Feb 2, 2018

Abandon Ship - Gary Burchell

In this post, we’re going to take a look at the nastier things lurking in the depths…

The world in Abandon Ship is in turmoil. Since the collapse of a dominant faction, lawlessness prevails.

Into this vacuum a new power is rising: The Cult of Haliphron.

The Cult worship ancient sea monsters. Their ultimate goal is to consume the entire world, bringing enlightenment to everyone, whether they want it or not.

The origins of the Cult and the main character’s connection to them are explored in the game. For now, it’s enough to say that the Cult is after you and will stop at nothing until you’ve been brought back into the fold.

Here are some of the foul creatures and agents of the Cult that will be hunting you:

Cult Fleet

From small vessels through to the largest Man O’ War, the Cult Fleet will constantly hound you.

Each Cult ship is captained by a Cult Leader, one of the true fanatics to the cause.

They will never surrender, or give up.

Haliphron

-- Fending off a boarding action by Haliphron --

The Haliphron are man-sized aquatic creatures. Still regarded as mythical in some areas (parents tell unruly children to behave “or the Haliphron will get you”) – they are a very real threat, and the reason many lone sailors disappear on dark and stormy nights.

As the Cult has gained dominance, these creatures have returned in force and actively hunt you. They can swim through the water, boarding your ship without warning.

Haliphron have even been known to wait on Cult vessels, diving into the water and swimming across like a torpedo, to board unsuspecting ships at long range.

Even upon death, the Haliphron can be deadly. Special red-skinned variants can explode into a pool of acid upon their demise; a dangerous parting gift to non-believers.

Kraken

The Kraken represents the top of the food chain in the world of Abandon Ship. When the Cult resurrects one, it kick-starts their takeover attempt. After all, with a mythical sea monster prowling the waters, who can stop them now?

In the game, the Kraken is one of the creatures that hunt you. Initially, you do not have the means with which to kill it, so have no choice but to escape and flee.

If you can acquire the right tools to make it surface, you can finally go toe-to-tentacle to decide who rules the waves.

While the Cult is not the only adversary you face in the game, they are an ever-present danger. In some areas, after a certain amount of time, they will dispatch either a high-level ship, some Haliphron or the Kraken to chase you. You can delay this by defeating Cult vessels, or if you decide to flee these events, they will hone in on your position faster.

-- Pursued by a Cult ship --

Once you reach a certain part of the story, there are many Cult targets to take out, from Ports you have to liberate, to vessels carrying slaves. Do you take out their crew, or sink them, thus condemning their innocent human cargo to a watery grave?

Development Origins

Right from the start of development, we knew we wanted to include battles against giant sea monsters. The Kraken was always our first choice of monster to create because that mental image of a giant cephalopod taking down a ship is a very evocative one.

At the same time, we were thinking about a mechanic where the player would be boarded unexpectedly from the sea. We knew we wanted the feature, but needed a dressing for it. This train of thought led to a race of squid-like bipedal creatures. There was also a desire to have a faction that would serve as the primary antagonist throughout the main story, and these different elements came together to form a Cult that worshipped these grotesque monsters.

-- Haliphron chasing you down --

Without revealing too much about the story, you can probably guess it has some Cthulhu-esque influences. The Cult worships these aquatic beings, that are off-shoots from a larger monster (the Kraken). If you've been paying attention to our previous trailers, you'll have seen us hint at something bigger, too.

When it came to finding a suitable name for the Cult, and the creatures they worshipped, we went through the Latin names of deep sea creatures. Once we had pulled out a collection of names that sounded ominous, we put them through the "what comes up in Google Images if you search for this term" test. When designing creatures, we've always thought that if the results are a good approximation for the idea in your head, it's a compelling result.

So for us, the winner was "Haliphron" - or to give its full name, "Haliphron Atlanticus". This is a seven-armed Octopus and as you can see from Google Images, it looks suitably gross:

We then embarked upon creating concept art for these, the results of which are shown below.

-- Concept art of a Cult Leader, flanked by Haliphron --

One last warning about the Cult. Even when you think you defeat them, they have an uncanny knack of coming back stronger. As you’ll find out, there is certainly more to the Cult than it initially appears.

Feb 2, 2018

From the Depths

Abandon Ship - Gary Burchell

In this post, we’re going to take a look at the nastier things lurking in the depths…

Cult Fleet

Haliphron

Kraken

Development Origins

We then embarked upon creating concept art for these, the results of which are shown below.

Jan 9, 2018

The strategy games of 2018

Abandon Ship

Whether you enjoy turn based games or a good RTS, 2018 will present some interesting options. Naturally, the brace of current 4X games like Civilization 6, Stellaris and Endless Space 2 will continue to receive expansions and updates throughout the year, but there are a bunch of new titles to look forward to besides. Here are the ones we're most excited about, and a few that we can expect to see appearing in 2019 and beyond.

Frozen Synapse 2

Developer: Mode 7 | Release date: 2018 | Link: Official site

Frozen Synapse was a sleek, streamlined tactical squad combat game released in 2011. A tight variety of weapon types and smart asynchronous multiplayer helped it to stand out, now the sequel plans to couch these combat encounters in a procedurally generated city populated by embattled corporations. As in the original game, you give orders to your neon operatives in five second bursts by drawing out pathing and aiming instructions, then you press 'go' and watch your orders play out. The core combat is proven, but we'll have to see how the addition of an overworld relic-hunting metagame builds on those fine foundations. The digitised cut-glass cities already look gorgeous.

A Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia

Developer: The Creative Assembly | Release date: 2018 | Link: Official site

Total War fans waiting for a return to history could be in for a treat as The Creative Assembly debut the "Saga" series. It's a sizeable Total War game with a much tighter focus on a particular flashpoint in history, namely the aftermath of Alfred the Great's victory against the Vikings at the battle of Edington. Three factions are poised to fight for control of the British isles, but the country is rendered at a much greater scale than we've seen before in a Total War. Take a look at the map at the end of the video below and you can see how the game intends to zoom in and explore the territory in detail.

BattleTech

Developer: Harebrained Schemes | Release date: Early 2018 | Link: Official site

We like everything we've seen so far of this turn based mech combat game. You spend half of your time engaging enemies with a squad of highly customisable mechs, and half managing your mercenary organisation in a tough universe where betrayal is a constant risk. Learn more in our interview at the PC Gaming Show, where we learned more about your home base and the strategic metagame that binds your missions together. BattleTech/MechWarrior creator Jordan Weisman is onboard, so long-term fans of the BattleTech universe can expect a detailed and authentic take on the universe.

Into the Breach

Developer: Subset Games | Release date: TBA | Link: Official site

It is a good year to be a mech fan. Into the Breach, from the developers of FTL, doesn't have an official release date yet even though from what we've played it could come out tomorrow and be brilliant. It's a turn based tactical combat game set over a tightly limited turn count. In each encounter you have to do is survive an onslaught of giant creatures burrowing up from beneath the planet's surface, but where many strategy games rely on dice rolls and happenstance to generate drama and tactical dilemmas, Into the Breath shows you everything. You know exactly how and where each enemy is going to strike next, and how much damage they will do. Then it's up to you to craft a perfect series of attacks to push enemies around the battlefield and blow them up for sweet XP.

Phoenix Point

Developer: Snapshot Games | Release date: 2018 | Link: Official site

The creator of the original X-Com, Julian Gollop, is returning to the genre he helped create with an exciting modern take on the formula. Bodypart targeting, mutating enemies and a grittier look all help separate Phoenix Point from Firaxis' recent XCOM reboots. Soldiers will have willpower and endurance stats to model how stressed they feel when they get shot by alien crabs with miniguns for arms, and there are multiple human factions with their own tech preferences. Of course you can expect to repurpose crab tech for your own purposes, in true X-Com fashion.

Age of Empires: Definitive Edition

Developer: Microsoft | Release date: Early 2018 | Link: Official site

This could be a dream remaster of one of the best loved PC series ever. The art has been updated to look good at modern resolutions, the population cap has been increased, you can zoom out, pathfinding has been adjusted, you can attack-move, there's an "enhanced orchestral soundtracK" and more. The package will include the original campaign and the scenario editor. The only drawback is the game is releasing "exclusively to Window 10 PCs" according to the Microsoft Store page. Hopefully we'll see it coming to a wider range of PCs later.

Wargroove

Developer: Chucklefish | Release date: Early 2018 | Link: Official site

This will look very familiar to Advance War players, but we're sorely lacking bright turn based tactical games like this. Wargroove's four factions are depicted in vivid pixel art, and include exciting unit types like 'dog' and a very excited archer. Careful positioning and adjacency bonuses are everything in the Advance War formula.

Abandon Ship

Developer: Fireblade Software | Release date: Early 2018 | Link: Official site

An FTL-esque oceanic romp set in a procedurally generated seascape full of pirates and the odd tentacle monster. You order your crew around your vessel during sea battles as they load cannons, fix holes in the hub, and fend off boarding attempts. Meanwhile you have to target your enemy using a range of attacks, from cannons to chain shot that ruins sails. Between battles you navigate between ports to take on missions, earn bounties and upgrade your ship.

Phantom Doctrine

Developer: Creative Forge Games | Release date: 2018 | Link: Official site

If the phrase 'Cold War XCOM' piques your interest, keep an eye on this tactical squad game in which you command a team of agents. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to sabotage opposing nations, recover intel and flip enemy agents. Stealth is preferable of course, but you can charge in with a machinegun if the circumstances warrant. There is no in-game footage yet, but the first screenshots are full of moody lighting and period outfits.

Looking further ahead

Age of Empires 4: Easily one of the most exciting strategy games on the horizon. A slim concept-art only teaser trailer reveal suggests that it could be some way off, but genre-specialists Relic Entertainment are developing the project, It's a great opportunity to bring back a bastion of PC gaming.

Warhammer 40,000: Gladius—Relics of War: In the grim darkness of the future there is war on hexes, where futuristic units take it in turn to annihilate one another for the glory of their respective factions. Warhammer 40K stalwarts the Ultramarines, Orks, Imperial Guard and Necrons duke it out in this follow up to Slitherine's Sanctus Reach and Armageddon.

Forged Battalion: Forged Battalion is a colourful RTS from the vets at Petroglyph. You forge your battalion using an extensive unit customisation suite before taking them to the field to battle The Collective. It's due to enter Early Access soon but the final release date is as yet unknown.

Phantom Brigade. Another mech game—hooray! This one features turn-based battles in destructible environments and, true to the genre, heavy war machine customisation between missions.

Dec 21, 2017

Man the Cannons!

Abandon Ship - Gary Burchell

In this post, we’re going to take a look at some of the weapons you can get in Abandon Ship.

These fit into three categories:

Cannons
Mortars
Swivel Guns

-- You can purchase and equip weapons from Port --

Cannons

Cannons appear in batteries on the port and starboard sides of the ship. Most vessels have room for two batteries on each side, but the larger the ship, the more cannons will fit.

Cannons can only fire broadsides, meaning they must be facing the enemy to be able to hit their target.

Mortars

These weapons fire into the air, arcing down onto the enemy ship. The benefit to this is they can fire on the enemy no matter which side of your ship is facing them.

Some ships can only hold one mortar, whereas the larger ones can accommodate two.

Swivel Guns

Swivel guns are mounted on the rails of the Sick Bay and Helm sections. They are specialist weapons, geared towards either damaging the Masts and Sails (like the Chain Shot or Bar Shot) or taking out the crew on deck.

-- The Bar Shot Swivel Gun can temporarily freeze enemy ship movement --

Manning the Guns

Weapons cannot be fired or reloaded unless manned by one of your crew.

A weapon will reload faster when manned by a crewman with a higher reload skill. Remember, all crew gain experience from performing actions, so you may want to make sure everyone gets some practice in – just in case something should happen to your main gunners.

All weapon reload performance is affected by the health of the Section they are in. If the section is damaged (in the yellow) the weapon’s reload time will be twice as long. If the section is in the red (critical), the weapon won’t reload or fire until that section is repaired out of critical condition.

-- Concepts for the Lobber and Flaming Cannon models --

Weapon Development

When creating new weapons, we start by thinking about interesting gameplay mechanics.

The Acid Bomb (shown below) was borne from the idea of an anti-personnel weapon that forces crew to move out of a location, incapacitating that area of the ship for a short duration. We thought this could provide some interesting choices to the player, such as aiming it at the Winch while the enemy is trying to man it to rescue a drowning comrade. It is essentially a weapon to grief the enemy, but we’ve found those weapons to be a lot of fun!

When it comes to giving the weapon an appropriate theme, our setting provides a lot of real world inspiration – however for the Acid Bomb we didn’t want to re-use fire as we already had flaming weapons, so we had to think of an alternative dressing (Editor’s Note: it is at this point I should admit that I originally wanted it to fire a bee’s nest. When it landed, it would explode, sending a swarm of angry bees that eventually dispersed. This wasn’t a popular direction, but I’ll get my “Bumble-Bee Gun” in the game one day!).

We ultimately settled on Acid, as this was an idea we felt players would naturally understand, i.e. acid hurts, get away from it. It also provided a nice big green splat visual effect, which was a colour we hadn’t really used in our other weapons.

Once those decisions are made, we create concept art for what the weapon model, plus muzzle flash, projectile and impact visual effects look like. The model silhouette should be easily identifiable, as should the different explosion effects. We then use these to create the assets that get hooked up in game.

-- Concept sketches of the Acid Bomb Mortar --

Damage Types

The damage weapons cause roughly fall into three categories:

Ship Damage
Crew Damage
Griefing/Crowd control

Not all weapons fit neatly into one category and some straddle multiple purposes.

Ship Damage

Ship damage can be to the hull (when the hull health is reduced to zero the ship will sink) or Sections (which affect ship performance).

Some weapons are specialised at causing hull cracks, which will fill the enemy’s water gauge unless the cracks are repaired. A full water gauge will sink the ship, so hull cracks are effective because they force the enemy crew to spend valuable time repairing them and pumping the water out, instead of returning fire.

There are several different types of ship damage weapons, a handful of examples include:

Double-Shot: extremely powerful weapon but short-ranged.
Lobber: More powerful the further away you are from the enemy.
Section Damager: Does very high damage to sections, but no hull damage. Useful for disabling the ship.
Chain Shot: Only targets the masts section, but does very high damage to it.

Crew Damage

The crew are the lifeblood of the ship. A reduced crew can greatly impact battle effectiveness, so an anti-personnel strategy can often be a rewarding one. If you kill all of the enemy crew and take the ship intact, you’ll also receive more gold and valuable survival supplies.

Some anti-personnel weapons are area-of-effect, like the Grapeshot. It’s short-ranged but can damage a lot of bunched up crew at once. Other weapons, such as the sniper rifle, only target individual crew but cause high damage, allowing you to focus on a key enemy crewman or one about to complete a very threatening action.

-- The Flamethrower in action, decimating enemy crew --

Griefing

These are weapons that have twists on the standard damage (some may not even cause damage at all) but can really interfere with the enemy’s plans.

They can be particularly effective if used in combination with certain other weapons or strategies. Take the “Tackler” for example. This weapon is a bit like the Sniper rifle, only it doesn’t cause damage. It targets a single crew member and knocks them to the deck, stunning them. You could use this on the person manning the wheel, allowing you to catch up or close distance with their vessel.

If someone is running to the Sick Bay to heal, hit them with the Tackler to quickly stun them while you charge up another anti-personnel weapon to finish them off. A particularly nasty bonus of the Tackler is that it can knock crew overboard. Not only is that person at risk of drowning, another crew member will have to run to the winch to save them. Suddenly the enemy has two crew occupied, from a single shot.

-- As the projectile knocked crew down, we went for a bolas type weapon trail --

Strategies

Your weapons should fit into your battle strategy and combined with your Ship Upgrades (which we’ll cover in a separate post) can mean the difference between a triumphant victory or calamitous defeat.

Do you want to stay at far range and hit the enemy hard? Upgraded Masts Sections, Hull Armour and long-range weapons will be your forte.

More of an up close and personal type? Harpoons, Ramming Spikes and anti-personnel weapons will be essential to you.

Like to control and cleverly manipulate the battle? Multiple Bar Shot Swivel Guns can hit the enemy one after the other, freezing their movement for a short duration, and letting you gain the momentum.

Want to maximise your ship for seriously heavy damage? Double-Shot Cannons and Hull Destroyer Mortars will ensure your shots land with the utmost destructive force.

Of course, every weapon can also be used by the enemy, so prepare to have the same things done to you.

You’re bound to eventually come across an enemy ship that just happens to be equipped in a fashion that is your Achilles Heel. While going all out for a particular strategy can be effective, it can put you more at risk of meeting an enemy that is perfect at exploiting your weakness.

Even then, with enough Gold, you can always spec out your ship to have a different loadout per side. If one strategy isn’t working, turn the ship around and try something different.

-- Flaming weapons have a chance of starting fires on the enemy deck --

We’ve only mentioned a small number of the weapons you can already acquire in Abandon Ship, and during Early Access we will be developing more.

We’re particularly looking forward to working with the community to come up with nasty new ways to inflict pain on the enemy!

Dec 21, 2017

Man the Cannons!

Abandon Ship - Gary Burchell

In this post, we’re going to take a look at some of the weapons you can get in Abandon Ship.

These fit into three categories:

Cannons
Mortars
Swivel Guns

-- You can purchase and equip weapons from Port --

Cannons

Mortars

Swivel Guns

-- The Bar Shot Swivel Gun can temporarily freeze enemy ship movement --

Manning the Guns

-- Concepts for the Lobber and Flaming Cannon models --

Weapon Development

-- Concept sketches of the Acid Bomb Mortar --

Damage Types

The damage weapons cause roughly fall into three categories:

Ship Damage
Crew Damage
Griefing/Crowd control

Not all weapons fit neatly into one category and some straddle multiple purposes.

Ship Damage

Double-Shot: extremely powerful weapon but short-ranged.
Lobber: More powerful the further away you are from the enemy.
Section Damager: Does very high damage to sections, but no hull damage. Useful for disabling the ship.
Chain Shot: Only targets the masts section, but does very high damage to it.

Crew Damage

-- The Flamethrower in action, decimating enemy crew --

Griefing

-- As the projectile knocked crew down, we went for a bolas type weapon trail --

Strategies

Dec 6, 2017

Meet the Crew

Abandon Ship - Gary Burchell

In this post, we’re going to take a look at the classes of crew you can recruit on your ship.

Here is the lineup:

-- Because Abandon Ship is a strategy game, we spent time establishing silhouettes from the game camera view first, so the crew were easily distinguishable at a glance. Once these were locked down we created the above concept art, so our artist could create the models --

From the left, we have:

Male Player Captain
Marine
Gunner
Navigator
Sailor
Surgeon
Female Player Captain

Crew Experience

There are 5 skills that crew gain experience in:

Navigation: This affects the rate at which the Manoeuvre Bar increases.
Reloading: The speed with which weapons are reloaded.
Repairing: How quickly that crew member can repair section damage.
Melee: Effectiveness when engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
Healing: A Surgeon-only skill, this is the rate that the Surgeon can heal injured crew.

These map to the crew classes, so a Navigator is best at Navigation, a Gunner at Reloading, Sailor at Repairing, Marine with Melee and Surgeon with the Healing skill.

All crew start out with Level 1 experience in each skill, except in their specialist area, where they start out at Level 2.

The crew can gain experience by performing actions. For example, a Gunner that gets lots of practice at emergency repairs will quickly level up his ‘repair’ skill, pairing nicely with his existing specialisation in reloading.

Crew max out at Level 4, apart from in their area, where they can achieve Level 5 proficiency.

By making sure the right crew are doing the right jobs, you can squeeze extra efficiency out of your ship, which could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

Let's take a look at each class...

Captain

The Player Captain is the most important crew member, because it’s you!

Early on in development, we liked the idea that “As long as the Captain is alive, there is always hope”.

This was based around the concept that ship destruction is not the end, and that it would be interesting to follow the players journey after that point, whether it be on the lifeboat or stranded alone in the water.

We put safeguards in place so that the Captain can never unfairly be killed, prematurely ending the game. This is because we didn’t want a scenario in which you were doing fantastically well, had invested several hours in a playthrough, but a disastrous moment resulted in Captain death and a frustrating game over scenario.

Being knocked to zero health puts a Captain in an unconscious state (as opposed to crew, who can die if they’re not stabilised in time). This means that the Captain will either recover after a battle – if your ship survived – or will end up stranded if it was destroyed.

As you would expect, the Captain is adept at any standard task, and so starts at Level 2 for Melee, Navigation, Repair and Reloading skills. He can reach Level 5 in any of these. The only thing a Captain can’t do is heal other crew members.

-- We wanted to distinguish the Enemy Captain from the Player one, so there is a unique model for him --

Marine

Marines are hired swords. They are professional fighters who pride themselves on combat prowess, and continually practice their swordsmanship to ensure peak, lethal performance when called upon.

If you like to board the enemy, or need to repel boarders, your Marine should always be where the fighting is thickest.

Gunner

A Gunner is a well-oiled machine when it comes to weapon reloading, although it can be morbid work. Life seems cheap when you continually see the explosive effects of your skills on an enemy crew.

With their proficiency in reloading, you want your Gunner manning a weapon at all times

-- Under that muzzle-flash is a Gunner, performing his duty admirably --

Sailor

It is easy to dismiss the Sailor as a generic crew member, but their excellence in ship maintenance is a valuable asset.

When part of the ship is damaged, making sure it’s your Sailor who repairs it will get you fighting fit again at the fastest possible rate.

Navigator

Although Navigators tend to be the more studious members of a crew, they are well respected. The entire crew’s life is in a Navigator’s hands when piloting through treacherous waters or a sudden storm.

Manning the wheel means the Manoeuvre Bar is recharged at a faster rate, which means you can ram, flee or turn the ship around sooner.

-- The Navigator, doing what he does best --

Surgeon

Surgeons are used to making tough decisions, fast. If they need to take a man’s limb to save their life, they will do so without hesitation, remorse, and often without even a rope for them to bite down on.

Because Surgeons are the only class able to heal crew outside of the Sick Bay, other crew members can carry on with their duties in the meantime. This means the Gunner can still reload and get off that vital shot without having to run off to the Sick Bay to heal themselves.

Customisation

Each crew member comes with a randomly generated skin colour, bio and name. The name is either generated from the default list or the newsletter subscribers (more on that on a future post!)

You can rename crew if you wish. We know some people like to rename them after friends and then tell them how they triumphed, or the noble/embarrassing sacrifice they made.

We plan to add extra customisation options in an update during Early Access, so that you can choose things like your Captains skin colour and gender (at the moment, only a male captain is available).

Recruiting Crew

While you can gain crew as a reward from quests or events, you will predominantly recruit them from a Tavern when you visit port.

Sometimes, you will come across crew that have extra skills above the default values, often in their non-specialist area. Naturally, these veterans of the sea are more expensive to hire than their rookie colleagues.

**************************************************************************************************************

We hope you enjoyed this look at the Crew. Interesting strategies can arise from both your own crew selection (like going in for lots of Marines if you like to board) and the make-up of the enemy crew (facing a ship with multiple surgeons makes your anti-personnel ship setup a lot harder). We look forward to hearing the tales of your own crew’s glorious victories and desperate defeats!

Dec 6, 2017

Meet the Crew

Abandon Ship - Gary Burchell

In this post, we’re going to take a look at the classes of crew you can recruit on your ship.

Here is the lineup:

Male Player Captain
Marine
Gunner
Navigator
Sailor
Surgeon
Female Player Captain

Crew Experience

There are 5 skills that crew gain experience in:

Navigation: This affects the rate at which the Manoeuvre Bar increases.
Reloading: The speed with which weapons are reloaded.
Repairing: How quickly that crew member can repair section damage.
Melee: Effectiveness when engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
Healing: A Surgeon-only skill, this is the rate that the Surgeon can heal injured crew.

Captain

-- We wanted to distinguish the Enemy Captain from the Player one, so there is a unique model for him --

Marine

Gunner

-- Under that muzzle-flash is a Gunner, performing his duty admirably --

Sailor

Navigator

-- The Navigator, doing what he does best --

Surgeon

Customisation

Each crew member comes with a randomly generated skin colour, bio and name. The name is either generated from the default list or the newsletter subscribers (more on that on a future post!)

Recruiting Crew

Dec 1, 2017

Abandon Ship delayed, dev let's play shows off impressive new in-game footage

Abandon Ship

Abandon Ship gave its first ever public demonstration at the PC Gamer Weekender 2017, and has spent the last several months teasing its horrid sea monsters, brutal weather system, and picture frame map structure among other things. Developer Fireblade had originally planned to ship (pun intended) at some point this year, however has now delayed the seafaring strategy game into next year.

"I’ve decided to delay the Early Access release of Abandon Ship into 'early 2018'," Fireblade's Gary Burchell tells us via email. "While it was a tough decision because we’re in a really good place, I’ve spent most of my career working for publishers who only cared about hitting dates, and the whole point of me going indie was that I can focus purely on game quality—so ultimately this 'feels' right."

Fireblade hasn't decided on a concrete launch date as yet, however has released the following dev-led let's play which showcases Abandon Ship's systems and combat better than anything we've seen to this point.

Running at just over 30 mins, here's that:

Combat there looks suitably frantic, as crew members scramble around the deck, firing off cannons and barely surviving. Ringing bells sound when boats are taking on too much water, galvanising this sense of urgency—and should you somehow miss that, the fast-firing cannon balls blasting gaping holes in your vessel will drive that home. One minor detail I love about the above is the canvas effect used to identify as yet unexplored areas of the game's world map.

Again, Abandon Ship is due at some point in "early 2018." Check out our previous coverage over here.