Originally an Unreal Tournament 2004 modification, AirBuccaneers HD has been revived as a Unity engine based game. Now players can fly their hot air balloons across the vast skies and fight their enemies with cannon fire and daring boarding attempts. This time the Buccaneers aren’t battling against the original modification’s lowly Peasants though, as there’s a new threat rising from the west: the brutal and fearsome Vikings.

One very important update is that from now on your accounts will be accumulating experience as you play. This experience will at the moment determine your in-game ranks. In future it’ll do much more. If you haven’t bought an account though, then your ranks will not go up even if you accumulate experience. The free account will gather your experience, but it just won’t unlock the ranks. So if you for example, gather 2000 experience points with free account and then buy the activation key, your character will immediately go up to the level that your accumulated experience dictates. Word of warning on the experience gathering though. We might have to wipe the stats at some point during the Alpha.

Here’s a crude changelist:

Domination lag performance problem fixed
Scoreboard fixed
Account activation now possible from Login Menu
Experience based level progress system
Shouts (default U-key) for Pre-Alpha and Loot & Booty Pack license buyers
HUD and some other graphics improved
New sounds and music
New map menu
Bug fixes
Tomorrow around 10:00 GMT+2 time when our IndieGoGo campaign ends, we will update our Shop and the current Pre-Alpha packs will be replaced with the Alpha packs. This means that the price will go up a bit and many of the extras won’t be available any more. So grab it while it’s still available.

See you all in the skies!