This pirate-themed FPS just got an enormous update that lets you sail a 'living ship'—a hybrid of wooden hull and space whale that's called Abby and is utterly horrifying

A terrifying grinning space whale with a wooden torso floats through the nebulous void of the underworld in Davy x Jones

(Image credit: Parasight)

Forget moustaches, novels, and heavily discounted PC components—November this year has been all about pirates. Earlier this month, piratical survival sim Salt 2 weighed its early access anchor and sailed into the 1.0-pen ocean, while this week saw the release of Captain Wayne: Vacation Desperation, a buccaneer-tinged blaster built in the original Doom engine.

Then there's supernatural seafaring adventure Davy x Jones. Originally launched in August, Davy x Jones is a roguelike FPS where you play a headless freebooter named Jones, battling through the underworld in first-person combat while accompanied by a chatty skull companion named Davy.

Davy x Jones - Official Exclusive Kraken Hunt Update Launch Trailer - YouTube

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Your ship isn't just used for transportation, either. The sailing update introduces naval battles where you trade broadsides with other underworld vessels, as well as a crew system where you recruit fellow spectral scallywags that bring new weapons, attack types, and other abilities. It also adds a boss fight against the Kraken, which developer Parasight describes as "a dynamic fight that will push your strategic mind, your crew, and your ship's defences to the absolute limit."

This would seem sufficient for an update in and of itself. But the patch goes further still, extensively reworking the Jones side of Davy x Jones. First-person combat has been expanded with heavy attacks, rapid strikes and a "deeper" 5-hit combo system. Meanwhile, gunplay has been rebalanced with ammo limits and a "refined" reload system, melee attacks benefit from improved animations, and enemies have received AI tweaks to make them more entertaining to fight.

And that still isn't everything. The update completely redesigns the skill tree to accommodate the new crew recruitment system, adds a codex filled with tips and tutorials, enables support for Nvidia frame generation and FSR4, and throws in some Steam achievements for good measure.

It's an impressive-sounding update, though Parasight cautions that existing saves will be "corrupted and incompatible" due to the sheer number of changes made. If you're new to Davy x Jones and fancy giving it a whirl, the shooter is on a 20% discount until December 9, bringing the price down to $14.39/£12.

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

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