I was shocked that I hadn’t yet heard of Davey X Jones as the games industry’s self-proclaimed number-one pirate aficionado. After roughly 40 minutes with the Davy x Jones demo available during Steam Next Fest, I’m excited to see what the final product looks like, though cautious as well. In Davy x Jones, you play as a beheaded Davy Jones, betrayed by pirate lords across the seven seas and their leader, Edward Teach aka Blackbeard. It’s Teach who is responsible for you not having a head, but fortunately, your lifeless body discovers this head once more and together, this unlikely duo heads off on a quest for revenge.
I like that Davy’s soulless body grunts his name repeatedly, while Davy’s floating skull handles all the talking. But the two also amusingly interact with each other, with some nice voice acting too. Everything going on in this world, from the visuals to the storytelling and more, is great and I’m legitimately excited for more. However, I hope the team can use feedback from this demo and the time between now and its unannounced release date for polish. Of course, this is a demo of an in-development game so it naturally could use work, but so far, the first-person gun-and-swordplay feels a little floaty, lacking the weight I’d expect from the scourge of the seas. It’s not optimized well either, but again, it’s a demo, so I won’t hold developer Parasight’s feet to the fire, err, raging seas over this. Nonetheless, Davy x Jones has lots of promise and I look forward to the final release. – Wesley LeBlanc
Check out the demo and wishlist here.
