Age of Booty was pretty quality.

XBL had a sale last week on Booty for 200 points ($2.50). For that price the game couldn't really disappoint and it didn't. It's basically a multiplayer RTS on a much smaller scale. The point of the game is to capture a certain number of towns before another team does. Sounds easy, but with every other team with the same task, it becomes  a bit daunting trying to balance between trying to capture new towns while defending your old ones. There are though upgrades you can make to your boat and towns. Each town produces a certain item that's needed to upgrade your town and boat. There's Rum, Wood, and Money. Upgrading your town defense which requires Trees and Money basically just gives you added health and more cannon power while your boat, using Trees and Rum, can be upgraded up to nine total times in three different categories, speed, cannons, and defense. Each has their own strength and weakness meaning a good balance is what you should go for.


There's also other other random stuff going on, you can attack little tiki huts that have little health but contain one of the three resources. There's also merchant ships that sail around that give you special items, one is a card that allows you to steal up to two specific resources from, another is a whirlpool where you select a tile and it transports the ship on it to another area of the map. A ghostship that turns you invisible and allows you to travel at max speed allowing you to bypass pesky defenders on your way to your destination. Then there's the best one, the bomb which you play on any open tile and it explodes heavily damaging any ship or town with a one tile radius around it. This is best to take out multiple ships or damage a  full upgraded town. It's not recommended using the bomb near your own base though as it does friendly damage too.

The challenge single player mode makes this simple and easy seeming game into a real test of strategy. The game really ups the difficulty later too where you start praying for the time to run out rather than reach the objective. The game is one of those difficult but satisfying games where you feel like you accomplished something after multiple failed attempts.

Overall, the game is best used as a multiplayer game with a bunch of friends. I'd put it up there with Uno and Carcasonne in a rotation.

Fun game that if you catch it for cheap, is 100% worth the price.