Skull & Bones gameplay leak shows six minutes of footage

Ubisoft Singapore’s Skull & BonesIt’s been long overdue. An announcement at E3 2017 revealed the pirate adventure. The most recent Ubisoft update was in September 2020. That’s more than 18 years ago.

Skull & Bones finally resurfaced on Friday, when a Redditor posted a leak showing six minutes of gameplay — describing it as a tutorial video “meant for Alpha testers” — detailing the game’s “infamy” system as well as features like crafting. Ubisoft has confirmed that the leak is genuine to Polygon.

Leaked footage includes a tutorial video which narrates the infamy process, which records your pirate status. As you rank up your infamy, you’ll get access to new opportunities like the ability to build better and cooler-looking ships. To level up, you will be able to make “high-risk, high-reward” contracts with NPCs in the game, the narrator says, as well as explore, plunder, and complete world events.

In addition to exploring on land, you’ll be able to set sail and board other ships — Skull & BonesThis is not a game about pirates. It emphasizes the need to be prepared for anything and keeping your ship fully stocked. If you don’t feed your crew enough, they will just straight-up rebel and kill you. According to the video, crafting is an “essential” part of the game that will allow you to upgrade your ship’s stats, like attack damage and HP.

Asked for comment on the leak, a Ubisoft representative confirmed to Polygon that the footage comes from an “early version” of Skull & Bones:

This is an oblique glimpse at our game. Skull & Bones.A technical test was conducted recently for the game. Some of its details have been made public. This video footage was taken from an early version of the game and doesn’t reflect the quality and features of the final game. We’ll share more details about the game soon.

Skull & Bones’ development has been plagued with setbacks. The game was shown for the first time at E3 2017, but has been delayed multiple times. It was initially scheduled to release in 2019. However, it got moved to 2020. It’s 2022 now, but it looks like this ship might finally be ready to set sail.

So far, there’s been no substantive update on Skull & BonesUbisoft. However, the game’s official Twitter account posted a brief clip this morning with the text “Keep your eyes on the horizon…” and a desert island emoji. It’s only the second tweet from the account since the aforementioned development update in September 2020.