Hallowe’en is upon us! Oooh, scary. Not as scary as being stranded in the middle of the ocean on a murder cruise though! In fact, only one thing is scarier than that! Being stranded in the middle of the ocean on a murder cruise…alone! *sad face*

The Ship has seen somewhat of a revival this year with over 170k new players…which is just absolutely crazy for 10 year old game (we also came close to topping our highest ever number of players online at once)! Those new players join the 1 million+ players who have enjoyed The Ship over the years.

One of the challenges we face with The Ship is player retention. The player base, although large, has been spread over 10 years so there are times the servers can be a bit on the quiet side (although there are always people playing). This isn’t the case during sale periods though; we see an influx of new players trying the game out (we had almost 50k new players in the Summer Sale alone for example).

This is one of the reasons we’re making The Ship: Remasted (the remake of the original game) – it will allow us to extend the franchise more than we currently can and we’ve got LOTS of great plans on this front!

For these reasons, the team here at Blazing Griffin would like to make a polite request of our awesome players – come pay us a visit during the Hallowe’en weekend! It’s a great time to do it – loads of new players are checking out the game for the first time and there are generally new servers popping up too. And also, y’know, The Ship: Remasted isn’t that far off and we’re pretty sure some of you need to flex your murderin’ skills in preparation for that! We won’t be having any sloppy deaths on our shiny new boats…

It’s a great time to reinstall The Ship and pop back in for a quick game and catch up with your old buddies and we’re sure that new players would absolutely appreciate it too.

For all new players…welcome to The Ship! We hope you enjoy the game.

We’ve put together a guide for new players on our blog – you can check it out here.

Hallowe’en is upon us! Oooh, scary. Not as scary as being stranded in the middle of the ocean on a murder cruise though! In fact, only one thing is scarier than that! Being stranded in the middle of the ocean on a murder cruise…alone! *sad face*

The Ship has seen somewhat of a revival this year with over 170k new players…which is just absolutely crazy for 10 year old game (we also came close to topping our highest ever number of players online at once)! Those new players join the 1 million+ players who have enjoyed The Ship over the years.

One of the challenges we face with The Ship is player retention. The player base, although large, has been spread over 10 years so there are times the servers can be a bit on the quiet side (although there are always people playing). This isn’t the case during sale periods though; we see an influx of new players trying the game out (we had almost 50k new players in the Summer Sale alone for example).

This is one of the reasons we’re making The Ship: Remasted (the remake of the original game) – it will allow us to extend the franchise more than we currently can and we’ve got LOTS of great plans on this front!

For these reasons, the team here at Blazing Griffin would like to make a polite request of our awesome players – come pay us a visit during the Hallowe’en weekend! It’s a great time to do it – loads of new players are checking out the game for the first time and there are generally new servers popping up too. And also, y’know, The Ship: Remasted isn’t that far off and we’re pretty sure some of you need to flex your murderin’ skills in preparation for that! We won’t be having any sloppy deaths on our shiny new boats…

It’s a great time to reinstall The Ship and pop back in for a quick game and catch up with your old buddies and we’re sure that new players would absolutely appreciate it too.

For all new players…welcome to The Ship! We hope you enjoy the game.

We’ve put together a guide for new players on our blog – you can check it out here.

Big news today!

We're pleased to announce our expansion into film today, as we bring on film and post production partners to create two new divisions that will fall under the Blazing Griffin brand.

We've got some pretty awesome projects soon to be announced as well, so keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter channels for more details very soon!

More information on the merger can be found here.

Big news today!

We're pleased to announce our expansion into film today, as we bring on film and post production partners to create two new divisions that will fall under the Blazing Griffin brand.

We've got some pretty awesome projects soon to be announced as well, so keep an eye on our Facebook and Twitter channels for more details very soon!

More information on the merger can be found here.

Hi everyone,

We've just posted a couple of screenshots of the upcoming The Ship: Remasted on our Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.671197112979999.1073741827.145529665546749&type=3

Just a quick peek right now, but we'll be releasing more details over the next few months.

Here's the teaser trailer if you haven't seen it yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mAk-O67VcA

Hi everyone,

We've just posted a couple of screenshots of the upcoming The Ship: Remasted on our Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.671197112979999.1073741827.145529665546749&type=3

Just a quick peek right now, but we'll be releasing more details over the next few months.

Here's the teaser trailer if you haven't seen it yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mAk-O67VcA

Hi everyone,

We have a couple of special offers running just now:


The Ship is on sale for the rest of the week on Steam for 80% off (for 1 copy - sale starts at 6pm UK time on 17/8/15).

http://store.steampowered.com/app/2400


Alternatively, head over to BundleStars to grab The Ship (2 Steam keys) and a bunch of other great games for only $2.49! Bargain!

http://www.bundlestars.com/all-bundles/multiplayer-mega-bundle/

If you have any questions about the game, stop by the forums or read the current State of the Game announcement:

http://steamcommunity.com/games/theship/announcements/detail/194000194554609687

Ahoy Shipmates!

Here at Blazing Griffin we’ve been watching the developments surrounding Valve’s refund policy announcement with interest (as have most indie devs). While there have been concerns raised about the policy, we believe the spirit in which it is intended is ultimately good for the games industry.

With this in mind, we’ve decided for The Ship: Murder Party that it is important that we re-iterate the state of the game and the wider franchise. We’ll keep this announcement up to date with new developments – the intention is that it contains the information you need to know before you decide whether to buy or not.

As a studio we are always open to suggestions and welcome any constructive criticism from our players.

Unfortunately there are a few technical issues with the game and these can’t be fixed in its current incarnation. The reason they can’t be fixed is when we acquired the rights to the game in 2011 it didn’t include a technical licence to make changes using the Source Engine (which the game is written in).

We’re open to suggestions from players about our games and happy to implement good ideas or even make simple fixes – not being able to do it is an incredibly frustrating situation for us as well!

There are summaries of the issues and fixes for them on the forums, but the key ones you might want to know about are:

• In-game server select doesn’t work. But this isn’t a problem because it’s still possible to connect to servers via the Steam client > View > Servers > The Ship. Here you can find and save servers as normal. You can still host LAN games and there are several other methods of adding servers manually posted on the forums.
  
• Game doesn’t run. For a very few players, the game doesn’t work at all (although some players have found workarounds for this). Our hope is that Valve’s refund policy will now give you the option to try it out and see how things work on your machine.

Again, if we possibly could resolve any of these issues we would, but the cost of the licence to even begin doing so is more than it would cost to rebuild the game from scratch. Being a small studio, it's just not a viable option for us.

You can see from Steam Charts how active the game is. There are usually a good number of active servers available and through busy periods such as the holidays and sales there are usually more people setting up new servers and posting the details on the forums.

There is a Ship SDK available and support via Valve’s developer site. You can make new maps for the game. No other modding options are supported.

There are a number of players working on new maps and have an interest in modding. This is something we’re keen to begin having a conversation about with players, and while we’re not making any promises about modding support, please drop by the discussion on the topic and let us know what you think.

If there's enough interest there, we can certainly look at helping out.

Yes, you read it right.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/383790

You might be wondering why you’ve not heard anything about this yet? The reason for that is that this is the announcement!



We’ve begun work on The Ship: Remasted (which as the name suggests will be a high definition version of The Ship: Murder Party multiplayer game) and it is expected to be released early 2016. Even better, we’ll now have complete control over the code base so the issues with the existing game won’t affect the new version and we’ll even be able to make the odd improvement or two.

We are fortunate to have been joined by two former employees of Outerlight (the developer of original HL2 mod, The Ship and Bloody Good Time) – Jason joined our team last year as Technical Director and Neil joined our team just this week as Lead Programmer. It’s fantastic to have their input on the project and we’re really excited about where we’re heading with it.

The reason we’re talking about this just now is that in the spirit of transparency, it might be information you need to make a decision about whether or not to buy The Ship: Murder Party - some people may want to wait until the new version comes out next year.

If you do – that’s fair enough. We hope you keep up to date with what we’re doing (check out our newsletter) and we’ll see you next year!

For everyone else, we hope you try out the original game – it’s a lot of fun! And what’s good for you, is definitely good for us! We’re a pretty small studio here and having just gone through a growth spurt to be able to take on The Ship: Remasted project, we are reliant on the revenue generated by The Ship: Murder Party to move forward with it.

All purchases contribute to funding the new project and we are very appreciative of this support from players – we're sure many of you have waited a long time for more ship-related things to happen! So as a thank you for those supporting us with purchases of the existing game (now and historically), there will be a discount for existing players when we launch The Ship: Remasted.

Over the next few months we'll be releasing more information about The Ship: Remasted project - stay tuned! In the meantime, if you have anything to say about any of this, please drop by the forums - we're happy to chat about it.

And here's the teaser trailer for The Ship: Remasted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mAk-O67VcA

Thanks for taking the time to read this rather lengthy post!
- The Blazing Griffin Team

• 29th July 2015 - Scope of the Project
  
• 19th June 2015 - Player feedback discussion
  
• 26th Nov 2015 - Lucy's Diary
  
• 25th Dec 2015 - The Ship: Remasted Closed Testing Signup

http://store.steampowered.com/app/2400

• Twitter
  
• Facebook
  
• YouTube
  
• Newsletter
  
• Website

Ahoy Shipmates!

Here at Blazing Griffin we’ve been watching the developments surrounding Valve’s refund policy announcement with interest (as have most indie devs). While there have been concerns raised about the policy, we believe the spirit in which it is intended is ultimately good for the games industry.

With this in mind, we’ve decided for The Ship: Murder Party that it is important that we re-iterate the state of the game and the wider franchise. We’ll keep this announcement up to date with new developments – the intention is that it contains the information you need to know before you decide whether to buy or not.

As a studio we are always open to suggestions and welcome any constructive criticism from our players.

Unfortunately there are a few technical issues with the game and these can’t be fixed in its current incarnation. The reason they can’t be fixed is when we acquired the rights to the game in 2011 it didn’t include a technical licence to make changes using the Source Engine (which the game is written in).

We’re open to suggestions from players about our games and happy to implement good ideas or even make simple fixes – not being able to do it is an incredibly frustrating situation for us as well!

There are summaries of the issues and fixes for them on the forums, but the key ones you might want to know about are:

• In-game server select doesn’t work. But this isn’t a problem because it’s still possible to connect to servers via the Steam client > View > Servers > The Ship. Here you can find and save servers as normal. You can still host LAN games and there are several other methods of adding servers manually posted on the forums.
  
• Game doesn’t run. For a very few players, the game doesn’t work at all (although some players have found workarounds for this). Our hope is that Valve’s refund policy will now give you the option to try it out and see how things work on your machine.

Again, if we possibly could resolve any of these issues we would, but the cost of the licence to even begin doing so is more than it would cost to rebuild the game from scratch. Being a small studio, it's just not a viable option for us.

You can see from Steam Charts how active the game is. There are usually a good number of active servers available and through busy periods such as the holidays and sales there are usually more people setting up new servers and posting the details on the forums.

There is a Ship SDK available and support via Valve’s developer site. You can make new maps for the game. No other modding options are supported.

There are a number of players working on new maps and have an interest in modding. This is something we’re keen to begin having a conversation about with players, and while we’re not making any promises about modding support, please drop by the discussion on the topic and let us know what you think.

If there's enough interest there, we can certainly look at helping out.

Yes, you read it right.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/383790

You might be wondering why you’ve not heard anything about this yet? The reason for that is that this is the announcement!



We’ve begun work on The Ship: Remasted (which as the name suggests will be a high definition version of The Ship: Murder Party multiplayer game) and it is expected to be released early 2016. Even better, we’ll now have complete control over the code base so the issues with the existing game won’t affect the new version and we’ll even be able to make the odd improvement or two.

We are fortunate to have been joined by two former employees of Outerlight (the developer of original HL2 mod, The Ship and Bloody Good Time) – Jason joined our team last year as Technical Director and Neil joined our team just this week as Lead Programmer. It’s fantastic to have their input on the project and we’re really excited about where we’re heading with it.

The reason we’re talking about this just now is that in the spirit of transparency, it might be information you need to make a decision about whether or not to buy The Ship: Murder Party - some people may want to wait until the new version comes out next year.

If you do – that’s fair enough. We hope you keep up to date with what we’re doing (check out our newsletter) and we’ll see you next year!

For everyone else, we hope you try out the original game – it’s a lot of fun! And what’s good for you, is definitely good for us! We’re a pretty small studio here and having just gone through a growth spurt to be able to take on The Ship: Remasted project, we are reliant on the revenue generated by The Ship: Murder Party to move forward with it.

All purchases contribute to funding the new project and we are very appreciative of this support from players – we're sure many of you have waited a long time for more ship-related things to happen! So as a thank you for those supporting us with purchases of the existing game (now and historically), there will be a discount for existing players when we launch The Ship: Remasted.

Over the next few months we'll be releasing more information about The Ship: Remasted project - stay tuned! In the meantime, if you have anything to say about any of this, please drop by the forums - we're happy to chat about it.

And here's the teaser trailer for The Ship: Remasted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mAk-O67VcA

Thanks for taking the time to read this rather lengthy post!
- The Blazing Griffin Team

• 29th July 2015 - Scope of the Project
  
• 19th June 2015 - Player feedback discussion
  
• 26th Nov 2015 - Lucy's Diary
  
• 25th Dec 2015 - The Ship: Remasted Closed Testing Signup

http://store.steampowered.com/app/2400

• Twitter
  
• Facebook
  
• YouTube
  
• Newsletter
  
• Website

The simple way to find a multiplayer server is via the Steam Client > View > Servers > The Ship. Hey presto, you're done! :)

Here's a more detailed way of adding a server manually: http://steamcommunity.com/app/2400/discussions/0/613940477638201994/

On behalf of the team at Blazing Griffin, we hope you enjoy The Ship.

We have a couple of other games on sale this week that you might be interested in:

A quirky little turn-based rogulike puzzler, currently reduced to £1.67 / $2.03.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/310070/

A frantic local coop game, currently reduced to £1.74 / $2.49.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/253570/

Also our new roguelike meets space-RTS:


http://store.steampowered.com/app/335830/

- the Blazing Griffin team