Planned Release Date: To be announced

About This Game

Project Overboard is a management game where you design a cruise ship deck by deck, hire the crew, then take paying guests out to sea and try to keep them happy. Or at least keep them away from reception.

Build it

Lay out every deck yourself: cabins with balconies, restaurants and the galleys behind them, bars, a theatre, pools with slides, and the lifts and stairs to get everyone about. A yard of contractors builds it while you're in port, and you watch it go up crate by crate.

Run it

Hire the crew and set their shifts. Plan the cruises, from a working harbour to a private island, and sell the excursions at each call. Fares fill the cabins, but what the guests spend aboard is what pays the bills.

Keep them happy

Every guest has a fare, a budget and a few traits of their own. They queue for the buffet, go back for fourths, start congas, hog the sunloungers with towels and complain at reception when you get it wrong. At the end of the cruise they leave a review, and your reputation goes up or down with it.

When it goes wrong

A grubby buffet can set off a norovirus outbreak, and then it's Code Red, confined cabins and stewards with mops. A rough crossing puts the Seasick at the rails. And sooner or later somebody does something in the pool.

Features

• Two ships to run: an ocean liner and a riverboat
  
• Ports at sea and towns along a river, each with its own excursions
  
• Head office researches new rooms, decks and staff as your reputation grows
  
• Plays fully on a controller, with the interface laid out for Steam Deck
  
• A sandbox mode with everything open from the start

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Project Overboard was made with the help of Claude, an AI model by Anthropic, used as a coding and writing assistant. It wrote much of the game's code, including the code that draws the pixel art and synthesises the sound effects, and helped write the guests' lines, the in-game text and this store page. I designed the game, directed all of it, and reviewed, tested and edited everything that went in.

The game doesn't use AI while you play. Nothing is generated live, and no AI model runs in the game.

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

Cartoon, comic content only. Guests drink, get drunk and are sick (shown as cartoon puddles). Couples get romantic behind a Do Not Disturb sign; nothing is shown but a wobbling blanket. A guest can lose his swimming trunks on a water slide, and anyone in a bath or without their trunks is covered by a pixel mosaic. The romance and cheeky moments can be switched off in the options.