Shipwreck
A downloadable game for Windows and Linux
Shipwreck is a top down adventure game in which you must travel the land, explore dungeons, and defeat monsters to earn safe passage off the island on which you are stranded.
Shipwreck is the first game from Brushfire Games, a small game studio in Washington state, run by siblings Kelly Gravelyn and Joe Gravelyn. Shipwreck was created by these fine folks:
- Kelly Gravelyn - Design/Programming
- Joe Gravelyn - Design/Programming
- Ty Lagalo - Art
- Dan Waters - Audio
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $2.99 USD. Your purchase comes with a Steam key. You will get access to the following files:
Comments
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I adore this game! It's artstyle and story are really good!
Nice—a chill Zelda-alike with limited combat. It's a bit reminiscent of Neutopia, especially in its music.
The video on this store page is broken, if you can fix it you might want to do that.
The overworld may as well not exist. There's nothing there. Not even enemies to fight. World is way bigger than it needs to be but entirely empty. They may as well have added a level select. No side quests or anything besides one optional minigame. Dungeons are okay but combat can be frustrating.
Does not seem to work on linux
Hi Jolitti,
It works if you launch it from your file manager.
You can also get it to work from the terminal.
First do 'echo $TERM' and note your terminal emulator, mine is 'xterm-256colors'.
Now edit the Shipwreck script and insert e.g. 'export TERM=xterm-256colors' before the line that calls the binary for your architecture (in my case './Shipwreck.bin.x86_64').
Hope it helps somebody.
I played this game from a previous Bundle, but noticed it was in the latest one, too, and remembered I never left a comment.
This was a really fun little Zelda clone, and despite being shorter than those, felt like a full game, with solid polish. I really loved the music, too, which is something I usually tend to tune out in games.
Good times!
Solid little game! Sound design and art are excellent. Shows a lot of promise!
I enjoyed Shipwreck so much I added it to my Hidden Gems Series :)
A like/subscribe would be a huge help to continue these. <3 Enjoy your day!
A fun wee game. 👍
Got this game in a bundle a while back, before all the errors popped up in the log it said "[INFO] Steamworks initialized? False" Please help when you get a second and thank you.
Hi there. We'd need more information. That message is just informational; it means the game didn't detect Steam running on your computer. The game features Steam integration even if you didn't buy it from Steam. That message simply means the game couldn't enable the Steam features. But that shouldn't prevent the rest of the game from working.
If you have a full log file, please send it to support@brushfire.games and we'll be happy to take a look if the game isn't working for you.
A very interesting little game, with shades of Zelda all around! It's a shame the overall world feels a little empty and doesn't include a map, but the four dungeons provide a good challenge and some clever ideas :)
I finally beat the game and the main screen says 98%. Is the remaining 2% the actual beating the boss or did I miss something? I have all ten hearts. Not sure what else there could be to find.
Got this via the Bundle for "Racial Justice and Equality". Game version is 1.4.7.0. And its bugged, ive talked to the mayor but the guy blocking my path wont let me past him no matter how much i talk to the mayor. Its a persistent bug.
Downloaded the game after getting it in the massive bundle, and doesn't seem to play nice with Steam, it will pop up with something about my credentials being changed and ask me to log in or close Steam.
Quite pleasant music design, good graphics, overall enjoyable game with decent controls, not a bad boss battle. I loved the coin-explosion animation for the chest and the large number of coins compared to the bushes I chopped down (I always felt like Zelda had too few: If I'm chopping bushes to earn money, gimme more faster!).
I am not usually one to complain about open-ended level/area design, but that is the area I would most recommend that you focus on. First, you have to go through half a dozen screens with zero content and no branching, just to get to the cave; I'd suggest the cave be on the first screen there, or perhaps the second (so you'll likely have grabbed the sword). If you want some distance when the character returns to that spot, there are other ways to achieve it. (The cave itself was not a bad design, if a little back-tracky.)
Secondly, the town wanted me to go to the inn, but, being a Spade, I wandered. And I found just a ton of open areas with no dangers (which was actually nice), but also no content. I could basically get hints about upcoming areas to explore after the storm (lighthouse, graveyard, mayor's house, random buildings), and coins from chopping bushes, but that was it. Several screens had me stuck in a tiny spot where I could see the screen but not interact with it unless I backtracked and found a way to it -- which would be fine as a preview of "aha, the boss/treasure is over there" but this happened to "preview" spots I was at just two screens ago. One "previewed" a corner of the island next to otherwise all ocean.
(I couldn't tell if I couldn't enter the houses or just hadn't figured out the correct button. Having the doors react to "knocking" in some fashion would be useful.)
Earthbound has the police cordon off the not-useful places at the start, so you can only really go up to where you're meant to go to progress the story. This was funny, but also useful to prevent the player from spending time in ways that have no long-term effect on the game. I recall A Link to the Past being pretty restrictive at the start, in a natural fashion by not letting you chop bushes yet (or bypass guards?).
You can have some larger open areas, but, in general, think of areas as having enter/exit points, and design the screen around that concept. Trees and rocks and cliffs and the like help guide the player toward useful content, much like lit-up areas ("go here") and broken cars, fences, and trash piles ("you can't go that way") do in Left 4 Dead. If you do it right, the player doesn't even notice that they're being led around; they feel free to do things, but also are physically prevented from wandering too far off course.
(World of Warcraft did this between low-level and high-level areas, not as a hard limit but some pretty obvious signs that a certain area is Bad News. That I ignored those signs and got my level-12 character killed by a level-40 spider is my own fault. But most games won't even let the low-level characters get anywhere near the high-level stuff unless the player has been particularly tenacious in bypassing the signs.)
Anyway, that's the area that I think could use the most improvement. The only other issue that I ran into was a minor fine-tuning thing: It'd be nice if bumping into the wall slightly off from the path just bumped me down toward the path instead of being a hard stop, so that it felt easier to get my character in where I wanted to go. That's not likely a big concern at this level, but it's something to consider for smoother controls once you get to bigger projects.
This was a pretty good game! I might play more of it later (I'm just kinda dipping my toes in the water for a few of the games I just got, and offering feedback if the game is good enough to warrant a little polish). Thanks for making it!
Yeah, you pretty much have to follow the story and enter the Inn I believe to be able to enter the rest of the houses later.
Oh, I understood perfectly well what the game wanted me to do. But Spade-style players like to nose around the edges and see what the game lets you do. And whether the designers anticipated that.
In World of Warcraft, a long while before certain expansions, there was a place atop Ironforge that only a few players ever got to see. You had to do a weird combination of jumping and sprinting and knowing (or guessing) precisely where to aim in order to make it up there. But there was content there, for those of us who managed it. Similarly, in one game (I forget which, maybe a GTA?), there's an area you can only get to by something like a game-breaking bug, and there's like graffiti on the wall (I haven't played the game in question) saying something like "Hey, you're not supposed to be up here!"
A smaller game designer can't be expected to account for all the ways a player might try to play the game (heck, even the big game designers can't account for everything), but they can still work out flow charts for areas and figure out where adventurous players might try to go. Heart-type players might try to interact with the characters (and get disappointed if the NPCs are too simplistic). Diamond-type players might try to see if there are goodies to collect. Club-type players like to assert dominance over the enemies and the game itself. And Spade-type players like to explore (and break the game scripts by doing what the game doesn't expect).
Consider if, in the midst of that storm, there were just a couple characters out there -- not like the guards, not blocking the path (a mechanical detail), but out there to give a little color to the landscape for those players who didn't follow the game's directions to go straight to the inn. Maybe the lighthouse keeper is checking the integrity of the lighthouse. Maybe a farmer is checking to make sure that his animals are all right. Maybe a mom is out hunting for her storm-enjoying kid. A little something, maybe something that most players wouldn't see, but players who ran around the town a bit during the storm would run into these characters. It'd give a little color to the people in the town (Heart), show that the designer was thinking about more than just the linear story (Spade), and maybe it could give a small goodie to the player (Diamond) that doesn't impact the game much in the long term, but might be a useful boost in the short term (e.g. 20 gold coins for helping the lighthouse keeper gather wood to fix up his windows). Throw in a little challenge (like tracking down a couple of animals) and you might even make the Clubs happy, if they happened to hunt around in defiance of the game's logic.
If it's a character you meet later, then when you run into them "for the first time" (as the game expects), the game could remember your interaction the night before and greet you in a different way.
But if there's literally nothing to find out by venturing through the storm, then physically prevent that from happening. Make the inn be next to the entrance to the town, and have a guard not allow strangers in during the night, or have the gate be locked and not guarded due to the storm. Or maybe the storm's knocked over a big tree that blocks the path to the rest of the town, and they won't be able to clear it until the storm clears. Maybe the storm flooded a river and it's flowed over the field that separates the inn area from most of the town, so you can only really explore a tiny part of the town during the storm -- and maybe use that corner-of-map preview to let the player get a peek at upcoming areas, without being able to walk around in them just yet. Maybe you see the graveyard from the edge of the screen (behind the trees and rocks that block the path), so you'll know it's a point of interest for later. Maybe if you nose behind some bushes to the side of the inn, you see a short interaction between two characters that starts a little mystery about what's going on in town, or that makes it suspicious when that character seems super nice the next morning (not having seen you spying on them).
You don't want it to be as obvious (and boring) as No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom (see TV Tropes), but by artistically cutting down on where the player can go (at any given point), you can improve the player's experience and cut down on frustration (one type of frustration being "I'm not sure I checked all the nooks and crannies"). And if you allow a small amount of exploring while the game's waiting for the player to hit the next section, you can make simple yet interesting choices about what the player finds if they actually do start exploring, and you can expect the explorative characters to find the things you set up (as opposed to wandering around a giant town during a storm and then getting bored and wandering back to the inn without having found the one section where you hid something neat).
Yeah, I agree they could improve the level design. Blocked off stuff, added a little side mystery and called it good. This is a small indie team though so I'm not expecting too much out of them but I'm sure they will be happy with your feedback.
Yes, it's important to remember the scope of possibilities, given the resources and experience of the team. Honestly, being not that familiar with itch.io but having played a small varieties of games here, I expect smaller projects, smaller teams, lower budgets -- but even there, there's room to grow, and to think more about what can be done within those limitations. (I forget which thing I was watching or reading recently that discussed the benefit of working within limitations... possibly an episode of Start With This, by the creators of Welcome to Night Vale?)
I hope I don't come across as too critical in the feedback; I figure, since the creators donated their efforts to a good cause, then if I like it enough to both play more than a couple minutes of it and also wish it were better (more polished), I ought to provide at least a bit of a feedback about how that might be accomplished. Whether that feedback helps with a revamp of this game, or in a future project, it might still be useful. (As for the length: I tend to get wordy when I discuss things that interest me, and since I sometimes have trouble getting my point across, I tend to also over-explain things. So I hope it wasn't too much.) I know that with my writing, I appreciate detailed feedback about how to improve; that's not true of every creator (which is fine), but it's the position I start from, at least.
Hey we just wanted to say thanks for all the great feedback. Shipwreck was our first game and a big learning experience in just getting something we felt happy releasing. We first released it over 6 years ago and it's still something we look back on fondly but we aren't planning to make any design adjustments to it any more. That said we super appreciate all the time you spent on the feedback and we'll keep all of it in mind on our future games!
Very cute, very simple game. I found it relaxing. I played it during lunch breaks, and beat it after a few sessions.
This is such an adorable little zelda like game. I've really been enjoying it, the art is perfect, gameplay is great and I like the music, great job! It's not clear to me how save works but I'll assume it's automatic. :<
It feels clunky like the old school gameboy games and I rather like it.
edit: Yes save is auto, it was on the main menu and missed it earlier.
Hi! Just wanted to say my game is bugged and I'm wondering if you can fix it. In the desert dungeon, I got all three doors open and I went upstairs to get the last door. The room with the spikes should spawn enemies (I looked up a youtube video) but the enemies won't spawn so the door won't open, preventing me from continuing the game. It should be spawning the tornado like enemies that disappear.
A very fun little game! Almost like a mini Stardew Valley to Link's Awakening's Harvest Moon
Loved it! Short and sweet game, exactly the type of game I was looking for. The Sand Temple was my favorite dungeon, I thought it was the most cleverly designed. Looking forward to an enhanced version of this game or other games from the devs!
it's a 2D zelda but low budget! I don't mind low budget. My only complaint is that you walk slow. I enjoy the music and the dungeons are cool! I like it!
EDIT: Also, all the houses are locked when stormy so don't bother exploring unless it's sunny! Fight that explorer's instinct and just do what the story asks you to do!
(I'm currently going through all the games in the Racial Equality bundle and beating them if possible, in order to review them for all the people I've known that purchased it)
I have so far gotten a couple seals and am working my way through the game. The music is good and the art varies in quality but is generally fine to good, it can be a little hard to decipher what is what sometimes. The story has so far been simply present.
Much more of the development time should have been spent on polishing the controls than lengthening the game. A short and sweet experience is always better than a longer, blander one.
As the controls are, they're quite clunky. This is the biggest problem. The space between the character and the weapon is quite large, and the hitbox around the character feels blocky and unwieldy. There could be a bit more give between it and the environment/enemies. The movement and attack speed are rather slow for an action game, healing required a lot of button presses (I know it is a zelda-like, but we can make improvements on old formulas) and that can make things drag on sometimes.
The skills are there to make something successful. I hope they will consider making the controls as polished as possible before investing into making a full game around them in the future.
Game appears to work on Mac OSX ... But even with the sword, I can't move beyond the first screen. WTF?
Oh no. I'm sorry to hear that. Are you trying to walk up and off the screen? The game is styled on older games with fixed screens so the camera only moves to the new screen when you walk off the current one; it doesn't smoothly follow the player around like some games.
I'm also having that problem on windows, I'm just trapped on the beach. I've walked all along the edges of the walls and shore across a few screens and it seems there is no way forward?
I've been too busy to play this lately, but the music in the copy I impulse-bought years ago on Humble Store is beautiful. No clue what they're actually called, but I especially love the tracks that `unxwb music.xwb` extracts as 00000007.wav and 0000000b.wav.
Was a cool little zelda-like game!
Looking forward to other games like this! :-)
This game looks great! I hope it does well for you guys.