Skull & Bones gameplay leak shows six minutes of footage

Ubisoft Singapore’s Skull & Bones was a long-awaited release. Announced at E3 2017, the pirate adventure has been delayed for several years; the most recent update from Ubisoft came in September 2020, more than 18 months ago.

Skull & Bones finally resurfaced Friday when a Redditor uploaded a leak showing six minutes gameplay. It described it as a tutorial video meant for Alpha testers — and detailed the “infamy system” as well as crafting features. Ubisoft has confirmed that this leak is genuine to Polygon.

The leaked footage comprises a narrated tutorial video that goes over the infamy system, which tracks your reputation as a pirate. 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.

Along with exploring the land, you can also set sail to board ships and navigate them — Skull & Bones a pirate game. The video emphasizes survival elements and the importance of keeping your ship well stocked. You can’t give your crew enough food and they will rebel against 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:

We can confirm this is a glimpse of our upcoming game Skull & Bones. We recently ran a technical testing of the game, and some details were 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. More information about the game will be available soon.

Skull & Bones‘ development has been plagued with setbacks. It was first shown at E3 2017 and has since been delayed several times. The game was originally supposed to come out in 2019, and then got pushed 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 & Bones from Ubisoft. 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.