I've known about, and even wanted to play Uncharted Waters ever since I was a kid, but given how many games there are, I had never gotten to it. In fact, I may have never gotten to it. Often games like this just fall slowly down the mental list, until they become forgotten.
It it can feel weird and arbitrary what old game I end up going back to. I don't go back through a queue of games, based on which I think would be the best, or most important to play. It almost ends up happening through free association.
Pico Mayor and Mare Mercatus
I want to talk about two other I played a really fun Pico-8 city builder called Pico Mayor, made by The Plush Girls. Real quick...
- The game abstracts a lot about the balanced needs of a city, but in being more gamey, make something that feels more true.
- You do stuff like use the happiness of your citizens like a spendable resource.
- Unlocking buildings require building certain ways, and unlocked buildings might have needs that you now find hard to satisfy with your current build.
- The game has naturally emergent zoning. Cities that people post from the game have a very real quality to them that reflects this
- The general UX for this scale of game seems incredibly high.
- The heart of urban planning seems to be making hard decisions that will make no one truly happy, and this captures that energy.
- This captures one of the most beautiful things about gameplay, communicating concepts and feelings completely through play. It is communication with all the senses.
Impressed by the game I poked around thee rest of their catalogue, before reaching Mare Mercatus, a naval trading game about designing trade routes.
I wasn't quite the right freak for it, though. Slow, mathy, menus that are appropriately archaic(Though I would not be surprised dissatisfaction here lead to the decisions made in Pico Mayor's UX) for the style. I loved how it was presented, how progression work, how the map and developing products worked, but I couldn't make myself spend enough time with it to get past more than the first map. It's the type of game I want people to play, even if I don't want to play it.
Mare Mercatus didn't leave me wanting to manage a trading company... but it did leave me wanting to trade(... I almost went and played Escape Velocity)... to sail.
Uncharted Waters: New Horizons
Oh right this game exists. An old memory re-ignited. Now instead of getting to any of a million games on my backlog, I went all the way back for this, and it ruled.
Part of me keeps screaming that this game deserves a full writeup and not a Game Journal(A distinction only I care about). I loved my time with this game and was tempted to do another of the 6 characters the game offered. For my only playthrough I played as Joao, an adventurer who would give a taste of all the gameplay modes of the game.
While this is a game about sailing, I was charmed by the jRPG-esque on-land aspects of the game. I think there is a lot to be gained in a game where you control some kind of vehicle in making it clear that you aren't the vehicle, you're the person controlling it. Nothing happens off the ships that couldn't happen through menus, but being a person feels important, especially in a game with character plot beats. To appreciate life aboard a ship, you have to appreciate life off the ship.
It's important too because sailing feels bad. Not in a "bad controls" way, but because the wind isn't your friend. It is a tool, with its own whims, that you try and take advantage of. Things can go wrong, seemingly arbitrarily out at sea. Movement can slow to a crawl, storms can wipe away ships, pirates can attack. For sailing to have any meaning, for travel to be something other than a difference in presentation and graphics, it has to feel different, it has to represent some essence of sailing and the sea.
So sea life is hostile. Having a reprieve to walk around, shop for items, gossip at bars, and made trades in person helps add contrast to the experience. Normal feeling land movement(Okay I'm not gonna lie, moving on land feels a little funky. A LITTLE funky) reinforced that the way the ocean feels is intentional. It perfectly captures what it needs to capture. Life on shore is open and 'free', but limiting. Sailing can feel claustrophobic, yet is actually the most free you can be.
Hell, if I had any criticism here it'd be that this wasn't played into more, that I couldn't walk from the docks onto my ship, but New Horizons is already a game absurd in its openness for an SNES game. Hell, it's open compared to games of a similar scale released now. Designers fear giving players such little direction. You have a plot you can follow, but from a blind playthrough perspective, it seems to advance randomly. You are free to explore, plunder, work for map makers, and invest in international trade. Those summons by the king can wait. All that keeps you on track is the loose time limit of roughly 30 years.
Never has a game made me yearn for the Suez Canal. Okay, it'd be weird if another game did make me do that, but confronting the reverse-hull of the world, where land now represents walls, really changed how I perceived parts of the world(The Baltic and the South Chinese Sea come to mind). Taking the dangerous Northern Sea Route (which no one in the period would even attempt), gathering water from land while hoping my crew doesn't die and leave us stranded at sea felt amazing. My first time surviving the route, through good ration planning, helped me feel like I was actually exploring and knowing the sea.
The plot wasn't anything exciting, but it was cute. People had fun characterizations and interactions. I'm not sure how invested I am in Spain dredging up Neo Atlantan Super Weapons that you never see, but I think I'd miss it if none of those aspects were there. Even how you run into a lot of the other protagonists during the story feels great. For the World to feel like it is meaningful, things have to happen in it.
The game suffers a little from silly strategies. Low crew ships with no guns and lots of cargo, running from everything. Challenging captains to duels was another way to avoid combat, but the dueling minigame is at best weighted RPS, with little room for strategy vs an AI opponent. Ship combat might be okay, but the expense is so high that most people simply overload a boat for melee combat and charge the lead ship. In a way this can be seen as a benefit. It's easy to cheese your way out of part of the games you don't enjoy. It also seems to be a game that would be fun to make personal challenges with. I'm tempted to play as Catalina, the Pirate, and actually focus on using cannons.
Like any good sandbox, it's about the fun you make in it, and it tries its best to give you ways to create the type of fun you're looking for.
