Old Gamers Never Die: Trying Out 'War on the Sea'

© 2021 Killerfish Games

 Hi, Dear Reader. It's been a while since my last post, hasn't it? I have been busy building up A Certain Point of View, Too over on WordPress, and although I initially thought I'd be able to write regularly in both of my blogs, that idea quickly went out the window many months ago. (You know that old saying about the road to Hell is paved with good intentions? Well...) 

To be honest, I focus more on stuff there more than here for several reasons. First, the original A Certain Point of View has enough material - 1,360 posts, including this one - to sustain itself for a while without my input. I get fewer views than before the fateful Facebook block that forced me to create our WordPress sister blog, sure, but this blog still gets decent traffic and ad revenue without me publishing one post a day. 

Another reason why I need to be more active on WordPress it's because I have to pay annually for the Premium package and a domain name. It's not a huge bill (I think it's around $100 for the whole enchilada. But until I get enough ad revenue on A Certain Point of View, Too going to make it worth my while, I need to create enough material to keep my 275 followers interested and attract more readers. So, because I have a financial stake there and not here (and also because my WordPress blog is not blocked by Facebook), I need to focus more there than here. 

But I digress.

Last week I purchased a brand-new game called War on the Sea, a naval strategy and battle simulation developed by Australian game studio Killerfish Games. This is the same outfit that created Cold Waters in 2017, but only one of the members of that team — the lead designer — worked on this new game, which is set in World War II's Pacific Theater. 

War on the Sea came out last Tuesday, and I bought it late on Wednesday night, so I have not even gotten past the training scenarios, much less fought a Single Battle or a Campaign. The most that I can claim that I have done is completed the first training scenario and taken a cursory look at the Single Battles but other than that....

Here's how Killerfish Games describes the game on the company's website:

War on the Sea puts you in command of task forces, convoys and submarines as well as tactical use of aircraft to secure the South Pacific during World War II. Heavily inspired by the classic computer games “Great Naval Battles” and “Task Force 1942″, War on the Sea is coming soon to PC and Mac.

1942: The world is at war

The Japanese Empire expands throughout the Pacific where Allied forces attempt to halt its spread. A desperate struggle for control of the Solomon Islands is now underway.

How will you protect your transports as they deliver troops and supplies in the South Pacific? Will you deploy precious aircraft carriers to provide air cover? Do you screen the area with submarines? Or attempt to lure the enemy navy into a decisive surface engagement?

Screenshot from my first training mission.  © 2021 Killerfish Games

Like Cold Waters, this game has gorgeous visuals and gives you a rough idea of the complexities of naval warfare, albeit at an earlier era than the Cold War and with entire task forces rather than a single ship, sub, or aircraft. 

However, as even the more war game-savvy YouTuber "The Historical Gamer" points out in his videos about War on the Sea, the user interface (UI) is not easy to learn or use. Giving orders to your ships and navigating through all of the different views are not exactly intuitive or easily understood and mastered. 

Perhaps — since this is rather early in War on the Sea's rollout — the designers will get feedback from players and fine-tune the game's user interface to make gameplay a bit less frustrating. War on the Sea has a lot of potential, and it looks as though Killerfish Games might add more theaters of war (like the Mediterranean, which saw quite a few battles between the Royal Navy and the Italian and German navies and air forces. But before the programmers and artists do that, they need to fine-tune the UI. 

All images © 2021 Killerfish Games