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Why contribute?

Ahoy is an independent game project being developed by a small team of developers passionate about history. By making a regular or one-off monetary donation to the project, you can help to fund the game's production and bring it closer to completion. This contribution scheme presents an opportunity for individuals to directly support the development of a creative and exciting project, and to be a part of its ongoing success.

For indie games like Ahoy, contributions from the community can be crucial to the game's success. Unlike larger studios with ample resources, indie developers often rely on support from their audience to bring the shared vision to life. Overall, the contribution scheme for Ahoy presents an exciting opportunity for individuals to get involved in a creative project, support independent game development, and receive unique rewards in return. By working together, the Ahoy community can help make this vision a reality.


What your contribution means for Ahoy

A financial contribution towards Ahoy, beyond simply providing us with an immense sense of purpose in what we are creating, will also enable us to better finance the development of the project.

Running Costs Running Costs

The monthly running costs of the project includes development server hosting, service subscriptions (Github, Google Drive, etc.), software licensing (Adobe, 3D Software, etc.), keeping the website online, and even maintaining some of the functionality here on Discord through Nitro and other costs. Your contribution will help to offset some of these costs from the development team, and enable our personal finances to stretch further in enabling us to spend time on the project.

Contracted Overheads Contracted Overheads

In some cases, the project requires assistance in particular areas. It might be that the project is progressing on most fronts as expected, but that we're finding difficulty making progress in one specific area. Your contributions will enable us to possibly contract paid freelancers to come in and assist the project on a short-term basis to ensure the project is not held back in these areas.

The Community The Community

We'd also like to return the favour, and run community initiatives which might otherwise cost the team. These might be in the form of giveaways or other initiatives that grow the community, such as marketing/advertising.


Largely, we will prioritise the funds available from your contributions towards DEVELOPING Ahoy. If there is an area that needs financial assistance, your contributions will go a long way towards ensuring we can make those decisions and maintain progress on the project.

Types of Contribution

Regular Donations

You can make regular monthly contributions to Ahoy through Patreon. This are automatically renewed each month, and your rewards (based on the tier you choose to donate at) will remain as long as your Patreon contributions remain active.

One-off / Irregular Donations

This method of contribution is managed through the Ahoy website. You can make a donation of any amount you choose, and this amount will then provide you with a certain number of "Platinum Tier" months equal to £30 per month. Donations via the Ahoy website are tracked and accumulative. If you donate over £400, you will receive "Lifetime Platinum" rewards.

What is active contributor status?

In order to provide the correct donation rewards but also enable flexibility for how you can choose to donate, we have implemented an 'active' contributor status. Active contributors will receive newly added rewards, whereas inactive contributors will maintain some of the rewards earned during their previously active contributor period.

To explain this with a hypothetical scenario - Imagine that one member of the community decides to donate one larger amount via PayPal, while another chooses to donate smaller amounts each month via Patreon. Both members should in the end, receive the rewards appropriate to the amount they have donated. It is also important that those who continute to support the project receive new rewards as and when we are able to release them. This might be in the form of subsequent early access updates, physical merch, digital cosmetic rewards, and so on.

In order to preserve a sense of chronology within the reward system, we have decided to implement an activity status. This means that active contributors (those donating per month, or those who have donated a larger amount in recent months) unlock the newly released rewards, while past contributors can maintain the rewards that were earned during their active contribution period.

Patreon contribution history is tracked on the Patreon website, while PayPal contributions are tracked on the Ahoy website. We will be integrating the Patreon contribution process more directly in the future.

Reward Tiers

All donations are presented with certain rewards based on the contribution amount. In the case of Patreon contributions, this is as simple as which ever Patreon membership tier you choose. For PayPal donations, all donations must be a minimum of £30 and are therefore rewarded with a certain number of "Platinum" months.

  • Bronze Bronze
  • Silver Silver
  • Gold Gold
  • Platinum Platinum
"Bronze" Discord Role
"Silver" Discord Role
"Gold" Discord Role
"Platinum" Discord Role

All tiers receive these rewards:

Port Royal Experience

Port Royal Experience

(Releasing Soon)

Priority Testing Access

Priority Testing Access

(Bug testing access in order of Reward Tier)

Cosmetic In-game Medal

Cosmetic In-game Medal

(Matching your Reward Tier metal/colour)

Early Access To Dev Updates

Early Access To Dev Updates

(Accessed via Discord. One week before public)

Mentioned In Game Credits

Mentioned In Game Credits

(At launch, in alphabetical order)

Contributor Discord Channel

Contributor Discord Channel

(To discuss early progress reports and contributing)

What is "Lifetime Platinum"?

Lifetime Preview

"Lifetime Platinum" is for people who wish to make a significant or regular contribution via the Ahoy website (PayPal). Anyone who's account has an accumulative donation amount of £400 or more is eligable for Lifetime Platinum.

Lifetime Platinum is essentially the same as the regular Platinum tier outlined above, however those donating at this level receive a new Discord role (and badge). Also, as the name of this tier implies, the rewards are provided for the lifetime of the donation scheme. In other words, you will receive any and all rewards that are included in the Platinum reward tier for the duration of the time we're running the donation scheme. Additionally, in cases where there is a priority given based on donation tier, Lifetime Platinum contributors are selected before regular Platinum members.

Why is this not available to Patreon contributors?
Currently, the Lifetime scheme is not available to Patreon users. This is partly intentional to encourage people to donate through the Ahoy website, where Patreon platform fees of 8% are no longer applied to donations. Additionally, there are some framework requirements to enable Patreon contributions to be tracked within the Ahoy account system. It is not guarrenteed that we will introduce the Lifetime scheme to Patreon contributors, but if we do manage to solve the technical hurdle and find a sensible way to structure the scheme to account for the platform fees, all contributions will be backdated. Until then, please consider contributing on the Ahoy website (via PayPal) to be eligable for Lifetime Platinum.

Have More Questions?

We understand that contributing towards a project in this way might bring up a number of questions that you'd like answered beforehand.

In an aim to simplify this this for you, we have added a section in our FAQ for contributors. Additionally, you might consider joining our Discord community and asking any additional questions there. We'll be happy to answer any questions regarding the project and the contribution scheme outlined above.

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