Earlier today Plunder Bay got a paint job. Tonight Jolly Rogue got something better: a sword. I played through the new art on the TV, found four things to fix, and all four are live now at reefrunner.us/jolly-rogue/play/.

Jump on them, stab them

The big one. Landing on an enemy now drives your sword straight down into it. You bounce back up off the hit, your double jump comes back, and you can chain stab to stab across a whole crew without touching the deck. Run into an enemy from the side, or jump up into one from below, and it still hurts you, so you have to come down on top of them. Bosses take a real hit from a stab but can’t be one-shot; you’ll still need your guns for those.

Jolly Rogue on Palm Tree Island: the pixel pirate bouncing off a deckhand he just stabbed, with +50 above his head, a pixel crab waiting on a ledge to the right, and a painted bay with a pirate ship behind them
One stab, fifty points, and the crab is next.

No more triple jumps

On the third level there was a dock you could only reach with a jump the pirate doesn’t have. That turned out not to be the only one: a handful of docks across the game sat six tiles up, just past the top of a double jump. Every one of them has been lowered, and the game now has a test that checks every ledge in every level is within a comfortable double jump of something below it, so it can’t happen again.

A seamless sky

The new painted backdrops scroll behind you and repeat as you run, and where the end of a painting met the start of the next copy there was a faint line. The paintings now overlap and fade into each other, so the sky just keeps going.

A coin magnet that works

The coin magnet only pulled in coins that were almost touching you, so it felt like it did nothing. It now reaches about five tiles, and the monkey that collects coins for you reaches even further. Buy it at the shop and watch the gold come to you.

Where to play

Jolly Rogue is free, plays in your browser on a phone or computer, works with a game controller, and has no ads, no accounts and no tracking.