I'm a little more than seven hours into my first play-through, and so far, I am loving this game. If the idea of a slightly crunchier version of Pirates! with a Melville-inspired whaling theme sounds intriguing, then this game might be for you. You start with a tiny sloop that can accommodate three crew (in addition to your captain), and has one whaling boat. Crew members all have different classes and skill sets; broadly, you have crew that are focused on hunting, navigation, crafting, and science (basically medics), but then there are three different specialized fields within each of those categories, so there's a lot of variety. Your captain's Prestige limits the total number of crew levels you can hire, so a captain with 9 Prestige and three crew slots could hire three level 3 crew members, or a level 5 and and level 3 and a level 1, or any combination that doesn't exceed 9. Crew members level up as they serve with you, but sometimes you'll also find better, higher level people in ports that you will want to take on, and will cut an existing crew member loose. You lose a Prestige point when you do that, so it's not something to do on a whim. But Prestige is a resource that you constantly accumulate, and often the pros of taking on new crew can justify the extra Prestige cost. Crew managment is a core element of the game. The crew have all sorts of quirky traits and abilities--some good, some bad--and they acquire new ones on your journeys. Your ship has different stations that you can fill with specific crew members to activate bonuses or to get your ship to do specific things (crew stationed in the hold repair the ship, crew in the forecastle or sick bay will heal damage over time, crew in the trywork will convert whale blubber to oil, etc.). Each crewman's specific skills can contribute to their effectiveness at a particular post. So you really want a Scientist running your sick bay, and a Crafter (especially one with the trywork skill) will do a better job operating the trywork than, say, a harpooner. On the other hand, you do sometimes need to rotate them around so that wounded crew can get bed rest and heal. Bigger and better ships can house more crew, have more stations with a wider variety of functions, and also have more whaling boats (much of the combat takes place on whaling boats). Upgrading to larger/better ships requires money, and also very frequently a range of tech upgrades that you can build (at a cost of time and money) at shipwrights that you find in various ports. Ports also have newspapers that will offer you jobs (quests). These give you some direction and a way to earn extra money and experience, though you can also just strike out and explore on your own, if you want. Jobs might have you deliver a cargo to a certain port, or go hunt a sea monster, or follow the last known course of a lost ship to try to discover its fate, or any number of other things. The best jobs are the ones that direct you to sail to a certain location and (hopefully) discover a new whaling ground. Whaling grounds are your key source of income, and discovering them is a big deal. Once discovered, they get marked on your map, and each whaling ground is active for a set three month period every year. So you might discover one southeast of Hawaii where Blue Whales can be found from late December through mid-March. Planning voyages to whaling grounds, and then arranging other excursions and activities in your downtime, is a major part of the game. Exploration is quite interesting. You can stumble on new whaling grounds and random quest triggers, but you also run into lots of hazards at sea. Not just pirates, but shoals, icebergs, perilous waters (there's always one of these in the Bermuda Triangle), storms, etc. Little hazard icons appear on the map as you travel, and you can try to avoid them. Upgrading your ship's "lenses" tech will extend your viewing range and give you more warning, and thus more time to change course. Don't underestimate storms--storms will ruin your day. You can get events like lightning strikes that can straight-up kill a crew member, or gusts of wind that will toss whoever is stationed in the crow's nest into the sea. And probably kill them. There are lots of ways to die in a storm. Wind is also a critical factor in your travels. The map indicates prevailing wind patterns and can help you to chart the fastest possible course (which is rarely a straight line), but local wind conditions can be fickle. The worst is when you encounter NO wind. In a dead calm, your ship will inch across the map so slowly that it barely even seems to be moving, while you burn through your stores. Even taking on provisions (water, food, grog, and wood for repairs) can be more interesting than you might expect. It's not just a matter of "buy as much as you can afford," because all of that stuff takes up cargo space that you will also need to carry blubber and oil from whaling. But then on top of that, overloading your ship with supplies can trigger negative events. Take on more water than you need, and it can start to go putrid, forcing you to either toss barrels of water overboard, or let your crew get sick. Fill your hold with too much food or grog and your crew will start to demand extra rations. You can tell them "no," but if you do, they take a morale hit. It's a balancing act. Combat is simple and plays quickly, but offers interesting choices--especially once you have a ship that can launch multiple whale boats. There is shipboard or land-based combat that can happen when you meet pirates, but most of your battles will happen in whaling boats, either against whales, or other threats like or sharks or kraken, or sometimes even other longboats filled with hostile humans. Each of your boats can hold three crew, which you select at the start of the battle. Each of your boats can take one action each turn each turn, with the available actions determined by die rolls. All three crew on the boat get to roll a die, and if multiple crew get successful rolls, you can choose which result you want to use. Each crew has a die that is specific to that character, with their various abilities appearing on it. So when you pick which crew to put on a boat, you are determining all the possible attacks and actions that boat might be able to take. You might have a boat with a Hunter, whose die is filled with various attacks and (at higher levels) special abilities geared toward subduing sea creatures, and then you might also throw in a medic, who can heal other people on the boat, remove status effects like bleeding, and (in a pinch) also attack. Navigators get abilities that allow the boat to evade or counter enemy actions, and so on. Some crew might have multiple dice that they can choose between. For example, everyone gets an attack die, even if their primary skill is something else. If you level up multiple abilities on your captian, then he'll get multiple dice to choose between in combat. The combat is interestingly asymmetrical. Not just in the sense that it's often humans against sea creatures, but also mechanically. Your team always goes first each turn, rolling character-specific dice to determine what possible actions each whaling boat can choose from (if any--it's possible for all three crewmen to roll nothing), but your opponents play cards that determine their actions. Usually they play them face down, but sometimes they are forced to play them face-up for various reasons, allowing you to see what they are going to do. Attacks are generally played in front of your boats (you can see which boat an attack will target, but not which person on the boat will be hit), while special actions (like dive) are played on the sea creatures in the "Action/Instant" area. So you can see generally what the enemy is going to do, but you usually don't know the specifics. Overall, I am highly impressed with this game. Recommended!
Uhmm i like this game after playing a while altho combat becomes extremly tedious after a while, i just hoped there would be a little bit more, things to "explore" aren't that many and sadly the world is not even complete (we are missing all indian ocean which is well pretty big tbh) i hope they improve it to make it so that gameplay is a little bit more differentiate but yeah atm i think it's pretty unpolished
https://steamcommunity.com/games/621220/announcements/detail/1705062420842556287
https://youtu.be/GOpUTB90phY
You start with a tiny sloop that can accommodate three crew (in addition to your captain), and has one whaling boat. Crew members all have different classes and skill sets; broadly, you have crew that are focused on hunting, navigation, crafting, and science (basically medics), but then there are three different specialized fields within each of those categories, so there's a lot of variety. Your captain's Prestige limits the total number of crew levels you can hire, so a captain with 9 Prestige and three crew slots could hire three level 3 crew members, or a level 5 and and level 3 and a level 1, or any combination that doesn't exceed 9. Crew members level up as they serve with you, but sometimes you'll also find better, higher level people in ports that you will want to take on, and will cut an existing crew member loose. You lose a Prestige point when you do that, so it's not something to do on a whim. But Prestige is a resource that you constantly accumulate, and often the pros of taking on new crew can justify the extra Prestige cost.
Crew managment is a core element of the game. The crew have all sorts of quirky traits and abilities--some good, some bad--and they acquire new ones on your journeys. Your ship has different stations that you can fill with specific crew members to activate bonuses or to get your ship to do specific things (crew stationed in the hold repair the ship, crew in the forecastle or sick bay will heal damage over time, crew in the trywork will convert whale blubber to oil, etc.). Each crewman's specific skills can contribute to their effectiveness at a particular post. So you really want a Scientist running your sick bay, and a Crafter (especially one with the trywork skill) will do a better job operating the trywork than, say, a harpooner. On the other hand, you do sometimes need to rotate them around so that wounded crew can get bed rest and heal.
Bigger and better ships can house more crew, have more stations with a wider variety of functions, and also have more whaling boats (much of the combat takes place on whaling boats). Upgrading to larger/better ships requires money, and also very frequently a range of tech upgrades that you can build (at a cost of time and money) at shipwrights that you find in various ports. Ports also have newspapers that will offer you jobs (quests). These give you some direction and a way to earn extra money and experience, though you can also just strike out and explore on your own, if you want. Jobs might have you deliver a cargo to a certain port, or go hunt a sea monster, or follow the last known course of a lost ship to try to discover its fate, or any number of other things. The best jobs are the ones that direct you to sail to a certain location and (hopefully) discover a new whaling ground. Whaling grounds are your key source of income, and discovering them is a big deal. Once discovered, they get marked on your map, and each whaling ground is active for a set three month period every year. So you might discover one southeast of Hawaii where Blue Whales can be found from late December through mid-March. Planning voyages to whaling grounds, and then arranging other excursions and activities in your downtime, is a major part of the game.
Exploration is quite interesting. You can stumble on new whaling grounds and random quest triggers, but you also run into lots of hazards at sea. Not just pirates, but shoals, icebergs, perilous waters (there's always one of these in the Bermuda Triangle), storms, etc. Little hazard icons appear on the map as you travel, and you can try to avoid them. Upgrading your ship's "lenses" tech will extend your viewing range and give you more warning, and thus more time to change course. Don't underestimate storms--storms will ruin your day. You can get events like lightning strikes that can straight-up kill a crew member, or gusts of wind that will toss whoever is stationed in the crow's nest into the sea. And probably kill them. There are lots of ways to die in a storm. Wind is also a critical factor in your travels. The map indicates prevailing wind patterns and can help you to chart the fastest possible course (which is rarely a straight line), but local wind conditions can be fickle. The worst is when you encounter NO wind. In a dead calm, your ship will inch across the map so slowly that it barely even seems to be moving, while you burn through your stores.
Even taking on provisions (water, food, grog, and wood for repairs) can be more interesting than you might expect. It's not just a matter of "buy as much as you can afford," because all of that stuff takes up cargo space that you will also need to carry blubber and oil from whaling. But then on top of that, overloading your ship with supplies can trigger negative events. Take on more water than you need, and it can start to go putrid, forcing you to either toss barrels of water overboard, or let your crew get sick. Fill your hold with too much food or grog and your crew will start to demand extra rations. You can tell them "no," but if you do, they take a morale hit. It's a balancing act.
Combat is simple and plays quickly, but offers interesting choices--especially once you have a ship that can launch multiple whale boats. There is shipboard or land-based combat that can happen when you meet pirates, but most of your battles will happen in whaling boats, either against whales, or other threats like or sharks or kraken, or sometimes even other longboats filled with hostile humans. Each of your boats can hold three crew, which you select at the start of the battle. Each of your boats can take one action each turn each turn, with the available actions determined by die rolls. All three crew on the boat get to roll a die, and if multiple crew get successful rolls, you can choose which result you want to use. Each crew has a die that is specific to that character, with their various abilities appearing on it. So when you pick which crew to put on a boat, you are determining all the possible attacks and actions that boat might be able to take. You might have a boat with a Hunter, whose die is filled with various attacks and (at higher levels) special abilities geared toward subduing sea creatures, and then you might also throw in a medic, who can heal other people on the boat, remove status effects like bleeding, and (in a pinch) also attack. Navigators get abilities that allow the boat to evade or counter enemy actions, and so on. Some crew might have multiple dice that they can choose between. For example, everyone gets an attack die, even if their primary skill is something else. If you level up multiple abilities on your captian, then he'll get multiple dice to choose between in combat.
The combat is interestingly asymmetrical. Not just in the sense that it's often humans against sea creatures, but also mechanically. Your team always goes first each turn, rolling character-specific dice to determine what possible actions each whaling boat can choose from (if any--it's possible for all three crewmen to roll nothing), but your opponents play cards that determine their actions. Usually they play them face down, but sometimes they are forced to play them face-up for various reasons, allowing you to see what they are going to do. Attacks are generally played in front of your boats (you can see which boat an attack will target, but not which person on the boat will be hit), while special actions (like dive) are played on the sea creatures in the "Action/Instant" area. So you can see generally what the enemy is going to do, but you usually don't know the specifics.
Overall, I am highly impressed with this game. Recommended!
whos di.... eh i give up