Okay, I like it.
Made a few notes, just one play and a mutiny almost right away.. haha. I'll give it some more goes later, with some more thorough notes. My initial impression after 1 play-loss, is that I want to try it again because I'm pretty sure I can do better. So I guess that's where you want me to be. It's pretty good Alpha stage from what I have seen.
1) During the player setup, the scrolling map is almost distracting, it's beautiful, and maybe my SUPER crappy graphics card is why it was distracting, just a bit of flicker. It almost seemed to move too fast?
2) No arrow keys for cursor movement @ name entry.. haha, I thought I wasn't selecting the field correctly or something at first.
3) When you get to it, don't forget to make sure your installer checks for DirectX.
I actually didn't have it installed. For now, you might want to change the error from "missing d3dx9_43.dll" to something more user friendly, in case your installer doesn't check out right.
4) I'm not sure if the tutorial is "done" after it sends you out to find a ship to plunder or not, but I might suggest that it Could continue out just a bit longer and maybe direct you to an easily won prize? Just to solidify the instructions before you lose terribly to a mutiny your first go as captain.
That's all for now, like I said, will give it some more plays later.
Oh and on note #1, if you take too long to setup, the map eventually runs out, so maybe have it change direction instead or something like that.. ?