Developer: Games Incubator, ConsoleWay S.A.
Publisher: Ultimate Games, Games Incubator, PlayWay
Platform: Switch, PC, PS4, Xbox One
Tested on Switch
Ship Graveyard Simulator – Review
Ship Graveyard Simulator is a simulator game that is all about dismantling ships and selling the materials that you collect. A simulator that’s all about destruction immediately piqued our interest, and we were quite eager to tear down massive ships to earn some cash. The question is whether we would only destroy ships or ultimately destroy the game in our review.
Story
Ship Graveyard Simulator doesn’t have a story or a career mode. It doesn’t have the feeling that it needs one as the game itself feels like you are already running a business. The game gradually evolves as you progress, and truth be told, that’s all a game such as this needs.
Graphics
The visuals from Ship Graveyard Simulator are low quality. Most metals that you collect have the same textures which makes it difficult to see from far what it is. The edges of the map aren’t visually blocked off, so when you are at the edge you can climb a pile of rocks until you hit an invisible wall and see a couple of rocks floating. It would have been better if this border wasn’t climbable.
For the animations, they are done better than expected. That being said, the animations of the NPC look a bit weird. We reckon this has to do with the fact of how the NPC looks rather than the actual animation quality.
Sound
Ship Graveyard Simulator’s sound quality is average. The music that you hear is fun in the background and isn’t annoying. The sound that some tools make is fairly realistic and it suits the setting of a simulator game. It would have been fun if the sound of hitting wood didn’t sound the same as hitting metal. We assume that titles such as this use SFX from free sound libraries and probably didn’t match them to all the corresponding actions or materials.
Gameplay
Ship Graveyard Simulator is a simulator game about dismantling ships. The moment you enter the game there is already a nice little tutorial. It does a good job explaining the controls and keeps a reminder box in the corner of your screen. This small text box is small enough that it doesn’t bother visually.
The first objective is simple. You’ll have to scavenge the beach for some basic materials such as rusted steel, copper, or oil. These are the basics for those who know survival games. You’ll have to do this until you can book ships. Ships will give you more and better materials. The boats that are booked need to be paid every time the clock is on 8 in the morning. Except if you cancel your booking, then the ship will disappear at that time. Do note that you can not dismantle the whole boat, sadly.
After a while, you unlock the furnace and workshop. The workshop is just a place to store the gathered materials. Next to it is a furnace, and its purpose is to create better resources that can be sold for more or those that are needed to upgrade the workplace, merchant, or barracks for your employees. Do watch out when you combine two items for which there is no known recipe, as it will result in worthless junk.
In the corner of your screen, you see levels. When you level up, there is a plus symbol next to it. If you do level up, you get some skill points to spend to gather faster with certain tools or get more space to store whatever you find. We found out that having more inventory space is a must, as the maximum stack is five on everything.
Even when you have upgraded the inventory and you’re still getting more than you can carry? There is a car in the game. It makes you faster and has a trunk where you can store materials. Controls aren’t that difficult and steering it goes smoothly. We did notice that if you start to dismantle bigger ships, the car is a savior in transporting your loot.
Some NPCs do have a task for you. Those are mostly just bring X of certain materials. You can choose between an easy option, stuff that can just picked around on the beach, or one that requires you to make an effort. The latter often involves using the furnace.
To make it easy later on, you can hire people to get certain materials for you. That way you need to be less involved with doing the actual manual labor, allowing you to focus on the financial part of the game. You will then look at what items sell the best at that moment and which are best to avoid. The market on some of the metals and oils that you collect does switch based on which day you are in the game.
Conclusion
Ship Graveyard Simulator is an average simulator game that does what it’s supposed to do. It is something to keep you entertained with something mindless like smashing your hammer on something. It is fun in the short term. The further you go on, the less interesting the game gets. The idea of breaking a ship apart and selling the components does sound like a great idea but it gets repetitive after a while. We missed the feeling of accomplishment after clearing a task like we did in Powerwash Simulator or Euro truck simulator.
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