In the high-stakes world of zooming around through space in a piecemeal built jalopy of misaligned and randomly stitched together hulls, equipment, and crew members, only one ship can survive. Apparently, in this take on space, the moment you meet another spacefarer is a moment you must immediately and violently battle to the death. What a future to look forward to!
In Down with the Ship (DwtS), your goal is to build the deadliest, most efficient ship that can withstand an enemy onslaught while dishing it right back out. In practice, that works by way of the players dragging and dropping polyomino pieces (think Tetris shapes) together so that the pieces’ adjacency and locations will provide bonuses to your ship. You’ll then enter combat with another random player’s ship – someone at the same stage as you – and the game will autobattle it out and crown a PvP-ish winner.
If you’ve played an autobattler before, then you’ll understand the basic premise of the gameplay, which is to build your character (or space ship, as the case is here) with powers and gear, then enter combat and let the algorithm take it away. There’s little to nothing you can do to interact with the combat itself once it’s begun. In DwtS, the game plays as if you are in a gauntlet of battles with an ever-increasing progression of steadily more difficult opponents.
I should also get this out of the way early: If you’re familiar with Backpack Battles, then you’re already several steps further along in understanding how DwtS plays. The elevator pitch for it would basically be “Backpack Battles in space.” So a lot of the basic concepts from Backpack Battles will translate one-to-one with DwtS. And just as I found when I played Backpack Battles, this is a light game that has some deep decision-making opportunities… if you want to play it that way.
By that I mean you begin with a small ship, a pilot, and a weapon. A single run allows you five lives. So you’re able to lose that many battles before it’s game over. And just as in Backpack Battles, it’s technically PvP since you’re battling other players’ ships, but you aren’t actively interacting with each other live. Honestly, I don’t know how the game determines whom it’s pairing you up with to fight, but it doesn’t really matter in the least. You may as well be fighting NPCs. You press battle and let it run. There’s no pressure or heckling going on, so don’t even stress about that! Just enjoy building your loadout.
After every fight, win or lose, you’ll get a shop of six items to choose from with one free reroll each time. It’s kind of what you’d expect in a roguelite: Each run resets your ship to a baseline level, but as you play, you’ll be able to unlock new factions and some bonus tech items that offer some passive benefits. That way you’ll be able to specialize your buildout. It’s a fun and interesting way to create a sense of progression without overtly overpowering established players. Of course, players who’ve added some number of passive effects that they know will combo well with a particular build are going to have a nice advantage over a new player who doesn’t have any of those choices, but it’s a small advantage in the long run.
Building the ship involves purchasing those items between combat rounds. You’ll just click and drag them from the shop to your ship. If it’s a hull piece, it’ll may add some additional HP and armor or other bonus, but it also adds more slots (usually) that you can build into, similar to adding more bags to your MMO backpack inventory.
When you are adding weapons, generally speaking, you’ll just drop them at the front (you’re always flying to the right) of the ship. Some weapons require this, and some others don’t, which is part of the fun and challenge of ensuring you arrange your ship properly. There are components you can add to increase the effects and abilities of weapons or crew members – or even other components, if you place them within the correct orientation.
In Backpack Battles, it’s usually just adjacent or above or below, something along those lines. But in DwtS, you’ll find much more complex arranging. In the image below, you can see the arrangement this item will empower. It’s one square north, south, east, and west, but not adjacent, and then also in the corners even farther away. It’s cool, but the effort to make sure you actually hit that layout is surprisingly involved.
The items you can add to the ship could be weapons (bullets or lasers), crew members (who have different abilities from increased DPS or recharging and firing speeds for the weapons), or miscellaneous items that can stack bonuses on your ship, its crew, or the weapons. These additions felt much more straightforward in Backpack Battles than in DwtS. A single item might have two or three different abilities it can stack with, which absolutely increases the opportunities to build a unique and powerful ship.
But it also really leaves me with some analysis paralysis! I kind of see all the different stats and just can’t focus myself on them. Instead, I tend to find myself simply investing heavily in one or two things. If it says it boosts laser weapons, then yes, I’m going heavy on the lasers this time.
And there’s just a whole bunch of other aspects to consider, from abilities like improved ship speed (which increases the chance of enemy attacks missing) and increasing your total ammo or electricity on the ship (needed to make sure your weapons can continue to fire without waiting around) to stealth, poison damage, burn damage, and a whole lot more. Frankly, it just quickly begins to feel overwhelming to me.
Another point to note: DwtS and Backpack Battles actually play differently. At least to me, as I was playing through it ,I didn’t feel at all as in control of my ship as I was with my backpack. There’s no doubt that most of that is just me and likely the fact that I’ve always been more of a fantasy gamer than a sci-fi gamer, so mentally I can connect and relate with magics better than with guns and lasers. But also I think the combos you’re building out in DwtS are much more nuanced and complex than in Backpack Battles.
None of this is a bad thing, either! At least, I’m not knocking the game for it. I think it’s extremely cool that it requires more thought and strategy to build out the ship well. But for the effort and reward I get out of games like this, I think it might be too much for me.
I would absolutely encourage players who enjoy the sci-fi theme and arrangement puzzle that Down with the Ship brings to give it a try (it’s 15 bucks on Steam) because what it does works really well. And I absolutely had a fun time playing and expect to play it more. But will I ever be good at DwtS? Probably not. But I’ll have fun when I do play!
