There are a ton of games out there where this is already happening.
Are the whales just innocent creatures out minding their own business or are they evil Progeny-of-Moby-Dick whales? B/C I might find it sad to kill innocent creatures.
I mean, they fight back after you menacingly approach them in your whaling boat at their breeding ground. Which is to say they’re innocent creatures trying to live their lives until you show up and try to harpoon them. I get conflicted sometimes thinking about my actions when playing video games, so I mostly rationalize it by saying, “well, it’s just a game,” but I understand that that’s not always going to work for everyone.
Peg. Preferably ivory.
Aye, aye Cap’n.
It probably goes without saying, but getting a bigger ship with two whaling boats makes life so much easier. Having extra space for blubber and an extra action during combat (you get one action per whaling boat) is fantastic.
I’m tempted by this, if only because Moby Dick is my favorite novel of all time. I’ve presented papers on it at conferences (though by no means am I even close to being anything like a Melville scholar), assigned parts of it to classes, and in general reveled in it for years.
But I kinda like whales, too. Sticking them with harpoons doesn’t seem quite right. Maybe I could play to lose?
I may have some questions for you :/
Maybe we should make a Moby Dick thread? I read it years ago, and really, really liked it. I keep meaning to read other Melville.
On this thread, I’ve bought the game and am looking forward to playing, but I’m in the middle of a Thea game. I can’t remember why I stopped playing Thea, because it is really cool.
So I played several hours of this last night.
The bottom line is it’s very good if you’re into management sims, but also can be terribly grindy.
The theme and presentation of everything in this game is fantastic. You are Ishmael and the game takes place immediately after the book Moby Dick. In the tutorial, you go on Ahabs fated final journey, and then return to port determined to bring down the great white whale yourself. However, you have only a tiny ship, a pittance of money*, and only enough renown to attract the desperate to crew your ship.
The only way to deal with this is to take to the seas. There is much more then just wales out there, and you will spend a good amount of time determining the fate of other ships, finding lost tribes, helping reunite someone with a lost love, or tracking down the pieces of a murder. All of these quests are very interesting and there have been some neat little twists and surprises, though certainly nothing that would support more then a few paragraphs.
The real problem this game has, however, is that it is far, far, FAR more efficient to just go to a whaling spot, drop anchor, and chuck harpoons at those bastards until either your ship is fill to the brim or the whales move on to somewhere else. Ultimately, this is a management sim, and you get more resources per unit time (both in game days and out of game hours) by whaling like a Candy Crush player with a black credit card.
Occasionally you will put back to port to sell off dozens of carcasses and tell the local science people what to research next in shipbuilding. (Ishmael alone drives the entirety of naval research in Nantucket’s universe.) Once you have enough cash, you’ll invest in a bigger boat with a better crew so you can stab those blubbering bags of money until the plot of Star Trek IV happens.
You’ll occasionally get bored with that bit, do some story missions and advance the plot, and take part in some interesting research and intrigue. These parts are all terrific; I just wish they paid better.
Sadly, they pay awful compared to hunting whales. The combat in the game is fine, but it can’t stand up to the amount you end up doing grinding your way to a better boat. By the time I had enough to get the next “tier” of sailing vessel I was already on auto-pilot during those fights and I’m not sure how the game could toss me a curve to make it any better.
It’s a really good management sim, and a fantastic premise, but it really needs to make the core treadmill a little more enjoyable to run on, or at least a lot shorter.
*You actually have a treasure trove by 1851 standards, but it vanishes immediately and ships cost a kings ransom. Inside the context of what you can do in the game with money, you start flat broke.
Chris Woods
Despite the fact that the review compares it directly to Pirates? Haven’t played this one, but from the video I watched yesterday, it seemed much closer to Pirates! than Sunless Sea, at least in terms of the inherent level of hostility of the world.
If the total of your crews levels is greater than your prestige (i.e. 12/10), is there any penalty?
It’s bound to happen as you level your crew up. I can’t imagine you’d be punished for that. Seems to me the only time it comes into play is during hiring.
-Tom
I’ve played plenty of games that involve all sorts of despicable behavior being simulated. But I just can’t bring myself to ever play a whaling game. Too sad by far. I think there was a board game on Kickstarter not too long ago that I also avoided (maybe this is the digital version?)
This.
Do you guys feel the same about hunting games? Or is it specific to whales because they have relatively complex brains? Serious question.
It seems like an odd place to draw a line. Why is the slaughter of whales objectionable, but the wholesale exploitation and subversion of a culture (Civilization and Imperialism, for example) acceptable? Is it just the emotional reaction to suffering animals?
-Tom
I feel similarly about hunting games, but the whaling game hits a little deeper – because of their brains, yes, their social structures, etc, but also because they were hunted to near extinction. A game about killing Buffalo in the old west would also make me extremely sad.
Note that I’m not taking a stand that such a game is “objectionable” beyond the subjective, just that I can’t deal with it. I really like that @rowe33 used the word “sad”. To judge anyone else’s interest in the game would indeed be hypocritical.