For almost five weeks, the high score in Captain Verdeterre’s Plunder has been held by Stephen Jablon with $1,779.
Today I have authenticated Robert Eggleston’s new high score of $1,856.
You can see the complete high score list by scrolling to the bottom of this blog post.
Thank you for your interest.
Incredible how it’s still getting new high scores. It’s like we’re in the speedrunning era of the game where people are finding new glitches to exploit.
The same thought occurred to me, especially since by validating these high-scoring runs I’m forced to witness firsthand all of my own bugs being exploited.
But that brings up an interesting point: Unlike in the speedrunning community, Captain Verdeterre runners are each (as far as I know) working alone, each essentially starting from zero. I don’t publish people’s high-scoring solutions, so other players are unable to learn from them. Some players are aware of certain bugs (and even non-buggy intentional features) that others are not.
And the high score list is meant to resemble a high score list on an arcade game, where all you see are people’s names and scores—not like records at speedrun.com, which link to videos of the runs, and provide guides and other resources for a community of runners cooperating to improve “the record,” regardless of who holds it. The Verdeterre high score list is good for nothing beyond the glorification of individual achievements.
I have no desire to facilitate a community of Verdeterre runners, because I get enough headaches without facilitating any communities, and also I’m not exactly proud of the numerous glitches that make a score of $1856 possible. And I believe it is each Verdeterre player’s prerogative to keep their discoveries and strategies secret from all the other players.
But I’d like to say this to anyone who cares: If your goal is not merely to get a higher score than everyone else, but to push my buggy (albeit excellent) game to its utmost limits and attain the highest score possible, you will need to start working together, the way the speedrun.com people do. But not with my help, please.