Last night, after some Quake IV with the coworkers, I gave the new game “The Ship” a spin. When I first heard the description of this game, the first thing that came to mind was the real-life game we played at CSH called “Death by Dagger”. The jist of “Death by Dagger” is that each player is assigned a dagger with another player’s name on it. To “kill” your assigned player you have to be alone with them in a room; when you kill them you take their dagger as your next victim. Repeat until you are killed or are the last man standing.

“The Ship” is a video game interpretation of these same ideas. You are a passenger on a cruise ship, and you are assigned another passenger to murder. But before you can do that you have to find a weapon; a fire axe… a screwdriver… almost anything you can pick up.. Of course, if you can’t find anything, and you are lucky, you might be able to lock them in a sauna. Don’t forget, however, that one of the other passengers has your name and is hunting you. On top of the primary goal, your character has “needs”, similar in concept (but cooler in spirit) to “The Sims”. Your character needs to eat, sleep, bathe, and go to the bathroom. So you have to take the time to serve these needs; but while you are doing so you are rather vulnerable…

While the game has a “bot” based single player variant, it is really meant to be played against real people online. I had alot of fun playing last night, and look forward to taking another voyage. But you don’t have to take my word for it!

It’d be interesting to run a server at CSH!