It's Paper Pirates' sixth birthday, and we’re celebrating with the return of The Big Birthday Bash! Running from 28th February - 14th March, celebrate the anniversary of the game's launch with a festival of partying, and a whole host of anniversary goodies in Paper Pirates!

A new seasonal trait for the sixth anniversary of Paper Pirates, The Blessed is a passive trait that can appear in any Trait or Traits+ game with at least six pirates.

The Blessed is empowered with three special blessings, and any time when they are not currently awaiting a blessing they must choose a new blessing to receive. There are three blessings in total, and each one takes a certain amount of days to be fulfilled.

A Blessing of Scrying will reveal a pirate's team after two days, a Blessing of Reversal will flip a pirate's team after three days, and the terrifying Blessing of Doom will throw a pirate overboard after four days.

When The Blessed picks a blessing, they also have to choose which pirate the blessing will be enacted on. With a delay in the activation of the blessing, how can they predict what they will need and when?

Joining Paper Pirates for the duration of The Big Birthday Bash is the seasonal passive trait, The Magician! Play a Trait or Traits+ game during The Big Birthday Bash, and one of the crew may find themselves playing as The Magician.

When the entire crew have finished voting, but no pirate has gone overboard, The Magician will have the opportunity to cast a magic vote. This magic vote has three voting power, and can be cast for any pirate (other than The Magician themselves). The crew won't know who The Magician is, unless they can figure it out through deductive reasoning!

The magic vote still counts as voting for a pirate to go overboard, so if The Magician throws a human overboard they run the risk of becoming a ghost. Question is... who are they?

Go on a sailing adventure during The Big Birthday Bash, and each day there is a chance you may encounter the “Let Them Eat Cake” event. The crew will divide up a huge birthday cake, taking the chance to blow out the candles one by one. It's believed that the last person who blows out a candle will get to make a wish... what will they wish for, and will their wish come true?!

Every day during The Big Birthday Bash the crew will receive a special birthday gift bounty! If you complete the assigned task, you can open a present, and inside you will find... a special cosmetic surprise! There are sixteen different cosmetics in total to collect, so make sure to collect your birthday gifts during the seasonal celebration!

During The Big Birthday Bash, Sam Sherbot and Nat O'Bother have some new customisation options available to unlock in the Shop ship! If you buy a customisation option during The Big Birthday Bash, you can use it all year round - but the items will be disappearing from sale when the event is over, so don’t delay and buy today!

The full list of outfit items available during The Big Birthday Bash is:

• Accessories - Stars

• Faces - Balloon

• Belt - Cutlass (Balloon)

• Jackets - Waistcoat (Magician)

• Headwear - Hairpin (Star)

• Headwear - Pendant (Star)

• Headwear - Pendant (Key)

• Coats - Child

• Coats - Birthday Candle

• Coats - Playing Card

• Hands - Balloon

• Hands - Wand

• Shirts - Tie (Rainbow)

• Shirts - Tee (Cake)

• Shirts - Balloon

• Legs - Tutu (Rainbow)

• Legs - Balloon

• Feet - Balloon

• Hulls - Cake Hull

• Masts - Cake

Additionally, during The Big Birthday Bash, pirates have access to a unique anniversary hat, available to everyone in voyages started during the event. Once the event’s over, the hat will disappear from your collection until next year, so be sure to wear it while you can!

Invite bots into your game during The Big Birthday Bash, and you may find some of the regular crew replaced with one or three bots that mimic the Iteration Games crew! They’ll only join your games during The Big Birthday Bash, but these bots have their own personality and appearances modelled after the Paper Pirates developers.

Alongside the return of the seasonal celebration, The Big Birthday Bash, we're also bringing some new bits and pieces to Paper Pirates! We've prepared a few new events and a collection of new Traits across both Trait and Traits+ game modes to keep your voyages fresh.

There are two special anniversary bounties to complete during Paper Pirates' sixth anniversary. If the Human team successfully wins 5 times you will unlock a special unique hat. Equally, if the Ghost team successfully wins 5 times, there's another fun hat for you to discover. These hats work especially well with a few new treats in the Outfit Shop.

The Eager is a new passive trait appearing in Trait and Traits+ games with at least seven pirates.

When The Eager is aboard the ship, the Captain will always be able to choose The Eager in a job if they have one. They might appear in one, or both, of their options, but should the Captain figure out who they are, they can always have them play in.

If The Eager is a reliable human, that means you've always got a handy pirate to rely on! Even better, if you can make sure they're next to friendly humans, you've got a guaranteed safe job every day. On the other hand, if they're a ghost... well, that explains itself!

The Executioner is a new active trait appearing in Trait and Traits+ games with at least eight pirates.

The Executioner has a powerful and terrifying ability, which they can only use once per voyage. When activated, The Executioner will be required to throw three pirates overboard, one by one. They must throw three different pirates overboard, so they can't just do one and stop.

These count as throwing a pirate overboard, so if The Executioner chooses a human with any one of their three picks, they will become a ghost. The Executioner can only use their ability when there is at least two distance remaining from shore, and the crew have at least two treasure.

Will The Executioner wield their dastardly scheme for the good of the human team, or to join the dastardly ghosts in a fiendish victory?

The Decoy is a new passive trait appearing in Trait and Traits+ games with at least seven pirates.

The Decoy only appears in voyages where The Pure is also present. Whenever The Pure would be ghosted, through either voting, events, or traits, The Decoy becomes a ghost instead.

When you're The Pure, it can be tempting to take advantage of your purity to be a bit more cut-throat with your voting to try to get as many ghosts overboard as possible. Will you stop and think twice when there could be The Decoy on the ship absorbing all the ghosts?

The Adventurer is a new active trait appearing in Trait and Traits+ games with at least six pirates.

The Adventurer is ready to explore and keen to take the crew on an adventure of their choice! Once per voyage, The Adventurer can activate their trait to take the crew on adventure. They'll be offered a different adventure each day, which could take the crew on an adventure to a deserted island, could summon an angry kraken, or even take the crew back in time.

As an added bonus, The Adventurer's preparation can help the crew make the most of their adventures. When triggered by The Adventurer, both Island Adventure and The Kraken Rises offer the crew three opportunities to explore instead of the usual two.

A well timed expedition could absolutely turn the tide in the favour of the human team, or the ghost team. How will you convince the crew to do what they need to do?

The Toxicologist is a new active trait appearing in Trait and Traits+ games with at least seven pirates.

The Toxicologist is a charge-based trait, and they have the power to poison a pirate up to three times on each voyage. Being poisoned means that a pirate will receive one additional vote, from The Toxicologist, every time a pirate votes for them.

These votes count as votes from The Toxicologist, so every additional Toxicologist vote increases the chance they might become a ghost should a human be thrown overboard.

The poison will wear off after the poisoned pirate goes overboard by any means.

A new arrival for this year's Big Birthday Bash is the new seasonal passive trait, The Blessed! For full details of what The Blessed can do, make sure to read the full details of the seasonal celebration - which started today - on Steam!

Call of the Siren is a new wildcard event which appears only in Traits+ games. When a Call of the Siren event happens, the crew succumb to the allure of a mysterious siren. In the confusion caused by the siren's singing, every single pirate on the crew swaps teams - if they are on the human team, they join the ghost team, and vice versa.

The swaps happen one by one, from Captain to Stowaway, ensuring that each pirate's team is flipped. As always, these team changes are affected by a pirate's traits, so The Pure will always stay a human, as you'd expect.

When the crew have been visited by a siren, you never can be too sure who you can and can't trust - and what opportunities for misdirection and bluffing will this introduce?

One Always Lies is a new wildcard event which appears in all game modes. When a One Always Lies event happens, two randomly chosen pirates will receive some useful information: They'll each find out the team of a different pirate.

One of the chosen pirates will receive the truth - they'll get genuine information about their pirate's team. The other pirate will receive a lie - they'll get the wrong information about their pirate's team.

In Trait games, this information is still affected by traits as normal, so remember to consider whether a pirate is The Cursed or The Disguised!

As always, don’t forget that you can join us every Saturday at 8pm GMT on Twitch [www.twitch.tv]for our weekly dev stream, or pop by our YouTube channel to see Let’s Plays of Paper Pirates, How To videos and more! Or if you’re looking for a crew to set sail with make sure to join our Discord[discord.gg]!