Davy X Jones is a first person adventure with piratical flair

2025 seems to be the year of the ninja with multiple releases in the Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi series, so it’s good to also see a game that focuses on the masked assassin’s natural predator: the pirate. Now in Steam Early Access, Davy X Jones sees the fusion of pirate myth and pirate history as you play the role of the eponymous antihero following his death at the hands of Edward Teach – the infamous Blackbeard. Despite Teach decapitating Jones, you awake in the Locker, a space which works as a kind of piratical Purgatory. What follows is a hard hitting first person adventure that takes clear influence from Pirates of the Caribbean and adds a comic Gothic twist.

The main conceit of the game is that your head remains separated from your body, with the floating skull Davy constantly berating and bossing around the body of Jones (which you play as). Of course, verbose skulls have a long lineage in gaming, from the navigator Murray in Monkey Island to Johnson the gun in Shadows of the Damned. Davy is very much in this mould, serving as the main narrative driver of events, and having an awful lot to say for himself. In fact, Davy is so verbose that he can become a little annoying at times with repeated lines whilst Jones somehow manages to speak a monotone ‘Jones’ in response. How does he do this? It’s best not to think too hard about it.

The underwater world of Davy X Jones is suitably submersive and immersive with fish of various kinds swimming around the place. There doesn’t seem to be any sense of moving underwater, but this is probably a good choice as the resistance this would provide goes against the fluid and dynamic combat system.

Enemies are mostly variations of undead pirates with some imps and aquatic monsters scattered amongst them. The pirates range from simple grunts with cutlasses to grenadiers and others that can shield and empower their comrades. The frequent combat encounters involve combinations of these enemies that make the most of their different skills and require some degree of strategic approach. I generally found it most effective to remove the ranged enemies first and then focus on the close combat foes. Combat does get a little repetitive at times, as fights are seemingly constant and enemies respawn quickly. I would hope that the latter is remedied for the full release as it leads to serious fatigue.

Traversal across the watery depths is pretty neat, with double jumps and a grapple move helping you to cross great distances with ease. This can become a double-edged sword at times, as the open environments can make it easy to get lost and the relatively samey scenery means that landmarks are few and far between. You do find a feathered companion who helps direct you to objectives quite early on and there is a map though so navigation becomes easier, but what doesn’t change is how easy it is to fall to your death. Whilst checkpoints are quite frequent, repeating fights gets boring fast.

The characters in Davy X Jones are well realised and the writing is pretty solid. The early access version has some interesting quests, but I did encounter a bug whereby these wouldn’t progress so I ended my time until the full release. I will definitely check out the 1.0 version as there is a lot here to enjoy and hopefully the bugs and balancing issues will be fixed by then.