Played on:
Windows
Pentium M 2GHz CPU
2GB DDR2 RAM
GF Go 7800GTX Video
Windows XP
Valve Software has been doing a great job picking up independent developers on their download service / gaming network, Steam. After major action-based first person shooters like Half-Life 2 and SiN Episodes, now Steam gamers have the chance at trying a totally different kind of first person game: The Ship from Outerlight.
Starting out as a mod for the original Half-Life, The Ship has turned into a full-blown single- and multiplayer game using Valve's Steam technology, pitting players against each other on an old 1930s-style cruise ship. There may be over a dozen players at once, but everyone is assigned one person to kill - and only one. The unique part is that this means that you yourself are someone's target, and must avoid being killed by your secret stalker while you're looking for your own target.
The Ship winds up feeling a little like a first-person version of The Sims - the characters are drawn in a unique comic style, and they talk in an English-sounding gibberish. Every player also has certain needs: Conversation, Entertainment, Eating, Drinking, Showering, and, well, Bathroom #1 and Bathroom #2. All of these needs slowly become more pressing over time, and you'll need to use the facilities on the ship to relieve them. But where this game diverges from the Sims gameplay style is in the murdering going around. These needs will create a lot of tension if you know your killer is nearby yet you simply can't hold it any longer, or if you pass out from sleep deprivation.
Not everywhere on the ship is open game for murder, however. Certain guarded zones will have a player immediately arrested if they pull out a weapon, so you will sometimes have a creepy game of cat and mouse where the person you're stalking doesn't want to leave the room but knows they need to get out to relieve some kind of need. There's no stealth here; instead, you will simply have to wait for your prey to leave themselves open to attack in a non-guarded area. And as far as weapons go, The Ship includes a ton of them. From katanas and tommy guns, to candlesticks, knives, fire axes, sporting equipment and even umbrellas, the arsenal is quite deadly.
The aim of this game winds up actually being money in all but one gameplay mode. Kill your prey without getting caught by ship security, and you'll get a cash reward and the round ends after 90 seconds. Every round, there is also a changing list of bonus-cash weapons which will net you an even bigger reward if you can find one of those weapons on the ship somewhere and do your quarry in with it. This makes the game even more interesting, since it's rare that the fire axe, one of the game's more common weapons, will give those big bonuses. You might be better off trying to pick up a selection of The Ship's more rare weapons and keeping them with you.
Of course, if you die or get arrested, then you're going to lose all of the items (weapons, books, new outfits, food and drink) in your inventory, so keep that in mind when you ignore your character's needs and suddenly just commit suicide (no, I'm not kidding, and it's your Entertainment need that causes this if ignored). Sometimes your own prey can also get themselves arrested by mistakenly panicking and pulling out a weapon to defend themselves at the wrong time, and they will get a big fine and a minute or so of jail time. Of course, once you know your way around each of the game's different ship levels (The Ship starts out with six total), then you can quickly get down to the brig and ambush someone just after they're freed.
