Developed by Fika Productions and published by Team17, Ship of Fools is a new roguelike co-op game where you must sail uncharted waters and try to defend your ship from dangerous creatures. Set on the Archipelago, Ship of Fools gives you another chance of defending the people from the Everlasting Storm and the corruption coming alongside it called Aquapocalypse. Sticking true to the roguelike concept, Ship of Fools is a neverending game and happily, it is one of those games that we do not want to end up playing either. This is our review of the PS5 release of Ship of Fools in which we load some cannons and blast some foul toads back into the murky waters.
At the start of the game, you are given the option of choosing a Fool which is a name for the in-game characters. Each Fool looks different than the other and apart from the visual differences, each Fool also comes with a unique skill as well which sets them apart from the rest of the pack. After choosing your Fool, you arrive at The Great Lakehouse which serves as your main hub in the game. While you are not on your runs in The Forgotten Waters, you are spending your time here at The Great Lakehouse exploring around, meeting with different NPCs, and purchasing new upgrades. This island is pretty empty at the start of the game. However, as you complete runs and find new people stuck in the seas, you will bring them back to The Great Lakehouse and unlock new upgrades and facilities for yourself. The upgrades are unique to each run, and they grant you different bonuses such as additional resources or added damage for a certain type of attack.
Your very first run in the game is basically a tutorial and the game teaches you about all of the simple in-game mechanics. After this is over, you are on your own and you must forge your own path during each run through The Forgotten Waters. Each run in the game takes place through a hex-based map and you choose which hex you want to move to next. Since the map is randomly generated each time, you will find different items and challenges on these hexes on each run. Sometimes, a specific hex will give you a rare resource while sometimes you will get to meet with a new NPC to bring them back to your island for utilizing their talents. Sometimes you will find a question mark and you can explore this hex for a surprise which could be pleasant or sometimes not so pleasant as well.
You start on the left side of this map and from the extreme right side, the Everlasting Storm also slowly takes over the map. It has a counter and once those moves reach zero, the storm will take over a certain number of tiles moving to the left side of the map. Each run in the game starts slow as you start getting accustomed to enemies and your own setup however as you continue to move to the right side, hex after hex, the enemies and the challenges start getting tougher and once you are inside the ever-lasting storm, you will start getting absolutely battered as you will start encountering the worst that game has to offer in terms of enemies and boss battles. Compared to the enemies and creatures your encounter in the Everlasting Storm, the entire map that you covered before starts to look like a piece of cake.
While on your ship called The Stormstrider, you will be tasked with protecting it from all sorts of creature attacks and making sure that you complete your run and make it back to the safety of The Great Lakehouse. You will have multiple cannons at your disposal that you will need to continuously refill with ammo. Apart from manual cannons, you can also place automatic turrets that fire at the creatures on their own however you must refill them with ammo. Apart from the cannons, you will need to use your oar as a melee weapon to kill anything that manages to creep up on your ship. Your ship can only take a few hits before it goes down and if you run out of wood, you will be unable to repair it and your run will end prematurely. To give yourself an edge in the game, you can find and equip various trinkets and artifacts which can be placed on your ship for various buffs and bonuses.
The game allows you to play both solos and with someone else in co-op and the game is definitely more fun and manageable in co-op. Since your ship is surrounded by water, the creatures that attack you will come in all shapes and sizes along with all directions as well. Playing solo makes is harder to focus on multiple tasks and directions and sometimes when there are enemies both at the top and the bottom, you will be frantically running around trying to man our cannons, shooting at enemies, killing enemies that are onboard the ship, reloading the cannons, repairing the ship and more. This gets tedious and your runs will barely make it to the end solo. However, when you have some company, the whole dynamic of the game changes as both of you can easily cover all sides of the ship, complete tasks, and take out any sort of enemy without much trouble.
As you find more NPCs who decide to join back on The Great Lakehouse, you will start getting access to more and more upgrades before you start your run which increases your chances of survival in harder parts of the run especially when you arrive inside the Everlasting Storm. Once the island is up and running to its fullest, you can purchase resources, upgrade your cannons, and get some cool trinkets and artifacts right from the start of the run which makes your run much more manageable. At the end of each run, you are given XP which levels you up and unlocks different rewards for you as well. You have two currencies in the game, one is called Tendrils which is used to purchase upgrades at The Great Lakehouse while the more premium currency called Sand Coins is used for shopping rarer items at remote shops that you find out in The Forgotten Waters.
Ship of Fools features a really good visual and sound design as well and the art style really sticks with the overall theme of the game. The creature design is wonderful as you will be fighting giant mosquitos that squirt slugs onto your ship, giant frogs that whip you with their tongues, and big spiders that surround your ship and damage it apart from the bigger bosses that take a really long time to defeat them. The bosses are mostly found inside the Everlasting Storm, and they pose the biggest threat to you and your ship as well. I was only able to defeat any of the bosses in co-op as I was unable to reach the end of the game with any of the solo runs. With that said, they are not entirely unbeatable in solo and if you are good and more patient than me, you might have more luck at defeating the bosses in solo than me.
On the PS5, the game does not use any of the enhanced features of the DualSense controller which is a bummer and since the game is a PS5 game, you cannot use the PS4 controllers to play it on the console. You will need two DualSense controllers if you want to jump into the game in co-op. Apart from this, the game plays really well on the console and there are no performance issues with the game as well. The framerates are steady and I do not recall a single glitch or visual hiccup of any sort while playing the game. The co-op is also pretty seamless and you can also switch your character while you are on the island with another character. The game offers long hours of fun both in solo and co-op.
Final Verdict:
While Ship of Fools may primarily be made with co-op in mind, the game is equally fun solo as well however you might find yourself struggling a bit more than normal. The gameplay of Ship of Fools is absolutely solid and precise with a lot of frantic moments as you forget to press the correct button while clinging to your almost-lost ship. With a beautiful art style and an amazing sound design, Ship of Fools is an amazing roguelike seafaring game that will keep you hooked to itself for hours. With no complex mechanics in place and an extremely easy learning curve, you can enjoy the game with literally anyone. If you were looking for a solid roguelike with good gameplay mechanics and addictive runs, look no further than Ship of Fools. If you find someone to play this game with, you will be spending hours after hours in this simple yet challenging game. Highly recommended if you are in the market for good co-op or roguelike titles.
Final Score: 9.5/10
