Highlights
- Spiritfarer: A heart-wrenching and adventurous game where players become the captain of a ship, helping souls fulfill their final wishes and exploring the high seas.
- FAR: Lone Sails: A unique vehicle adventure game set in a dried-out ocean bed, where players traverse a desolate landscape, maintain their locomotive, and solve puzzles.
- Sea Of Thieves: An open-world multiplayer seafaring game that allows players to live the pirate life, featuring sailing mechanics, combat, looting, and the option to embark on narrative-driven campaigns.
The high tides and dangerous waves of the seas have been grounds for many well-known stories, and it comes as no surprise that video games have leveraged the mysterious and dangerous ocean as the setting for their narratives. With the success of the One Piece live-action series, lovers of adventure and mishaps might be wanting to experience seafaring for themselves.
Without going to the ocean or the risk of running into a Sea King, there are many enjoyable games to help players chase after the thrill of life on deck in its many exciting ways that do not risk them also being commandeered by pirates – at least not in real life.
6 Spiritfarer
Spiritfarer, from Thunder Lotus, is a heart-wrenching and adventurous game wherein the player takes upon the role of being the captain of a ship that ferries souls into the afterlife. The colorful cast of passengers on the ship seek to fulfill their final wishes before being ready to move on for good, which also includes finding their favorite foods, making amends, and exploring the high seas.
This is an adventure and simulation game with elements of exploration of the seas and islands, farming, building, cooking, collecting resources, and collecting the stories of those who find themselves passengers on the ship. This game is great for those who are looking for stories along the sea and wherever the waves may take them.
5 FAR: Lone Sails
FAR: Lone Sails, developed by Okomotive, is a unique vehicle adventure game where the player traverses a dried-out ocean bed following the vestiges of a fallen civilization. This mournful and beautiful game tasks the player with trying to find remnants of others like the player in a vast landscape filled with nothing but relics. The player is the captain of their locomotive, which serves as their medium for traveling in the mysterious environment.
Along this atmospheric journey, some roadblocks and hazards will prompt the player to maintain and upgrade their vehicle-ship so that they can continue on their path of exploration. It is a bite-sized experience told solely through the environment and the puzzles that lay across a desolate, once-thriving landscape.
4 Sea Of Thieves
Sea Of Thieves, from Rare Ltd, is an open-world multiplayer seafaring game about leading a pirate’s life. For those who want the true pirate life, this game features essential sailing mechanics, fighting, and looting. The ocean is forever lawless and it is up to the players to approach the high seas in search of lost treasure, mythical gargantuan foes, or to commandeer other players’ ships.
This game also features the Tall Tales, which are narrative-driven campaigns featuring beloved pirate Captain Jack Sparrow and an original story that provides more structure to approaching the world. This game is great for players looking to explore an open world and try their hands at a true life of pirating, by themselves or with friends.
3 Sunkenland
Sunkenland is a waterworld survival game from the developers at Vector3 Studio. Set in a post-apocalyptic world where most of Earth is covered in water, the goal of the players is to explore, fight, and survive. This game encourages plenty of exploration to find lost and hidden technologies, collect necessary resources, and find the perfect spot to build bases. Sunkenland has plenty to offer in terms of modular base building, which is put to the test through invasions of neighboring clans that threaten the player’s resources and territory.
Co-op is also an added feature so that the player can experience the waterscape and fend off mutant enemies with friends as well. This game is great for those who really like the survival aspects of living on the sea, alongside deep-water exploration of post-apocalyptic civilizations and the ever-looming threat of enemies.
2 Ship Of Fools
Ship Of Fools, from developers at Fika Productions, is a seafaring roguelite co-op, wherein the players uptake the role of the Fools, those only brave (or foolish) enough to take on the sea. Aboard the ship The Stormstrider, players will voyage across the sea in search of the source of corruption that is now controlling the waters and threatening to send the Fools’ homes into an apocalypse.
In a game about blasting away foes, this game boasts frantic and high-intensity ship combat against terrifying creatures that come with the storms that are designed for co-op battling. This game also features appealing cartoon-like animation and atmospheric settings where the players will continue to meet many zany faces along the way to saving the world.
1 Dredge
From Black Salt Games, Dredge is a Lovecraftian single-player fishing adventure game where there is more under the waves than just a haul. All alone on a boat and in a new part of the ocean, the player becomes the new fisherman for a town in desperate need of one. The job takes the player exploring with a fishing trawler along a collection of remote and mysterious isles.
While also responsible for selling the catch to make a living and upgrade the boat, there are also plenty of secrets hidden among the isles and the watery depths below them that will have the player watching their back – especially at night. This game is great for those who fear the sea in the same way they crave to explore it, no matter what creepy things lurk below the surface.