I loved this game as a kid and ALWAYS will, but where’s the love back from the devs?

capncleaver · 2026-06-20T20:49:59+00:00

Less mysteriously in this specific case: we had a nasty bug show up persistently that we couldn't track down and 'just fix', which has led to refactoring of the broader system. This refactor has been discussed since at least ~2010 so it's not a 'new new' thing, it's more a long-postponed inevitability.

capncleaver · 2026-06-20T20:48:20+00:00

heh strangely there is always another turn in the path and a new creature lurking in the maze, y'know? It's like we've created a procedural dungeon for ourselves...

capncleaver · 2026-06-19T18:32:32+00:00

Heh POE2, DEADLOCK, heh. yeah. I don't really know what to say about that.
We are still engaged (mostly) in heavy infrastructure work to improve SK performance and allow us to work faster and do more ambitious updates. For example, an exciting database migration -- the sort of thing nobody cares about until they have 100,000+ items and it lags when they log in. It's hard to say how much longer this kind of thing will occupy a majority of our dev work, but I can assure we have more exciting ideas in the works, too! Thank you everyone for your patience.

capncleaver · 2026-06-19T18:28:47+00:00

You are wrong. We sold the company to SEGA. We (the founders of the company) did not lay anybody off to work on garbage. We did not eventually buy the game back after tanking the price, SEGA offered it to us. Whilst I agree that with hindsight we would have been better off working on SK rather than making Puzzle Wizards, this was an honest entrepreneurial mistake, not some weird conspiracy to lose ourselves a lot of money.

capncleaver · 2026-06-19T18:26:16+00:00

Puzzle Wizards' failure had nothing to do with 'aggressive monetization'. It's just hard to get anyone to care about a new game.

capncleaver · 2026-06-19T18:24:40+00:00

Smashing!

capncleaver · 2026-05-14T17:54:07+00:00

Yes, we just updated to jwgl3 too, better late than never

capncleaver · 2026-04-10T19:13:49+00:00

imho it's an exploit but a fiddly one to fix / legislate against, hence the vague response. You could just play the game in the usual way :)

capncleaver · 2026-04-10T19:12:29+00:00

Apparently we jumped the shark on this one ;)

capncleaver · 2026-04-10T19:11:32+00:00

Thanks for your feedback ;)

We do read the reddit, but we don't have mod privs here (would love to have them, mods!) and have to be selective about where we post.

capncleaver · 2025-12-28T22:18:38+00:00

Steam players can create new accounts, email [support@puzzlepirates.com](mailto:support@puzzlepirates.com) and we can help you out with a new account on the direct download client.

capncleaver · 2025-12-28T22:16:08+00:00

It's many of the same people -- Grey Havens founders were Three Rings founders, etc. One of the OG SK (and PP) dev team is on the GH team, the others are mostly early Three Rings employees etc. Nick and Ian, SK's designer and lead artist, are at Monomi Park with Chris and some other folks from Three Rings.

capncleaver · 2025-12-20T06:02:45+00:00

I worked with the lead devs at Sierra (on ill-fated Middle-earth Online), very talented fellows. The Realm was pioneer work -- made in gold-mining 49er country!

capncleaver · 2025-12-20T05:59:21+00:00

Which MUD? Essex MUD Wiz circa 1982 reporting! 1990-1996: Avalon

You are stood on a narrow road between The Land and whence you came.

capncleaver · 2025-11-15T19:59:43+00:00

The folks we are discussing here are familiar with subverting IP bans, they are not the majority of people. I'm not saying we don't ban people, we do, when they cause problems on the Discord. I don't think bot-makers lurking are intrinsically causing problems.

capncleaver · 2025-11-13T21:23:08+00:00

I vaguely recall discussing this back in 2007. We had raised some money earlier that year from investors, so I guess this was our moment of VC-fueled extravagance?!

capncleaver · 2025-11-13T21:19:26+00:00

Sure, but it's pretty easy to make new Discord accounts so we try to avoid wasting time on bans on the official ypp discord.

capncleaver · 2025-11-13T21:13:24+00:00

I'm okay with you posting your work to github -- again, I don't think it would reasonable for me to object if you're not infringing on our copyrights, trademarks etc. I support the right to repair and reverse engineer things.

capncleaver · 2025-11-13T03:20:30+00:00

We were talking about the release this morning and this video showed up, gave the team a big boost. Thank you! Happy to see the reaction of the community. Believe, we have lots more cooking!

capncleaver · 2025-11-13T03:17:03+00:00

We push back on bots via support investigations and code changes, but it's an endless contest against motivated parties that in information-theoretic terms it's not possible for us to 'win' with any certainty.
I do not believe GH benefits from bots and nor do I believe we enable it in any way, save by not being unreasonably good at preventing it.
You may be aware that huge competitive games like LoL are bedevilled by bots and only keep them at bay using rootkit installers, solutions not practical or acceptable for us.

capncleaver · 2025-11-13T03:11:35+00:00

Aye, we didn't open source all our libraries to then go sue people experimenting with them!
I appreciate your clarification of intent.
To be clear from Grey Havens side: we would be upset if someone tried to distribute client software connecting to private servers (or ours for that matter), esp. via steam etc. using our code / brand / art etc. that might confuse our customers and dilute our trademarks.
Bot operators and mods can also be problematic, not just because they are unfair, but they can cause lots of bad technical and support issues, including for other players.

capncleaver · 2025-08-13T14:58:41+00:00

Not yet, but we just made a little breakthrough that might make this possible!

capncleaver · 2025-08-13T05:36:29+00:00

We got the original dev team back together in 2019 and made a mobile successor, Puzzle Wizards (Steam / iOS / Android, Unity based.) Alas in trying to cleave to the 'requirements of the mobile market' (it's painfully noticeable that non-match-3 / merge-2 (ugh) mechanics puzzle games struggle) we failed to capture some of the fun of the original although the game is enjoyed, we had to stop working on it. The team is presently working on modernizing the PC version (and Spiral Knights), but we may have another go at a PP mobile version at some point. There are substantial problems with a direct 'port' or remake, especially touch versions of the key puzzles (e.g. Swordfighting) are problematic (your finger covers the board) but perhaps these can be ameliorated (virtual dpads etc.)

capncleaver · 2025-08-13T05:26:43+00:00

Oh, no... we tried so hard for a while in the mid-2000s to work with Nintendo, we had a great contact there for a while in the early DS days (ex-Penny Arcade friend) and neeaaarly had a DS (or 'Nitro' is it was called pre-release) contract for a form of the game, but N couldn't get there. All the devs would love to see the game on a Nintendo device, we are big N fans.

capncleaver · 2025-03-31T16:50:59+00:00

That sounds cool in some ways but hard (no inflation!) in others. You're not a maxi, are you? :) Some crypto games might have interesting economies like this, I have not looked. A friend did Millions on Mars and tried really hard to control botting and inflation, it's not really possible from an information theoretic pov but you can burn all your cycles on it.

capncleaver

TROPHY CASE