Shantae and the Pirate's Curse is an action platform game, the third installment in WayForward’s Shantae series.

Plot

The game follows the half-genie Shantae and takes place after an event of the Shantae: Risky’s Revenge. The main heroine abandons her genie powers and stars adjusting to the life of a regular human being. One day she comes across the previous game’s antagonist, a pirate named Risky Boots that tells her about evil and fearsome tyrant Pirate Master sealed long ago by genies wants to revive himself using Dark Magic. Now Shantae must form an unexpected alliance with her past rival to stop Pirate Master.

Gameplay

Regarding gameplay, Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse shares many similarities with previous games in the series. It is a 2D side-scroller that is not divided into several levels but rather takes place in one interconnected world. The game mostly consists of fighting enemies, solving puzzles, platforming sections, interacting with different NPC that can give you quests or sell useful items. Since Shantae abandoned her genie powers, in this game you do not use magic abilities, instead of throughout the game you collect different pirate items such as a pistol, a pirate hat, pirate boots, scimitar, and cannon. Each of them gives player new abilities that help in combat, puzzle solving or open previously closed areas of the game world.