Ships At Sea (Sea legs and Protestant work ethic not included)

Early Access Ships at Sea came within a cod’s whisker of flunking its 3×3-style audition. Two hours in I was railing against its rigid earn-to-unlock structure and unexpected lack of ambience, and fast losing patience with its improbably choppy harbours and recalcitrant small craft. But then I set off for Vedøya.

The job – delivering five crates of unspecified ‘goods’ to a rocky island 2.2 miles from the game’s hub, Røst – was the first somewhat long-distance assignment I’d taken on. After manually loading the cargo onto Seaføx – the only vessel I could afford with the starting funds – I chugged out of the disappointingly deserted harbour and turned my boat’s oddly unresponsive prow to the south-west.

Within a few minutes, Seaføx’s attractive wheelhouse was being skewed by sizeable waves, and I was studying a rock- and skerry-sprinkled chart with growing concern.

Here, at last, was the salty tang I’d hoped to find. Yes, the sparse audio still failed to pull its weight. As we toiled up and sped down restless liquid hillocks, Føxy murmured but never rattled, knocked, creaked, or whined. The waves never slapped or hissed. However, I did feel like I was at sea.

When the sun started to sink, the temptation to lash the wheel and go screenshot and savour, grew even stronger. I began picturing myself checking lobster pots, and doing whale watching trips, and lighthouse supply runs. Perhaps this made-in-Stavanger descendent of Fishing: Barents Sea and Fishing: North Atlantic was a (lighthouse) keeper after all.

Perusing a roadmap that promises attractions such as ferries and windfarm construction ships in the coming year (the game is due to leave Early Access in 2026), I can’t find any mention of sandbox seafaring which is a tad disheartening.

After three hours of being tossed about on virtual swells that even sheltered anchorages don’t completely eliminate, I felt slightly battered… a little green around the gills. If there’d been an option to meddle with the weather and the sea state, and test-drive some of the locked ‘higher tier’ tubs, towards the end of the audition I would have reached for it.