Underway
[WIP]
A Mutiny. A Mission. An Adventure.
Underway is an adventure on the high seas for one player: the newly appointed captain of a band of pirates. Scanning the seas for opportunity and danger, keeping a ship through unforgiving waters, and finding new lands and ports to explore. You, dear captain, are tasked with pulling in as much ill-gotten gold and well earned infamy as a sailor can before the seas drown you, or the crown hangs you. Sail well through the storms, give the right orders in battle and ashore, and perhaps you'll live long enough to live forever in old sea tales.
But beware, the crew made you captain, not the Crown. A mutiny gave you this ship, and a new one may yet take it away...
"Lad, let me tell ye a story. There was a time when men at sea were free..."
We enlightened modern folks, sitting comfortably behind our screens, always seem to find some romanticism in that forgotten age of sailing ship, despite all of the keelhauling, the scurvy, and the maggoty bread. Underway is built on the idea that what draws us to this period is simple: pirates are fundamentally free. A ship offers a window into an anarchy of a hundred, who've taken their fate entirely into their own hands.
Our stories about them open a window into a world where every authority above you can be literally thrown overboard, and you could go anywhere the wind would take you. Whether you reveled in riches or perished at the hands of a lawman or a storm, you were the one that charted that course. People want to have that feeling, that everything in life is ready to be seized, and that they dare to seize it.
"Well lad, you need a ship to sail, not to mention a plan..."
Underway is my first attempt to build something larger than a pair of nested game play loops. Instead of "run through the level, get a high score" as the player's sole objectives, Underway is designed with the idea that the player is chasing down merchant ships to get gold, to pay their crew, to go on adventures, to advance their legend as a pirate captain. In essence, I'm attempting to apply the lessons from the game jams I've done to a fleshed out game, rather than the prototype of one.
At time of writing, the game itself is currently in two pieces: one being a unity project with all of the technical testing and prototyping, and the other a pile of paper prototypes to test the game as an experience. With any luck, those two tracks of development will be meeting shortly, and they're be a lot more interesting screenshots up on this page.
