Seriously, where do kids get all that energy? If I could learn how to harness the staying power of a 2-year old, I would never have anything leftover on my to-do list by the end of the day... but sadly, they ran circles around us and, at the end of the day, all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for a week. 

 

But as you know, there's no rest for the working class, so I decided I needed about two pots of coffee and something fast-paced to wake me up. Lucky for me Skeleton Pirates had just been released and from the look of it, I thought it might be just the impetus I needed to get the adrenaline levels up. 

 

 

And lucky for me, Skeleton Pirates delivered. 

 

Now, I'm not going to pretend there's anything unique about this game. It's pretty much a copy of Plants vs. Zombies, but instead of zombies you have skeleton pirates and instead of plants you have treasure chests and cannons. 

 

Of course, there are a few twists that were added that provide some extra fun. In order to get points for cannons, you need to produce silver stars. Treasure chests will produce silver stars for you, just like your daisies in PvZ, but there are also little blue birds who fly by that will drop them as well, so remember to keep your eyes open for them. 

 

 

Another twist in Skeleton Pirates is that you need to provide your cannons with ammo. They can't just make cannon balls, like your plants can. So, in order to make sure you don't run out of ammunition, you need to have gold treasure chests on the board that will produce gold stars. 

 

Trust me, it can be pretty easy to forget to load up on gold stars, and, just when you're in the midst of unloading on a whole slew of pirate skeletons, you run out of ammo and then it's all over. 

 

The graphics for Skeleton Pirates were cute, very cartoony and colorful. I loved the little blue birds that flew by to help you out. The skeleton pirates were also memorable and kind of adorable... for skeletons anyhow... their big eyes, exaggerated jaws, and pearly white teeth were fun to look at as they bore down on your defenses. 

 

 

Speaking of defenses... not so cute... there's really not much you can do with cannons and catapults to make them adorable... a far cry from the ridiculous cuteness you get from your plants in PvZ. Maybe if they had humanized them a bit more... given them mouths and eyes like the plants have... otherwise, they were just pieces of equipment and you really didn't mind losing them during battle. 

 

The music was upbeat and catchy, nothing too annoying. I left it on without thinking too much about it. I did think the voices were great. The pirate "Yo-ho-ho" and "where's the treasure" were done just right in a wonderfully raspy pirate voice. 

 

 

There's obviously not much of a story going on here... they are pirates... they are dead... they want your treasure. That's pretty much it. Do you really need much more than that? Well... it's no PvZ, but then again... what is?