Make Sail

It really pains me to say this as I really wanted to like this game. But there is almost no content, the game feels unfinished, empty and controlls/ physics are weird. While teh world looks really pretty at first view, it is empty. There are onyl a few islands scattered across the expanding map, there is nothing on them except a few ship-parts you can collect. There are groups of jellyfish and weird flying whales and that's it. No other people, no other animals, nothing. your job is to sail from one island to the next and collect chimes in order to calm a tower that is conjouring a storm. So you get the first 2 chimes, bring them back. The direction of the wind changes. Then you collect three chimes, bring them back, etc. Same thing, always with more chimes to find. The gameplay gets boring quickly, especially because the distances only get larger, the winds more annoying. That alone would not have led me to wite a negative review. What really annoyed me is that the main selling point of the game, building boats and sailing them, is just no fun. You have to find new parts for your boat in order to even have variation, the building mechanics are fecky as hell (bulding takes so long and is sooo unsatisfying!), you only know whether your boat works or not until you try sailing it (you go into a loop of trying and failing, eventually just using one of the blueprint boats). The sailing itself wants to be authentic and interesting but just isn't. I constantly just drove into islands full force, destroying my boat in the process and then started knew on the savepoint on said island. If you want to play a good game on boats, then get raft. It's only slightly more expensive and has so much more content!

The concept is interesting and it looks like there was effort put in. However, for being a game entirely about building, the building is somehow agonizingly bad. Putting down a single part is a multi-step process that fills me with frustration and sadness.

Essentially unplayable as far as I can tell. Within 5 minutes it just froze in a loop panning around my character, after failing to give me any indication of what I should be doing. It seems like a fun concept but that's all it is right now.

I got this game as a part of the 2021 Jingle Jam Package and enjoyed it for the 15 ish hours I put in. Having got this game as a part of a larger fundraiser I got it for much less than the price listed on steam which I believe to be too high at the moment. The game is fine, the physics can be a bit buggy at times and the content in story mode abruptly ends after around 6 hours of play. Overall, if you're a fan of boat building or vehicle building games and find this on sail you should buy it in its current state. This game still needs some love and updates to reach its full potential.

The building mechanics are very janky, getting pieces to snap together is difficult. The sailing itself is fine but moving around the islands doesnt feel good, the camera follows the player in an odd way.

Though I love the concept for this game, I have to give a negative review for it. Buoyancy physics are jacked in that you can't build a realistic-looking boat and have it float. Wood parts do not have the buoyancy you'd expect it to have in the game, and enclosing the hull to the point you've technically increased the volume of your boat and lowered your density doesn't keep your boat from sinking.

To be fair, this is not a great game in it's current state. The UI is unintuitive, the controls are clunky, the physics are questionable... But [b]Make Sail[/b] has a charming atmosphere, and a fun gameplay loop. You build and upgrade a rudimentary 'ship', and sail around a tiny 'ocean' to collect more parts to build with. If the devs give it a few more years in the oven, it might actually be a game I would enjoy playing.

The camera makes me scream in anger.