Pastry Pirates key art: a chef's-hat skull and crossbones on a black flag, surrounded by wheat, milk, cinnamon, an egg, a cutlass and crossed rolling pins.

Pastry Pirates — press kit

A free pirate board game you play in a browser. Pirates who bake.

Free. No download, no login, no account. Works on a phone.

The story

Wyatt Roy is a designer. In 2026 he went to watch a summer-camp class where highschoolers design their own board games, and two of them — Luca and Amelia — presented a bridge-building game called Seafarers. In his own words, on the game's credits page:

“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.”

Three months later there is a finished game. The other half of the reason it exists is simpler: he wanted to bake a cookie from absolute scratch — not buy the flour, find the wheat — and that compulsion is the game's entire core loop.

What it is

You come ashore at Tortuga to open a bakery, and the pantry is empty. You are dealt a recipe, then you sail a grid of islands plundering what it calls for — wheat, cocoa, vanilla, eggs, dairy, sugar, spice. You buy crates at island docks, trade with rival captains, and fire broadsides at anyone carrying something you need.

The wind turns every day, and sailing into it costs you half your distance — so half the game is reading the weather and the other half is deciding who to rob. The first captain home with a full recipe bakes, and the bake-off decides who is crowned Best Baker in the Caribbean.

It plays solo against AI captains, pass-and-play around one screen, or online with friends who join from a link. A voyage takes about fifteen minutes.

Facts

Name	Pastry Pirates
URL	playpastrypirates.com
Price	Free. No login, no account, no ads, nothing to install.
Platform	Any browser — phone, tablet or computer. Chrome and Safari.
Players	1–4. Solo vs AI · pass-and-play · real-time online
Length	About 15 minutes a voyage
Genre	Board game · strategy · pirates · baking
Developer	Wyatt Roy, solo
Built in	About three months
Built with	Vanilla HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Native ES modules, no framework, no build step.
Sound	Luis Zanforlin
Music	Fiddlers Plus and Muster Field Farms
Support the game	ko-fi.com/wyattroy

Description, at three lengths

Copy whichever fits. These are the wording the developer prefers.

Short — 25 words

A free pirate board game in your browser. Plunder baking ingredients, battle rival captains, race home to bake. Play with a friend in 60 seconds. playpastrypirates.com

Medium — 50 words

Pastry Pirates is a free browser board game about pirates who bake. Sail the Sugar Seas, plunder ingredients off islands, trade and fight rival captains, and race home to be crowned Best Baker in the Caribbean. Solo, pass-and-play, or online with friends. No login, no download, about 15 minutes. playpastrypirates.com

Long — 150 words

Pastry Pirates is a free pirate board game that runs in any browser. You come ashore at Tortuga to open a bakery, find the pantry empty, and set out across the Sugar Seas to plunder the ingredients your recipe calls for. You buy crates at island docks, trade with rival captains, and fire broadsides at anyone carrying what you need. The wind turns every day, and sailing into it costs you half your distance. The first captain home with a full recipe bakes — and the bake-off decides who is crowned Best Baker in the Caribbean. It plays solo against AI captains, pass-and-play around one screen, or online with friends who join from a link. There is no login, no download and no account. A voyage takes about fifteen minutes. It was built in about three months by one designer, in vanilla JavaScript, with no framework and no build step. playpastrypirates.com