Seafarer: The Ship Sim

Written by Jason Dailey on 9/30/2025 for PC  

I will try almost any simulator these days, particularly from publisher Astragon Entertainment, which has managed to earn my trust in recent years with titles such as Police Simulator: Patrol Officers and Firefighting Simulator: Ignite. When I discovered Astragon’s Seafarer: The Ship Sim, and its premise, I couldn’t wait to check it out. After getting my hands on a preview build of the game, which releases in Early Access for PC on October 7, I think this sim needs a little more time in port.

But I need to put a big fat disclaimer on my impressions of this early version of Seafarer: The Ship Sim—I’ve been playing on Steam Deck. As a primarily console gamer, my only means of PC gaming is with my lovely Steam Deck, and I’m sure it is the absolute worst place to play Seafarer. So, while some of my issues are valid regardless of platform, there is a bit of “It’s not you, it’s me” in this preview due to my hardware limitations.

For starters, Seafarer looks dreadful on the Steam Deck—both docked and undocked—and nothing like the gorgeous screenshots in this preview. Performance was more stable than I expected but still chugged from time to time. Developed on Unreal Engine 5 and utilizing NVIDIA’s WaveWorks 2.0 technology, I’m sure it looks and performs much better on a more powerful rig, and I’m hoping it makes its way to consoles at some point so that I can properly admire its open world. I did appreciate the ability to freely swap between first and third-person perspectives, though, since driving a boat seemed easier in third-person, while manipulating controls was easier in first-person.

Strangely, NPCs mouths do not move during dialogue cutscenes despite being fully voiced, which breaks immersion somewhat. With that said, the voice acting is quite good and a marked improvement over other simulators I’ve played. You’ll interact with the captains of various factions to take on jobs and follow the career paths of their respective organizations. The tutorial lets you try out ships and missions for Crescent Port Logistics and Tide Patrol, with the former operating traditional cargo lines, and the latter providing maritime policing services.

Crescent Port Logistics needed me to push a large freighter ship into dock with my tugboat to start with, and they’re not playing around with this being a simulation. You can freely move around your vessel and interact with various objects, doors, and electronics. Taking the helm, the controls take some getting used to, with slight adjustments to speed or direction oftentimes leading to major over-corrections. Each ship handles and drives differently too, which is the way it should be, but you’ll need to develop some solid muscle memory to not get frustrated by imprecision, especially as you develop a fleet of ships over the course of your career.

Thankfully, a series of radial menus make it relatively easy to interact with the various functions of your boat. You can turn on a gazillion lights, raise or lower anchor, swap between vessels, and so on. For a game this rich in interactivity, radials are a godsend, particularly on a controller.

The most disappointing aspect of Seafarer are its bugs. You probably couldn’t have guessed that one. Simulators are janky enough at 1.0 launch typically, so throw in that this one is unfinished in Early Access, and it compounds that to some degree. For instance, I was unable to complete the tutorial missions because I never could figure out how to secure cargo containers to my ship after loading them with the dock crane. I circled and circled, interacting with everything I could, attempting to figure it out to no avail. And the game didn’t give me any direction or hints or yellow paint to go by. Bummer. Before that, my police patrol dingy floated away from me while “docked” against another boat performing an inspection. And before that, my tugboat would not auto-align to the side of the boat I needed to push to port, despite the prompt to “Hold A to auto-align.” You catch my drift.

Ultimately, not all my issues with Seafarer: The Ship Sim are solely the game’s fault. My PC hardware is limited, to say the least, and this really isn’t the simulator for Steam Deck. I want to come back to this if it ever comes to consoles (or if I ever have a beefy gaming PC) to experience it properly. Still, there are bugs and onboarding issues that are not acceptable regardless of the device I played on. They need to swab the deck a bit to clean up the early hours if they want players to stick around.