The fine frigate which serves as the featured image for this article is called the Stately Gunwale. That’s not a name I, the boat’s creator, gave it. It’s a name ShipShaper’s demo automatically assigned my vessel when I picked the set of colours I wished it to be painted. Quite frankly, I doubt I could have dreamed up a more fitting moniker for my deliberate attempt to fling something funky onto the high seas.

ShipShaper’s the latest creation of The Falconeer and Bulwark developer Tomas Sala, who describes it thusly:

I’ve always loved ships and boats, perhaps it’s the idea of going off to explore or an enduring fascination with the ocean. But I love ships. Over the last years I’ve known that ships would be at the centre of any Falconeer/Bulwark follow up, and what started out as a little folly made for Bulwark has grown into its own thing. ShipShaper is a small, explorative shipbuilder I made for the simple pleasure of shaping boats and ships. You pull, push, and drag forms into place, creating everything from humble fishing vessels to tall ships, ironclads, and early dreadnoughts. There’s no grid, no ‘meta’, and no right answer. Just shapes, balance, and the slow satisfaction of something coming together.

Starting off with a small, bare template, you stretch and bend you boat into whatever shape you like. I stuck a big hump in the middle of the deck, because that’s practical, then peppered masts, exhausts, and gun turrets about with reckless abandon. The engine cover is wedged halfway through the hull, and the sides are stocked with protruding galley oars which don’t touch the water and cannons pointed at impractical angles. An anchor and some flaps round out a ship that should fare well at sea, when its prow isn’t jutting underwater.

Once you’ve built the thing, you can snap some screenshots of it in a waterborne diorama. Sala has teased that “the full game will come with an open creative license to use the ships you create in any way you want for your own game development, boardgame or modding venture”. You’ll also be able 3D print your ship or import into Bulwark.

It’s well worth spending at least five minutes playing around with ShipShaper, which doesn’t have a release date as of writing. You can find its demo and wishlist it on Steam, if you’re so inclined.