Jamestown is a vertically scrolling shoot ’em up set on a version of Mars where British and Spanish colonial forces collide with Martians. You and up to three friends pilot small steampunk ships through a shared screen, clearing waves of enemies and working toward a boss at the end of each stage. The original game’s five-stage campaign mixes bright pixel art and orchestral music with the familiar arcade rhythm of moving through a wall of bullets, but its co-op systems give the whole crew a way to recover and build a score together.
A lost colony on a very strange Mars
The setting remixes the early colonial era into a science-fiction adventure. Walter Raleigh arrives on Mars seeking a way to clear his name, then gets drawn into a conflict around Roanoke, the lost colony, and a Spanish-Martian alliance. You see that story in short scenes between missions. It gives the stages a loose narrative thread and a parade of eccentric enemies, while the action remains the main event: fly upward, shoot down waves, collect the brass pieces they leave behind, and survive the boss.
Each level has its own scenery and enemy patterns. One stretch might put small ships and ground emplacements across a dusty frontier; later waves can fill the screen with larger machines, strange creatures, and sweeping bullet fans. The handcrafted pixel art keeps hazards readable through the chaos, while bright enemy shots and oversized bosses make each encounter feel like a stage on an arcade cabinet. Francisco Cerda’s orchestral score adds a grand, almost adventure-film sound to the Martian setting.
The campaign is divided into five substantial stages rather than one continuous map. You select a stage, fight through its waves, and face a boss whose patterns ask you to read the screen as carefully as the ordinary enemies. The story gives those battles a destination, but you do not need to track a complicated plot to follow what is happening: Raleigh and his allies are pushing across a hostile Mars to uncover the fate of Roanoke and stop the Conquistador.
Four ships, four ways to fill the screen
Jamestown starts you with the Beam ship, then lets you unlock three more ships using credits earned during play. Each has a primary shot and a special attack, so choosing a ship changes how you cover the screen. Beam sprays bullets across a wide area and can focus a powerful line of fire on one target. Gunner can redirect its secondary shots to attack at angles. Charge builds up a projectile before releasing it, while Bomber turns a stream of shots into a delayed chain of explosions.
These ships are not a class system with locked jobs; they are different ways to handle the same levels. Beam can cover a broad lane, a directional attack can reach enemies that drift to the side, and a charged or timed weapon can hit a tougher target hard. The distinction matters more as enemy waves grow denser and bosses expose brief openings. Your friends can bring different firing patterns into the same shared space, with each pilot still moving and shooting independently.
The original game has four ships in its base roster. The separate Gunpowder, Treason, & Plot add-on adds three more ships. Jamestown+ is another separate edition, with two additional stages and a larger ship selection included; those extra stages and ships are not part of the original game described here.
Each player can use a keyboard, mouse, or controller, and the game supports mixed inputs as well as multiple keyboards or mice. The mouse controls movement by pointing toward a spot on the screen, rather than moving the ship directly with the cursor; some players may prefer the more familiar keyboard or controller response. The game has full controller support, and the controls can be remapped. Each pilot needs a separate input device or assigned control scheme, so a four-player session is easiest when there are enough controllers or keyboards available.
Vaunt turns defense into a score run
Defeated enemies drop golden cogs and gears. Collecting them charges your ship’s Vaunt meter. Once it is full, you can activate Vaunt for a temporary shield that cancels many incoming bullets, strengthens your weapons, and multiplies your score. More gold picked up during Vaunt extends the effect, so one defensive burst can become a longer stretch of boosted fire if you keep collecting drops.
Your whole group occupies the same scrolling field; there is no separate camera or lane for each ship. Enemy patterns, boss attacks, and gold drops appear in front of everyone at once, and the screen can become a knot of ships and projectiles when four people fire together. That shared view makes the party’s survival visible at a glance: you can see who is still flying, where Vaunt shields are active, and whether a dropped revive is within reach.
That shield makes the game’s co-op rhythm feel different from a standard shared-lives shooter. If a pilot is hit, the others can keep flying while that player waits for a timed return. Certain stronger enemies and bosses can also drop revive items. Their effect depends on difficulty: at the lower settings a pickup can bring the whole team back, while higher settings make it a more limited rescue. A remaining pilot can therefore keep a run alive, and the crew can recover together instead of losing the stage as soon as several ships go down.
Vaunt also links the team through scoring. Each player charges a meter from the gold they collect, and the score multiplier rises when multiple ships are in Vaunt at the same time. The system rewards both using the shield to survive and extending its run with pickups. A boss fight can shift from frantic dodging to a brief burst of firepower and a high score multiplier, then back to weaving through patterns as the meters drain.
You do not get a conventional bomb stock to erase every screen of bullets. Instead, Vaunt is both your main emergency shield and the engine behind the score system. Some enemies also release more gold when you hit them during a particular attack window, which creates a reason to watch their behavior instead of firing at everything in exactly the same way. The result is still immediate arcade action, with a scoring layer that becomes more noticeable as you replay a stage and learn when to use each ship’s weapons.
Difficulty and replaying the stages
The difficulty settings affect how demanding the same core loop becomes. Enemy formations grow more dangerous, bullets come in tighter patterns, and bosses leave less room to drift into the wrong lane. The revive system gives a group some breathing room, but it does not turn a late-stage boss into a formality. Jamestown can work as an introduction to a shoot ’em up, yet its higher settings are built for players who want to recognize attack patterns and chase better scores over repeated attempts.
Progression comes from earning credits, unlocking ships and challenges, and opening more of the campaign and its difficulty settings. The later stages are gated behind progress through earlier ones, so moving through the complete original campaign can mean replaying familiar levels at a higher difficulty. That structure puts more emphasis on improving a run than on simply checking off each chapter once. If your group wants a story campaign that advances in a straight line without repeating stages, the unlock path may feel drawn out.
There is more to do once the main stages are open. The original game includes more than twenty bonus levels, arranged as challenges that ask you to hit a target score or survive a dangerous section. Gauntlet mode strings all five campaign stages together for a longer run with limited continues. Farce mode changes the tone of the story scenes, while online leaderboards give score-focused groups a reason to replay a level after they know its route.
These additions make the game better suited to short repeat sessions than to a long campaign with a persistent party build. Ship unlocks and difficulty gates provide a sense of progress, but most of the lasting variety comes from choosing another ship, taking on a harder setting, or trying to improve your score. The main campaign is compact enough that groups looking for a large collection of maps may want more; the challenge levels and Gauntlet run are where the original extends its arcade loop.
Who should play it together?
Jamestown supports one to four players in local co-op on a single shared screen. It has no built-in online lobby. Steam Remote Play Together lets the host stream the local session to remote friends via Steam; that keeps the game’s shared-screen setup, and the host needs to own and run it. The game itself does not provide separate online matchmaking or an independently hosted co-op mode.
That makes it a natural fit for friends in the same room, or for a group comfortable using Steam’s streamed local play. It is strongest when your group likes arcade shooters, shared action, and the small moments of recovery or synchronized Vaunt that emerge during a hectic boss fight. If your friends want a long story campaign, distinct character progression, or native online co-op with separate lobbies, Jamestown’s compact stage list and local-first design may not line up with what you are looking for.