Kickstarter Pick: The Ship: Full Steam Ahead

I really liked the original Ship, it was a multiplayer murder mystery with a dollop of Sims-like toilet usage to boot. The idea was that you were given a target to murder, you had to hunt them down and kill them, preferably somewhere isolated lest you be thrown in the brig. The problems you faced were two-fold, every other player was trying to do the same thing, meaning your target was out to murder someone, and someone was out to murder you. On top of that, you also had to manage your bladder, your hunger, your tiredness… It was a clever new spin on competitive multiplayer gaming. Unfortunately I was rubbish at it, and everyone else seemed to hunt me down before I’d so much as taken a piss.

So it was a nice surprise to see The Ship: Full Steam Ahead appear on Kickstarter. Touted as “a steampunk sequel to the popular 1920′s-themed computer game, The Ship“, Blazing Griffin is looking for £128,000 to get the project out the door. It’s a big sum, but here’s their plan as per the Kickstarter page:

• Pay everyone: these days, it seems, it’s the ‘done thing’ to recompense to the working classes. That includes our business folk, designers, coding navvies and artistic wallas, as well as our specialists in the field of auditory, acoustic engineering.
• Change our engine: replacing the technological marvel that is The Ship’s resilient – though somewhat antiquated – engine. The scale of this task may be imagined as a rather modest canal-building project, using desks and keyboards instead of shovels. The use of flat caps will, of course, be mandatory.
• Rebuild the core game: recreating the core of the old game in its new genre. How else might we regale the world with our thrillingly eccentric creations, such as new gameplay, environments, weapons, and passengers, and some ‘banging good tunes’ – all in a most gratifying Steampunk styley? This will be a slim slice of the multiplayer game, but one of merchantable quality.
• Create a content delivery platform: so we can deliver our new, anabaric wonders without recourse to a pony and trap, or the laying of a new trans-Atlantic cable.
• Promote and market the game: so we can aggrandise ourselves in the most prestigious periodicals. Such shameless promotion will help us sell our tenacious product, and thus self-fund future expansion of The Ship:Full Steam Ahead, the Empire, and possible sequels.
• Localise our content: so that those in the colonies as well as London may enjoy our loquacious quips.

If they can improve on the original game in any way, it’ll be a definite favourite for those who want something different from their online escapades. Fingers crossed they hit their target, check out their Kickstarter page for more details on the game and the pledge rewards.

(NB: There are no screenshots as of yet, but here’s a live action teaser for you)