People ask me, "When will work on Silent Hunter 6 be started?" Who knows? At this time, Ubisoft has not revealed any interest in continuing the series. People are also asking me why Subsim cannot produce a community-based game. Well, maybe we can. I think we are actually at a point where a non-Ubisoft game could surpass SH5, because this week I spent 6 hours in the new world of a groundbreaking WWII subsim: HMS Marulken.
HMS Marulken is a lot like SH5, where you can move about the sub, but a key difference is, you interact with the controls directly, not though a user interface. For example: to change depth, you don't merely click on a dial, in Marulken you actually pull a lever that opens a flood valve and fills the tank until you reach the depth ordered (don't overshoot!). And say you want to surface and switch propulsion to the diesels; you would flip a switch that reroutes the circuit from batteries to diesels, flip another pair of switches to energize the starter circuit, and crank the big diesels to life. And then you can decide how much power you want to send to the screws, and how many volts to jam back into the batteries for your next submerged attack. That's just the tip of the iceberg as far as features go, wait till you try your hand at intercepting radio transmissions and decoding them with the Enigma, or inputting fire control data into the TDC.
HMS Marulken is still in early alpha state and the devs have many more features planned, but it is impressively detailed and functional. Subsim has asked the dev team to set up a demo, waiting for you to download and try out. It is stable, I have not experienced a single crash thus far. But that's not the really cool part....
.. this game is designed for four players to man the sub as a team! Yep, co-op subsim play may actually surface before the Terminators rise to destroy the planet.
The game has four different roles; Captain, Navigator, Chief Engineer, and Radio/Sonar Operator. And believe me, this changes everything. It's really stimulating to manage a warship as a team, as compared to single player. You are closer to simulating a submarine that ever before. Read all the details in my preview here: http://www.subsim.com/2016/preview_HMSMarulken.php
Yeah, I'm really stoked about this game, I sure hope you will have a look, tell me what you think, sir.
The forum to discuss the game is here: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/forumdisplay.php?f=277
Download the playable demo here: http://hmsmarulken.se/index.html
The devs even have a Kickstarter to help them speed up development of the game, you can find it here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1655728789/hms-marulken-reboot
I have seen the future of subsims and the brightest ray of light is HMS Marulken.
Good hunting!
Onkel Neal
SUBSIM
