Developer: Games Incubator, Hypnotic Ants
Publisher: Ultimate Games, Games Incubator, PlayWay
Platform: Switch, PC, PS5, Xbox series X/S
Tested on PS5
Ship Graveyard Simulator 2 – Review
Ship Graveyard Simulator 2 is the sequel to Ship Graveyard Simulator, a game we only recently featured on the site here as well. We tried the Switch port of the first game, and we did have quite a few remarks as to how the port was handled. In the second installment, we hoped that improvements were made on what we felt was lacking in the first title. For the most part, we saw significant improvements.
Story
In Ship Graveyard Simulator 2, no story is directly told to the player. It is just you, a Bengali worker, on a ship graveyard that breaks down ships for materials to sell. It doesn’t bother us that there is no story in a simulation game, but at least the overall setting feels fleshed out more compared to the first game. We hear Bengali when we interact with some of the NPCs, which is also a nice touch.
Graphics
The graphics in Ship Graveyard Simulator 2 are an improvement compared to those of the first game. The NPCs still look cheap, but the textures did improve. The tools look fairly realistic and detailed, and so do the components that you get from dismantling ships. In the first game, you often simply got a description of an amorphous block that simply didn’t have any characteristics.
Sound
We had mixed feelings when it came to the sound design of Ship Graveyard Simulator 2. Some voice lines of the NPCs sound computer generated, while the voice lines when using the radio do sound realistic. While doing the sorting minigame, the little detail of a radio playing music was also fun. The other sound effects are decent. The music that plays in the background sounds like something you’d hear in a jungle setting, which is a bit odd.
Gameplay
Ship Graveyard Simulator 2 is a first-person simulator game where the goal is to strip shipwrecks of their material and sell those materials. Tools are your best friend here, and it is your bread and butter to break the shipwrecks into materials. Your tools can be upgraded by buying blueprints. To do so, you have to go to the workshop and there you can start the upgrade process by giving the NPC some of the materials that you salvaged from the ship. For each upgrade, you need the right amount of materials. The concept of salvaging and using materials from the ships to improve yourself is a nice idea and it does present you with the choice of cashing in immediately or allocating resources to be able to upgrade your tools.
The hammer is the first actual tool and is used to break the connections between the wall plates to further dismantle a ship. Each piece of material that you salvage has a certain weight, and you can only carry a certain weight. That is a huge improvement compared to the first game as this gives you the feeling of accomplishment. The carrying capacity can also be upgraded by getting a better crate, with which you carry materials to your truck. The truck doesn’t have a max capacity and you can throw your crate from anywhere if it can reach the truck. This aspect of the game felt a bit unrealistic, as it looked a bit silly to throw a crate that weighs roughly 100 kg.
A nice detail of breaking the ship down is that gravity does actually work here. In many similar titles, you’ll end up with floating bits, depending on how you tear down a structure. If you make a weird-looking tower in Ship Graveyard Simulator 2, it’s quite amusing to see everything tumble down when destroying the bottom piece. Luckily, you also don’t take any damage when all the debris falls on top of you.
Some parts are too heavy to carry. You need to detach those heavy pieces with a grinding wheel and make sure that the whole piece has nothing above it. If those two requirements are met, you can use the walkie-talkie to get the crane to carry it to the warehouse. This might just be a small detail, but it does make the experience feel a bit more realistic and it also changes up the gameplay a tiny bit.
Each decommissioned ship also comes with its requirements and contract. Those contracts want you to get an amount of a certain material in your truck. Once your contract is completed, you can access your computer to report it. Via the computer, you can also access new contracts and choose what ships to salvage.
The items in your truck and warehouse are used to fulfill contracts, but you can also sort items whenever you want. These items and materials go to a recycling point, where you can play a minigame or allow the game to sort the materials automatically. When you choose to do it automatically, there will be a 10% penalty on the materials you end up with. The minigame is a fun change of pace, as it breaks up the otherwise monotonous salvage gameplay. There is also no penalty for accidentally placing items in the wrong bin. You can redo the failed items until you get it right. Whatever you’re left over with can be used to sell or for upgrades.
Conclusion
Ship Graveyard Simulator 2 is a game that has improved on its first installment in a positive. There are extra or different mechanics in gameplay that do make the game better. Like the extra tools, minigames, or adding physics to the walls. The graphics are slightly better but still not the best, as the NPCs do still look weird. Sound also has somewhat of an improvement except for the NPCs’ voice lines as they sound computer generated.
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