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Seas of Fortune (Previously called The Whaler)

Trym_studios

Trym_studios

Landlubber
Hi guys,

I saw someone mentioning our game here earlier about whaling games. We changed the name to Seas of Fortune, because it portrays more of the core gameplay, contra one single minigame.

Love seeing all these other games mentioned here, my opinion is there can never be enough age of sail games!

We have some very early gameplay here and we are also going on Kickstarter on Monday May 14th.

The link on IndieDB has also been updated.

Seas of Fortune Windows game


kick2.jpg



I will continue to do some inputs on this forum because, as fellow naval game lovers your input is highly valuable. :)
 
So, is this a whaling game or an actual pirate game? Because that picture down there seems to suggest ship battles.

And I guess, Captain Ahab is a relic where it went under the name "The Whaler"?
 
GAZ Vodnik said:
So, is this a whaling game or an actual pirate game? Because that picture down there seems to suggest ship battles.

And I guess, Captain Ahab is a relic where it went under the name "The Whaler"?
Click to expand...

Reason we changed the name was because whaling is only a mini-game and does not reflect on everything else you can do and gives the opinion to some that "thats all there is", Seas of Fortune leaves that a bit more open. The game itself and the content has not changed at all.

There is sea battles against hostile nations and pirates. But you can not be a pirate though. :)

Ahab was a phun we did which indeed, still gives reference to whaling. :)
 
GAZ Vodnik said:
So, is this a whaling game or an actual pirate game? Because that picture down there seems to suggest ship battles.

And I guess, Captain Ahab is a relic where it went under the name "The Whaler"?
Click to expand...
Whalers during the 16th-17th centuries sometimes engaged in naval combat. In this early era the line between merchant and military fleets was still fuzzy. Whaling was a very profitable business and the rival nations were often on the lookout for enemy whaling ships and stations to plunder or destroy, so the whalers armed themselves in consequence. It's not like in the 19th century, when the seas were mostly peaceful and whaleships were highly specialized for that particular activity.

About the name change, I'm kind of divided. I suppose The Whaler wasn't the right one if whaling is only one of several available activities, but Seas of Fortune sounds to me a little too generic.
 
Homo eructus said:
Whalers during the 16th-17th centuries sometimes engaged in naval combat. In this early era the line between merchant and military fleets was still fuzzy. Whaling was a very profitable business and the rival nations were often on the lookout for enemy whaling ships and stations to plunder or destroy, so the whalers armed themselves in consequence. It's not like in the 19th century, when the seas were mostly peaceful and whaleships were highly specialized for that particular activity.

About the name change, I'm kind of divided. I suppose The Whaler wasn't the right one if whaling is only one of several available activities, but Seas of Fortune sounds to me a little too generic.
Click to expand...

We had a community vote, so it was between this and tides of commerce. :) Might be a bit to generic but I think it leaves things open as well, as fortune can be interpreted widely as The Whaler might come off as "this is it", and it actually happened that people got thrown off by the name.

And yes, very true about whalers in 16th-17th century, there was not really clear what a "whaling" ship was at that time, as it could be any ship that went hunting for whales or pushing them to the coast for processing. The ship we use for the testing (The Dawn) was based on the dutch whaling ship "The Pearl", it had 6 cannons and shows they were ready for everything. The next ship we are planning to start working on is a similar one also a dutch whaling ship, called De IJsbeer. :)
 
Well, with only 6 guns, how were they supposed to fight someone really outfitted for trouble? Hoping that their armament was at least enough to fend off pirates?
 
This sounds like front page news, so thread moved! :cheers

It's great to see the developer in these waters.
If we can be of any assistance to you, we'll do what we can. :doff

As for a (non-)generic name, we once added a subtitle to help with that.
So it could be "The Whaler: Seas of Fortune" or something like that.
Best of both worlds. ;)
 
Pieter Boelen said:
This sounds like front page news, so thread moved! :cheers

It's great to see the developer in these waters.
If we can be of any assistance to you, we'll do what we can. :doff

As for a (non-)generic name, we once added a subtitle to help with that.
So it could be "The Whaler: Seas of Fortune" or something like that.
Best of both worlds. ;)
Click to expand...


Dammit, where were you when we had our vote! :checklist

Thank you! :D YARR harr and a bottle of rum!
 
Trym_studios said:
Dammit, where were you when we had our vote! :checklist
Click to expand...
I was right here, of course! :rofl

Only reason why I suggested it is because it is the exact issue we had ourselves when coming up with a game name.
It's often either generic and clear, or it is interesting but confusing to the general public.
Figuring out a name that is neither is REALLY hard! :shock

In our case, we also had a poll and ended up pretty much selecting a combination between the #1 and #2 votes.
(Technically we didn't blindly go with the vote results and used them more as guidelines than actual rules.)

Anyway, I understand the difficulty and wish you good luck with the marketing!
Once I have internet at home again, perhaps I can put some links to your stuff on our promotional profiles (Facebook/Twitter/YouTube).
We haven't posted much on there in a while, but there is still a bit of an audience there... :doff
 
Pieter Boelen said:
I was right here, of course! :rofl

Only reason why I suggested it is because it is the exact issue we had ourselves when coming up with a game name.
It's often either generic and clear, or it is interesting but confusing to the general public.
Figuring out a name that is neither is REALLY hard! :shock

In our case, we also had a poll and ended up pretty much selecting a combination between the #1 and #2 votes.
(Technically we didn't blindly go with the vote results and used them more as guidelines than actual rules.)

Anyway, I understand the difficulty and wish you good luck with the marketing!
Once I have internet at home again, perhaps I can put some links to your stuff on our promotional profiles (Facebook/Twitter/YouTube).
We haven't posted much on there in a while, but there is still a bit of an audience there... :doff
Click to expand...


Wow, thank you so much! That would for sure help us! :D As a gratitude, maybe we could do something cool when we are ready with the pre alpha tests and give keys to your members here. :) Player input is of great value to us to be able to have a great game, and who better to give feedback on things in the age of sail then you guys!
 
I'd say doing away with "The Whaler" was a good call. As seen with the recent release of Nantucket, some people mistake making a game about historical whaling with endorsing modern whaling, so having it absent from the title is probably a good idea to avoid needless controversy.
GAZ Vodnik said:
Well, with only 6 guns, how were they supposed to fight someone really outfitted for trouble? Hoping that their armament was at least enough to fend off pirates?
Click to expand...
Despite what movies and games make us think, 6 guns would probably be more than enough to fend off 90% of the pirates one was likely to encounter. And maybe enough to make better armed but oportunistic privateers reconsider if the trouble was worth it.

Speaking of early whalers, I'd like to take the oportunity to recommend a comic book series I discovered recently (although it was published in the 80s) about Basque whalers around 1600. The Basque (from both the Spanish and the French side) were pioneers in the hunting grounds of modern Canada, and absolutely dominated the whaling industry for a century and a half, although they declined in the 17th century in favour of the Dutch, later the English in the 18th and lastly the Americans in the 19th. Sadly, I think the comic is only available in French, Spanish and Basque. It's called Justin Hiriart.
portada1090.jpg
 
Homo eructus said:
I'd say doing away with "The Whaler" was a good call. As seen with the recent release of Nantucket, some people mistake making a game about historical whaling with endorsing modern whaling, so having it absent from the title is probably a good idea to avoid needless controversy.

Despite what movies and games make us think, 6 guns would probably be more than enough to fend off 90% of the pirates one was likely to encounter. And maybe enough to make better armed but oportunistic privateers reconsider if the trouble was worth it.

Speaking of early whalers, I'd like to take the oportunity to recommend a comic book series I discovered recently (although it was published in the 80s) about Basque whalers around 1600. The Basque (from both the Spanish and the French side) were pioneers in the hunting grounds of modern Canada, and absolutely dominated the whaling industry for a century and a half, although they declined in the 17th century in favour of the Dutch, later the English in the 18th and lastly the Americans in the 19th. Sadly, I think the comic is only available in French, Spanish and Basque. It's called Justin Hiriart.
portada1090.jpg
Click to expand...


This is awesome! Thank you! Reminds of one of our illustrations.

We did some research on the Basque whalers as well. Its very interesting!
 

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Trym_studios said:
Wow, thank you so much! That would for sure help us! :D
Click to expand...
When you have anything to post, let us know here and we'll see what we can do.
Hopefully my internet will (finally!) be back soon, which would help a lot. ;)

Trym_studios said:
As a gratitude, maybe we could do something cool when we are ready with the pre alpha tests and give keys to your members here. :) Player input is of great value to us to be able to have a great game, and who better to give feedback on things in the age of sail then you guys!
Click to expand...
You're definitely welcome to ask for testers here!
Can't give any guarantees on myself having time to spare, but I'm sure there will be some people interested. :yes

I wonder what @Armada, @Captain Murphy and/or @Flannery would think...

Homo eructus said:
I'd like to take the oportunity to recommend a comic book series I discovered recently
Click to expand...
That looks really cool!
I accidentally ran into a seafaring comic book myself last Friday, but I forgot to buy it or check out the title, so now I don't know what it was or how to get it. :facepalm
It was something that, at first impression, seemed like "Hornblower: The Comic", but of course it wouldn't actually have been Hornblower.
Do you have any clue what it might have been...? It was in Dutch, but that may have been a translation.

EDIT: Quick search on Google didn't give any results. Unless it was "Roodbaard" (="Redbeard"). But I thought it was something else...
 
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