Chase after Moby Dick, and live through the Golden Age of American whaling in this seafaring strategy game. Set sail around the world, manage your ship and crew, and live Ishmael's story, the sole survivor of the Pequod, a few years after the events narrated by Herman Melville in his masterpiece.Set...
Chase after Moby Dick, and live through the Golden Age of American whaling in this seafaring strategy game. Set sail around the world, manage your ship and crew, and live Ishmael's story, the sole survivor of the Pequod, a few years after the events narrated by Herman Melville in his masterpiece.
Set sail and explore the seas Set sail around the world, visit cities, and increase your prestige by hunting whales, landing jobs, and searching for new adventures.
Be the captain you want to be Develop your character in true RPG fashion, by increasing your stats, choosing your reactions, and developing your seafaring skills.
Manage your ship and crew Hire and manage your crew, give them tasks on your ship, and improve your ship with new compartments, expanding your ship's capabilities.
Experience the Golden Age of whaling Experience more than a thousand unique events tailored around your choices—and face the results of your actions.
Hunt whales and fight pirates Discover new whaling areas, hunt whales for blubber, and protect your ship from pirates using a turn-based combat system.
Chase after Moby Dick Follow an original story line and complete quests to unveil the secrets behind Moby Dick and dissolve Ahab’s curse.
This game is great. I love the prevailing winds system, something almost all other games miss with sailing. The combat is a quick and clever dice system. Only issue is the load times seem a tad long and the weather effect card in combat doesn't really need to be shown in the middle to pause things. But those are minor issues.
Imagine if killing went on today despite vilification, then imagine a game that tasked you with killing other people... Oh wait 80% of the games do that!
So let's make this clear, this is a game, and is not a game that tries to promote whale hunting, it's a game that tries to promote some gameplay and a story, does it succed?
Imo it does, you get some good Melville feelings, while still being able (if you are an intelligent human being) to realize that this is a game and killing whales in real life isn't a good thing.
The RNG is there but is the kind of good RNG, the sailor songs that form time to time pop-up are really a nice addition.
Or you could side with the guys bashing this game and being considered like those bigots that in the eighties where sure that playing D&D was like worshipping satan.
I now regret I did not try this game on Steam, I would refund it immediately. While the game's premise is interesting enough - whaling, traveling on high seas, sounds okay. However, the game is extremely thin content-wise, everything is very lazily done.
There are two most important questions I ask about every game - how entertaining is the activity you spend doing most of the time, and how difficult and interesting are the decisions you have to make in the game. This game fails in both - the main gameplay loop is the embodiment of dullness. You just sail somewhere, and watch the numbers slowly change. Water decreases. Grog decreases. Food decreases. Sometimes winds blow faster, so youh travel a bit faster, and vice versa. Sometimes, a meaningless event occurs - hey, Captain, this crew member does not drink too much - you can either "gamble" - 80% chance you inherit his "positive" trait, 20% you inherit the opposite trait., or you stay away and nothing happens. Inconsequential, and dull!
The crew members are rows in a database table anyway. They are represented by the same picture (all hunters are the same, for example), they have a few stats and positive and negative traits, and that's it. You cannot talk to them. You cannot get to know them. They could be robots, it would not matter. The game boasts that you can "travel around the world", but all the cities are represented with the same picture. How lame is that?
Sometimes, you get a "quest" - discover a new whaling territory. So you slowly trudge there, you fight a single fish, you sail back, and that's it - you get a few dollars. Or you are going after a "pirate's treasure" - you make a few choices like "go alone" or "go with the crew", you have no information that would help you decide, and in the end the game you find an empty chest, or some coins, but it's equally uninspired and boring.
The game design is really extremely uninspired - there is some underlying system of resource and crew management, but it's all so thin and uninteresting you will be hard pressed to find reasons to keep playing.
This game represent the worst of traps the indie scene offers you can fall into.
Avoid it like scurvy and plague.
A great game about the Age of Whaling - Nantucket has some serious Melvile and Moby Dick ingredients. I'm not far enough into the campaign to determine if there is also some In the Heart of the Sea in there as well. At least, no sperm whale has rammed my ship yet.
The sea shanties by the Roaring Trowmen are superb. I just wish they weren't interrupted so often by upcoming events in-game. Port visits, whale sightings, water barrels getting stale, sodomy among the crew... come on developers, just let the Trowmen sing while I deal with them.
Just a few minor things:
- A bit more variety with crew portraits, whale/enemy cards and harbour views would be appreciated. Why do all sailors, all harbours and all whales look exactly the same?
- The actual combat system is nice and simple. I just wish there was a bit of a more, you know, rowboaty whaling feel about it. Put your harpooneer in the bows, get him a crew of steady rowers, and then let them pull hard to chase the whale before a strike can even be considered. The way the game presents it at the moment is more of a hitpoint slugfest between whale and boat, where the whales always hit with their attacks, 100%.
P.S.: I have absolutely no problem with this game being about whaling. I think we shouldn't project our modern views about killing animals onto historical canvases. Yes, today we know that whaling is a Bad Thing, but 200 years ago, keeping the oil lamps of the world burning demanded the death of many many whales and people just thought differently. Arguing that this game is bad because of this is about as stupid as trying to censor Melville's book.
Solid economy-strategy game. Topic is controversial, but mechanisms are well polished. No bugs, no breaks. Brings back 1869, High Seas Trader and other medium-hardcore sailing trade games
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