Ships at Sea [Review]

Ships at Sea is an open-world simulation game where you drive ships to carry cargo or to stop and fish while at sea. The game was both developed and published by Misc Games and is still currently in Early Access. The game has a large world to explore with different kinds of boats to buy and use to head out into the vast sea.

Don’t get too cocky though, you start with a dinky little row boat that can only hold one piece of cargo. The game is slow. Even when you can upgrade to the next ship the game feels like it’s at a crawl. Of course, there are ways to upgrade your ship to help with this problem. You can even buy different steering wheels to help with better handling as the boats are slippery and difficult to control like real-life boats. Not only is the game slow but it’s also beneficial to take it slow yourself. Slamming your boat into the walls and docks takes a lot of damage to the boat and can force you to sail slower.

The game being in Early Access of course there are a few things to note. The game doesn’t properly support a controller just yet and you aren’t able to do things like undock your boat or even exit your boat with the controller. It was also a bit difficult to get the game going, especially with multiplayer. The game crashed a few times while trying to join the host game and when joining another game you aren’t able to customize your character at all.

Once in the game, we didn’t have any gameplay issues or glitches other than a few visual glitches. And that’s only because we had the graphical settings turned on to the highest settings. Because the game looks amazing when you allow it to at least. The water looks real and moves properly when driving through it. It's one of the nicest-looking games I've ever seen.

For me what makes this game worthwhile is that it is multiplayer. The game itself is very open yet empty with slow gameplay. So, for people who need a bit more stimulation, I suggest playing with friends. The only disappointing thing is that we were unable to all get on a boat together and truly experience it together. It’s more like an open world that can have multiple people in it doing their own thing, rather than working together and fishing with one another like I was hoping.

Ships at Sea, in Early Access at the time of writing this, will be fully released on PC on May 24th.

This game would have easily gotten a 9 or 10

The lack of real co-op ruined this game for me. If the game gets an update to allow friends on the same boat and for players to all actually play together, I will re-review this game.