Murder Cruise: The Ship HD Remake Announced
Killing time until 2016
A cursed ship sails the cyberseas. Many who see it fall desperately in love, longing to walk its decks and stealthily murder its other passengers so they can have the ship all to themselves. They follow rituals to summon the ship and they try to create replicas, but their love is doomed. This ship is The Ship, and it is returning once more as The Ship: HD [official site].
After failing to Kickstart a sequel to the first-person cruise ship stealth murder simulator in 2012, Blazing Griffin have scaled their plans down to a "high definition" remake of the original game.
The Ship is a rare beauty. It's a competitive multiplayer FPS set about a cruise ship in the 1920s, where players roleplay as guests roaming the ship. Only each player has been told to murder one of the others. And no one knows who's targeting them. You need to gather weapons and off your target without being seen or murdered yourself while following needs like eating, defecating, and socialising. You're forced to be vulnerable while trying to exploit the same in your quarry. It was always a bit wonky in practice, but what a dream! That's what inspires such tragic love.
It began life as a Half-Life 2 mod in 2004, graduating to a full commercial release with a single-player campaign in 2006. Developers Outerlight turned the Hollywood-set sequel into 2010's Bloody Good Time, and then shut down. Blazing Griffin picked up rights to The Ship in 2011 and tried to crowdfund a sequel, but only drew £18,247 in pledges towards their £128,000 goal and so got nothing. The series and the very idea have proven difficult to make commercially successful, but these people are in love. Bless 'em.
Blazing Griffin plan for The Ship: HD to be the old game but prettier, launching in "early 2016". Former Outerlight lead programmer Jason Kocemba has joined the team too. That's about all I can tell you about the game right now, but what more is there to know?
Speaking about the failed Kickstarter and sequel plans, Blazing Griffin say in the announcement:
"... without the funding to proceed, we couldn't take it forward. The size and scope of the project was simply too much for a small, newly formed studio to take on, so we worked on a number of other projects with an aim to revisiting The Ship franchise at a later date."
You poor, lovesick fools. Perhaps you'll find your lady love this time. If you wish to catch a glimpse of her, the original game is £1.74 in the Steam sale. Or there's this here HD announcement trailer:
