Skyrates is a free flash-based MMORPG that’s just entered beta testing. The concept: you’re the captain of a prop plane, delivering trade goods and fighting pirates while hopping from sky island to sky island. It’s designed to be played in sporadic bits and pieces—flights between islands occurs in real time (an hour or several, depending on length); you queue up actions like trades and refuels, and then come back a couple of hours later to reap the rewards. The game can even send a message to your AIM account when the action queue has finished.

In many ways the game bears a distinct resemblance to the old BBS game Trade Wars, but with a much nicer graphical interface, more RPG-like features like skill points, and a real-time combat module that allows you to take on the task of shooting down pirates yourself instead of letting the AI handle the fight for you. The neat part about the game, aside from the actual mechanics, is that it’s actually the brainchild of several game design students at Carnegie Mellon University. Thanks to some meticulous class documentation, you can read for yourself the game design document and other assorted design documents for a fun peek behind the curtain for anyone with a casual interest in how game concepts are developed and refined.