and Sid Meier's Pirates!. They take very different approaches, from story-driven action and online co-op to RPG sandboxes, classics and survival, but all of them nail the pirate atmosphere.

On PS5, the strongest choices are Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, Sea of Thieves, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, Skull and Bones, Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew and Return to Monkey Island. One Piece Odyssey is also there for anime fans.

Sea of Thieves is the obvious first pick, since it's Microsoft's own game and part of Game Pass. Beyond it, Xbox players can sail in Black Flag Resynced, Skull and Bones, Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii and Shadow Gambit. Game Pass lineups change, so it's worth checking the current catalog before you buy.

Yes. Return to Monkey Island, One Piece Odyssey, Port Royale 4, King of Seas, Pirates Outlaws and the Assassin's Creed Rebel Collection with Black Flag and Rogue are all available on Switch.

If you love sailing with friends, try Windrose for co-op survival and base building, Blazing Sails for quick battle royale matches and Windward Horizon for relaxed co-op voyages. For larger-scale online sailing, World of Sea Battle and Naval Action offer player economies and port battles.

Windrose is the standout pirate survival game right now, with crafting, settlements and co-op for up to eight players. Salt 2: Shores of Gold offers a calmer take on island exploration and crafting with no naval combat, and Atlas is still playable on community-run servers if you can find an active one.

For single-player, go with Pirates Outlaws, The Pirate: Caribbean Hunt and Pirate: Plague of the Dead. Strategy fans should try Sea of Conquest: Pirate War and Pirates of the Caribbean: Tides of War, while Uncharted Waters Origin is the pick for a full-scale naval MMO.

Which pirate game means the most to you: the one you keep coming back to, or the one that started it all? Tell us in the comments!

Pirate games rarely produce forgettable entries: when a game about the sea and ships is done well, people remember it for years. Sea Dogs still gets reinstalled decades later, the original Black Flag pulls players back for no particular reason, and Sea of Thieves fills up again with every new season. Alongside the main list, though, there are a few games that didn't make the cut, either because they've seen better days or because they'll only click with the most devoted fans. And if you want to keep exploring beyond the sea, check our best survival games on PC — plenty of islands, ships and shipwrecks there too.

An online sandbox from the creators of ARK where players built island bases, assembled ships plank by plank and fought over entire archipelagos. The official servers have been shut down and development has stopped, so today Atlas is only playable on private community servers. If you find an active one, it's still a unique experience of building a fleet from scratch.

A naval strategy game about fleet command, released in May 2026 under a familiar name. Battle of the Caribbean turned out divisive: the Caribbean looks beautiful and the atmosphere is there, but the tactics are oversimplified and the AI is weak. Series fans may want to judge for themselves, and the details are in our Corsairs – Battle of the Caribbean review.

Blackwake is a team shooter, free on Steam since 2024, where crews of up to 13 players share ships and fight together: one player fires a musket, another loads cannons, a third patches holes. The mechanics are still fantastic, but the player base has shrunk to a handful of loyal fans, so it's best to bring your own crew of friends.