Hoisting the sails…
Multiplayer needs a one-time Firebase setup — see ONLINE_SETUP.md. Solo play works right now! Lots of crews out sailing right now — multiplayer may be slow to sync. Play Solo works instantly and never waits on the crowd!
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Pass & Play
Pass the deviceCollect every ingredient on yer recipe map, then sail home and dock at the Isle of Tortuga. That fires up yer ovens — and the bake-off begins!
Each captain gets a recipe map ( ingredients), gold coins, and a ship docked at the Isle of Tortuga. Each island holds only a few crates — and the fewer that are left, the dearer they get.
🌬️ Wind. Each day the wind picks a direction and holds it for the whole table. Look at the compass: the big needle is this day's wind, and the ghost needle behind it is next day's. That forecast is never wrong, so ye can plan around it — save for a storm, which the compass warns ye of a day ahead but won't say which way it'll blow.
⛵ Sail. Sailing is free. Move up to squares in any mix of directions — but the moment yer route bites into the wind, even for one square, the whole move is capped at . Across the wind doesn't count against ye. Sail past other ships, but don't end on one.
⚓ Act — choose one:
Dock — tie up at an island's dock (one ship at a time!) and flip for yer fortune: heads ye strike buried treasure and take 🌕; tails ye spend the turn workin' the docks for 🌕. Either way ye may then buy an ingredient, with the coin ye just earned. Stay as long as ye like and keep flipping.
💰 Ingredient prices rise. The first ingredient off a full island is 🌕, the next 🌕, and the last one 🌕. Get there first, or pay for dawdling. Ye may buy ingredients that aren't on yer recipe — they make excellent trade bait...
🕯️ The black market. A sold-out island always has ONE more ingredient under the counter — a flat 🌕, forever. Steep, but no recipe is ever truly dead. Skint? The black market'll also take any two ingredients from yer hold in trade for it — even two of the same.
Attack — fight an adjacent ship! Pay 🌕 for powder, then one broadside each. Heads beats tails. Both heads? The captain firing downwind lands the shot — a crosswind clash and the cannonballs collide. Both tails and the defender may slip away, free. If the shot doesn't tell, the attacker may pay 🌕 to load another broadside and fire alone — heads and it lands — as often as they can pay. Break off and the battle ends with nobody gaining a thing. The winner takes one ingredient of their choosing. Nobody changes squares. Every dock is raidable — a berth protects nobody. But once a captain's ovens are lit they're beyond yer reach — rob 'em on the way home, or not at all. Ye can't attack a ship with an empty hold; there's nothing to take.
🔭 Callin' the fight. Any captain not in it may call the winner from the crow's nest. It's free, it costs ye nothing to be wrong, and ye get 🌕 from the bank if yer right. Nobody's paid on a battle that ends with no winner.
Trade — hail the whole table at once. Say what ye want and what ye'll give — ingredients, coins, or both. Every captain holding it answers: accept, deny, or name their price. Ye see every answer together, then take one or walk away. One round of haggling, and no bonus for shaking hands.
Muse — do none of it. Sit back, dream o' pastry, and pocket 🌕 for yer patience.
The trade windsThe sea around the rim of the world flows in a mighty clockwise current, in arcs of varying length each game. Sail (or get blown) into it and yer instantly swept to the far corner of that stretch — a daring shortcut for captains in a hurry!
The compass warns ye a full day ahead, so a storm is never a surprise. At the top of the day it blows every ship at once, squares, all the same direction, before anyone acts. Land and other ships stop ye short — that's the whole of it. Nobody loses a turn, and a dock is just water the storm can push ye onto or off. Mind the rim, though: blown into the trade winds and yer swept clean across the sea.
The bake-offDock at Tortuga holdin' yer whole recipe and yer ovens light that very turn. Yer recipe's revealed, yer ingredient crates get shuffled before yer eyes — and ye must name them back in the recipe's own order, from memory. Pay 🌕 to watch the shuffle again, as often as yer purse allows.
Crates ye place right lock in; the rest get shuffled again tomorrow, and ye bake again — yer attempt IS yer turn. The whole table watches every bake, so make it a show. Get every crate in its place and ye've baked it!
WinningFirst captain to bake their full recipe wins the voyage. Two captains bakin' it on the same day? No contest — they bake together. Best Baker goes to whoever brought the most to the bench: most ingredients in the hold, then most coin, then whoever got home first.
May yer flips be heads and yer rivals be broke.
These rules live at playpastrypirates.com/rules.html — a page ye can send to a shipmate.
This game was made by Wyatt Roy, a designer and overly enthusiastic noodle. It was inspired by two highschoolers, Luca and Amelia, who were taught by Nick Lesko how to design their own board game. When I came to class and saw theirs, an amazing bridge-building game called Seafarers, something in me clicked. Or broke. Or both. For the next 8 days straight (and counting) I did nothing except eat pastry, talk like a pirate, and build Pastry Pirates.
The game owes an immense amount to Luis Zanforlin, who spent his entire last day in Boston imagining mechanics for it in his head, and who later wrote every sound effect you hear, my father Robin and mother Cathy, two of its first multiplayer testers, and Xavaar, who came up with the idea for how the wind should affect your movements based on real sailing — as well as ways to make battles genuinely strategic, and playtesting it with an obsession that mirrored my own. The music is by Fiddlers Plus and Muster Field Farms. And lastly, to my sweet partner Juju, who has tolerated me turning every conversation towards Pastry Pirates with the acceptance of a Buddhist monk.
Trouble syncing with the crew — a move may not have gone through. Refresh to reconnect if this doesn't clear up on its own. Yer captain is repairing the voyage log — the board may be a few moves behind until they're done.