Playtest open Fri–Sun · Request access
A whole ocean, and a ship to cross it.
Sail a living, simulated sea around a circumnavigable globe. Trade for a reason, fight broadside to broadside, take prizes, and build a name worth leaving to your heirs — alone, or in Steam co-op.
- 17period hulls
- 52rivers to sail up
- 8captains in company
The voyage
Out on the water
Playtest · open every Friday, Saturday and Sunday
Sail the first waters
The Project Seaborne playtest runs every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, for now. It's a limited slice of the game, and a seat at the table for anyone who wants to help shape it.
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A slice of the map
The sea is fenced to a slice of the map, now reaching from Iceland and Greenland in the west to the Black Sea in the east, with the prologue to start you off. The rest of the world is waiting for later.
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No large ships
Small and mid-sized hulls only. The big ships stay in the yard for now, so every fight and every cargo is a smaller, closer thing.
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Capped, and growing every week
Places are limited and we open more each week. Request access now and you will be let in as the numbers grow.
Press Request Access on the Steam page. Found a bug or have a thought? Use Send Feedback in the Escape menu, or tell us on Discord.
The ship's log
Latest from the build
What got done, what broke, and what's next. Updated as the work happens.
- 30 Oct 2026 · Roundup Fog, fire, and a whole world to chart Magazine explosions, fog, a world you can fully chart, a globe view and fleets that sail as divisions.
- 26 Oct 2026 · Roundup The prologue opens the campaign, and the map reaches the ice Rogue waves, pack ice, eight Asian crowns, sieges, treasure hunts and wrecks.
- 23 Oct 2026 · Announcement The playtest is open Open every Friday, Saturday and Sunday: a fenced slice of the game, no large ships, capped and growing every week.
The sea is the game
You sail it properly
The ocean is simulated, not painted. Waves build with the wind, your hull rides real water, and every ship leaves a wake that others feel.
Set your canvas, read the wind, and beat to windward in tacks because you cannot sail straight into it. Weather turns over the hours — a clear morning becomes a slate afternoon becomes a gale that will shred flying canvas if you are too proud to furl. Night falls for real.
- A circumnavigable globe on the real Earth — sail east far enough and you come home from the west, in about five hours of sailing
- Fifty-two great rivers to take a shallow hull up, where deep-water ships cannot follow
- Dolphins on your bow wave, whales off the beam, flying fish ahead of a fast hull
Powder and shot
Take the helm. Lay your battery.
Run out the guns, raise the arc, and choose your shot — round to hole her, chain to cut her canvas, grape to sweep her deck.
Damage is real and it stays. Holes below the waterline flood her. Masts come down. Burning timbers spread. Torn sails rob her speed. Kill enough of her crew and she cannot work her guns. When she strikes her colours, you decide what she is worth: board her and take her as a prize, plunder her hold and let her go, or send her down.
Enemy squadrons fight as squadrons, and the world remembers who fired first.
What gives the voyage a point
A life ashore, and a name that outlives you
Every port is a painted harbour with the whole life of the town behind its doors.
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Trade with a reason
Raw goods are grown and dug where they are found, carried to the works that make them, and sold on as the fittings that build ships. Learn that map and you can see a profit two ports before you reach it.
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A crew, not a stat
Men eat, drink and form opinions. Run the casks dry and men die. Pay badly or sail badly and morale rots into desertion, and desertion into something worse.
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The Captain's Chronicle
Seven callings — Trade, Battle, Carpentry, Discipline, Survivalism, Exploration and Infamy — each with its own skill tree. You cannot have everything, and there is no respec.
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A world with its own business
Traders run real cargoes between real ports. Every port keeps a job board, from deliveries and pirate bounties to privateer letters and convoy escorts. Crowns own towns, and merchant shipping fights its own wars whether you are there or not.
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Things worth finding
Riddle-clue treasure maps with no waypoint, curiosities dear on the far side of the world, and a stranger with ten errands and no explanation.
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An estate, and a family
A farm granted by the crown acre by acre. A marriage, children who serve aboard as your officers, and an heir who inherits what you built.
The world
The real Earth — almost
Seventeen hulls
Every one a prize
Capture her, buy her second-hand at the quay, or have her laid down at a yard big enough to build her.
- Sloop
- Pinnace
- Fusta
- Galiot
- Galley
- Caravel
- Caravela redonda
- Barque
- Brigantine
- Fluyt
- Carrack
- Nao
- Nau
- Galleon
- Spanish galleon
- East Indiaman
- Junk
The yard is where a ship becomes yours. Fit her guns, cut her canvas in your own dye and device, paint your house flag pixel by pixel — or sit at the drafting table and lay down a hull's lines yourself.
Sail in company
You and seven friends, one ocean
Host a voyage and invite up to seven friends through Steam. One economy, so the cargo your friend sells ahead of you really does move the price. One shipping lane, so the merchantman you both sight is the same ship.
Fight the same enemy from two decks. Then make port together, sit down across the felt, and play Liar's Dice for real gold.
In active development
Be there when she sails
Wishlist Project Seaborne on Steam so you're told the day she's ready, and follow the build as it happens in the Dev Log and on Discord.