"The golden chest is the legendary, ultimate treasure said to exist since the birth of the world. They say all of piracy began when, centuries ago, explorers sailed out in search of it. The truth is, nobody really knows what's inside, but whatever it is, it's got to hold unfathomable wealth and power! ...If we can get our hands on the key and chest, we'll be the greatest pirates of all time!"
Dubloon is a freeware RPG developed in 2010 by Wishes Unlimited founder Greg Lobanov over the course of about a year.
The game is set in an Ocean Punk world where the Navy has almost complete control of the seas, leaving pirates scattered and vulnerable. The story follows a crew of four pirates who seek out the world's ultimate treasure - a golden treasure chest - taking on the Navy in the process.
The game uses a unique mouse-based interface and incorporates elements of many different games, such as combat based on Action Commands and field moves.
The game can be downloaded here
or here.
This game provides examples of:
- Action Commands: Using battle items starts a short, timed minigame where scoring points directly correlates to the damage said item deals (e.g. for a Cannon item, drag and drop cannonballs which roll past the screen inside; more shots equals more damage). In addition, every boss has at least one attack which can be completely blocked with use of the mouse: either click and hold the respective projectile(s) or possibly using your mouse as a shield to block attacks.
- Actually Four Mooks: On the overworld, every single encounter is represented by a sprite of an enemy from that area which roams around. But when you enter in combat with said enemy, their encounters may feature additional enemies to accompany that which you saw in the overworld.
- After-Combat Recovery: At the end of any battle, any characters who had died are restored to 1 HP once the battle is over.
- All in a Row: Exploited in one of the puzzles located in the Pirates' Graveyard, where the solution involves stepping onto four adjacent tiles with the party in the correct order.
- Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The battle against the Final Boss takes place in a black void with a golden yelllow swirling vortex effect on its side of the field (at least with what Gamemaker 1.1 native effects can conjure). This is the only such instance in-game; other battle environments are rendered with in-game tilesets.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: When Russell and Anne leave Outcast Island bound for Jolly Roger Island, the game temporarily switches point of view to Riley and his pet monkey Ricky until when the four meet up shortly before departing Jolly Roger Island.
- Bag of Sharing: Hand Waved; Riley and Ricky are sent a package containing the first two crew members' entire inventory. How they can fit all of that junk into a small package, however, is left to imagination.
- Barrier Change Boss: The Mermaid in Treasure Tower has an attack which recolors her scales either red, blue, or yellow, to indicate a weakness to either fire, ice, or electricity, respectively.
- Big Boo's Haunt: The Pirates' Graveyard, a purple-tone, foggy dark area decorated with tombstones where the primary type of enemies include ghosts, zombies, and limbs of zombies.
- Black Mage: Ricky. His learn set specializes on pure offensive magic (which does not necessarily specialize on one particular element like the others, and also includes some non-elemental water-themed spells), and a good portion of his skills have additional status effects.
- Booze-Based Buff: Pirates' magic is powered by alcohol. The more drunk one is, the more powerful they become.
- But Thou Must!:
- When Anne offers to help you escape prison and when Riley and Ricky are offered to join the crew, the player must accept in order to be able to proceed.
- You can deny Anne's offer to join her crew, but she's your only ticket off of Outcast Island.
- Likewise, when Kaz's crew asks for assistance, you can say no and leave them standing there, but you can't progress with the plot until you say yes.
- Carnivorous Healing Factor: A Man-Eating Plant can eat its allies alive to regain its Hit Points.
- Chain of Deals: On Stern Island, there are four pirates with whom the party must negotiate in the right order (find an item on the island to hand to one pirate, which gives you an item that another pirate is looking for, and so on) to find out the location of one of two Sea Serpents guarding the Keys to Atlan Tower.
- Combatant Cooldown System: Each combatant has a meter that allows them to perform an action when filled up. The game doesn't pause them when one of player characters gets their meter full, which means that it's possible for slower members to act beforehand, or to wait for some bosses to quit their Counter-Attack mode.
- Combat Exclusive Healing: Russell's and Riley's healing spells do not work out of combat. Once you end the battle, you need to resort to items for healing.
- Cool Versus Awesome: Over the course of your journey, you'll fight the following: pirates with hooks for heads, pirates with peglegs for heads, pirate zombies, vikings, ghosts, skeletons, sentient severed hands, multi-colored knights (including a golden one), sea serpents, mermaids, mutant fishes THAT SHOOT LASERS, a giant mole, flying hippos, walking trees and bushes... and more!
- Failed a Spot Check: One Navy NPC on Bowish Island remarks on "[your] pirate ship sailing by the island". Of course, he hadn't noticed any boat coming from this ship (or for that matter, any boat at all).
- Fatal Family Photo: In the Navy Base at Jolly Roger Island, one of the rooms (presumably Riley's dad's office) contains a family picture hanging on the wall. Riley's dad gets executed in that same room. That same picture is in the background during Riley's battle with Bradley.
- Fetch Quest: Davey Jones hands the crew a quest to fetch three gems hidden across the Pirate Graveyard (whose locations are not marked on the overworld; he offers hints as to where they are buried) to prove to him that the crew is serious about piracy. Succeeding makes Davey allow access to the Treasure Tower where the Golden Key resides.
- Fire, Ice, Lightning: An elemental theme shared between Russell, Anne, and Riley. The offensive magic on their respective movesets follows this pattern.
- Friend-or-Idol Decision: At the end of the game, immediately after defeating the final boss, the player must choose to either make out with the rest of the crew or the Golden Chest which the entire plot revolves around. 100% Completion allows you to save both.
- Ghost Pirate: In Greg Lobanov's later game Wandersong, the monkey from Dubloon makes a cameo. It's said in it that the monkey may actually secretly hold the spirit of a "legendary and powerful pirate."
- Go Wait Outside: Timber has to build another ship while on Pyrite Island. It takes as long as you re-enter part of the island where he is.
- The Guards Must Be Crazy: One NPC on Bowish Island gives Ricky a hint about the key to the house, just because he wouldn't expect the monkey to do this.
- Healing Checkpoint: Most save logs are located close to either trauma inns or red chests that replenish your crew's health and alcohol points. Ones that aren't are usually located somewhere within a dungeon.
- Heroic Mime: Russel, the silent protagonist.
- Played With. The intro and the endings are clearly narrated by him, and he does speak once in the game, even if it's for just one word: "Aye"
- Hopeless Boss Fight: The first battle with Bradley on the Navy ship. It's required to lose this fight in order to progress the story, and it is the only case in the game where losing a fight does not cause a standard game over. It's actually possible to beat that first battle with a LOT of grinding, but if this happens, Bradley just calls you a cheater and carries on as if he'd won anyway.
- 100% Completion: Collect all buried loot and open all the chests to unlock an alternate ending: the crew manages to save both the Golden Chest and themselves after fighting the Chest.
- It's Personal: The only reason Riley and Ricky join the crew is because Riley's dad was executed by the Navy, and shortly after the fact. After Riley meets the other crewmembers, Anne actually requests that Riley join in order to pay a debt of gratitude forward from Riley's father, who had served alongside Anne before the events of the game. Eventually, Riley gets the opportunity to deal the final blow to kill Bradley, and he proclaims before Bradley that said final hit is to avenge his dad.
- Load-Bearing Boss: Defeating the final boss causes Secret Island to start collapsing. The crew must make it back to the ship within a time limit. This ends the game.
- MacGuffin: The Golden Chest. The game revolves around bands of pirates attempting to fight the Navy (when they're not fighting each other in pursuit of the chest) in order to get their hands on it. However, even though the chest is said to contain unimaginable riches, its actual value is ambiguous as the game ends shortly after the protagonists open the chest.
- The Medic: Riley. His learnset contains every healing spell in the game (including those that Russell does not have), and is most notably the only crew member that can learn the HealMax spell which heals all party members by a substantial amount.
- New Era Speech: Delivered by Domin before the crew fights him, but unlike most examples, there is no audience he is presented to. The way he speaks in this segment, however, matches several other examples.Domin: Now, make way for a new world order under the Navy... one without the pestiferous existence of piracy!
- Pictorial Speech-Bubble: When Russel saves Ricky without saving Riley first, Ricky will ask where Riley is with a speech bubble depicting his head, to which Russel replies with speech bubble showing a shaking head.
- Playing with Fire: Anne has fire-based spells that go well with her personality and hair.
- Plot Coupon: Two serpent fangs serve as the key for the pirates to unlock the door to Altan Tower, which the pirates try to access since it holds information as to where the Golden Key to open the Golden Chest is located.
- Public Domain Artifact: The Golden Chest is effectively Pandora's Box. Immediately after opening it, Davy Jones quips that the chest was designed by the gods of the sea to contain the Greed within humanity's hearts. It's played with, though: immediately after mentioning this, Davy states that if you can "conquer the greed within" (re: fight and defeat the chest), the chest is truly the greatest treasure known to man - depending on how you interpret his quip that greed is what humanity truly greeds for the most.
- Recurring Boss: Bradley stars in a total of five separate boss fights, counting the first fight on the Navy ship in which Russell loses.
- Red Shirt Army: For most of the game, all you'll see of the Navy are the pathetic Navy Jr's, Navy ships in the Unexpected Shmup Level, and Bradley.
- Ret-Canon: "Actually, I've just decided that in Wandersong that's canon. Yes."
- Ridiculous Exchange Rates: One NPC on Pyrite Island demands you to buy his treasure chest's content for 1 million Farquads. Later it turns out that 1 million Farquads is worth 1 Dubloon.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The Golden Chest is revealed to be a vessel built to contain humanity's darkest Greed. The pirate crew must subdue it to end the game.
- Shock and Awe: Riley and Vypa, whose offensive skill learnsets incorporate most of the game's electrical spells.
- Shout-Out: On Bowish Island you can find a hat, a sword, and a cape that belong to Blue (shown equipped in the screenshot above). Also, on the name-entry screen, there is a "don't care" button which gives a character one of several pre-defined names. These include shout-outs to Monkey Island, One Piece and EarthBound alongside much more mundane names.
- Squishy Wizard: Ricky. He has the lowest base defense stat if Russell is not intentionally built with low defense, the highest base Alcohol stat, and a move pool which focuses extensively on offensive magic.
- Stealth Pun: Standish, the Viking-themed pirate and one of the members of the Quartet, has a sprite which prominently depicts him wielding an axe. His signature attack, Rock Out, is described as a "hot-rocking riff" (and overlays loud electric guitar music to go with it). He's shredding with an axe!
- The Evils of Free Will: Discussed. During the conversation before fighting Domin, Domin explains that his end goal is that the Navy act as the sole world order, because, in his words, without the Navy, the entire world would descend into chaos.
- The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Pirates are too afraid of the Navy to actually go out pirating.
- Take a Third Option: Your reward for collecting 100% of all buried treasure and chests is that the option to save both the Golden Chest and your pirate crew becomes available.
- Team Pet: Ricky, Riley's pet monkey.
- Trauma Inn: Every major town has an inn which, for a fee (if you happen to not have Anne in the party), the crew can stay in to restore the crew's health and Alcohol Points.
- Treasure Map: A map serves as the area select screen, and you can add new areas to travel to by finding maps scattered throughout the world.
- Trivial Title: Titled after the currency used in the game that has no bearing to its plot.
- Unexpected Shmup Level: When you travel between islands you get to play a short shooting minigame with your ship, giving you a chance to rack up some extra dubloons.
- Utopia Justifies the Means: The Navy's end goal. As Domin states, the end goal of the Navy is to act as the sole world order since collectively, they believe that without them, the whole world would descend into chaos. However, most pirates (including the crew) oppose this, since most pirates just want to go out hunting for treasure without the Navy on their backs trying to police everything.
- You All Meet in a Cell: Technically, you don't begin the game there, but it's right after the first area, and it's how you meet your second party member.
- You Rebel Scum!: The Navy bears this attitude, but Bradley is the most vocal exemplar.Bradley: All pirates are scum, and it's the Navy's job to eliminate them!
