Sea King
Nintendo Switch

Developed By : Interactive Stone
Published By : Interactive Stone
Category : Multiplayer, Party, Naval Combat
Release Date : June 17, 2019

Do you find yourself sitting amongst your peers, swearing to them that if you could just get out on the water with a big, massive ship, you could easily best them at naval warfare? Well, if you do find yourself in this truly unique and specific situation, Sea King on the Nintendo Switch is exactly what you’ll need to back up your hypothetical threats and allow you to get in your friends faces and say “I told you so!”

First and foremost, this game is built as a four-person party battle game, but you can play it with less than four players by filling in AI slots. I wasn’t able to fully test this out with the maximum amount of players, but everything that is said about this game rings true whether you play it against all bots or any other people. Naturally, the only difference is that playing against other people brings a bit more authenticity to the gameplay.

Sea King contains a dozen different modes to bring you various ways to prove that you’re the best thing on water. You have the round types that you’d expect, such as Deathmatch where the first player to destroy 5 ships wins the round, or Last Ship Standing where you need to be the…last ship standing at the end of the round. Even a Capture the Flag where you’ll need to pick up and hold the flag for a consecutive 20 seconds.

There’s plenty of unique styled modes too that will keep you entertained more than enough as you play. You can go fishing, where you’ll be on the sea with a literal crap-ton of fish just floating around, be the ship holding the most fish at the end of time to win. Shark Pong has a hungry shark darting around in the waters. This shark will target a ship and not stop pursuing that ship until it either eats it, or it gets hit by a cannon which will cause it to switch targets. Seagull’s Nest places a nest at the top of your mast, and a seagull flying around in the area. You’ll need to sail under it so it can land in the nest, and let it relax for 10 seconds to win.

As far as your ship goes, it operates mostly on twin-stick like controls. The left joystick will move your ship around, with the direction of the stick being respective to the screen (so if you want to move towards the top of the screen, hold the stick up). You can also fire cannonballs from four directions : forward, backward, and either side. These controls are bound to the button interface on the right joy-con, and will always be respective to the ship itself, not the screen. So X is your button to fire from the front of your ship, not to fire upwards. It sounds confusing to explain it this way, and I’m sure it might be slightly confusing to read as well but getting your hands on the ship controls makes sense in an instant.

Most people intending to pick this game up will be doing so for the ability to face off against others, but like I said earlier it’s pretty fun squaring off against the AI especially if you fill all the slots and ramp up the difficulty. Honestly speaking, this is the part where I would want to say that if you aren’t intending to play this with others then avoid it, however for this game to be priced as low as it is, you should absolutely pick this game up to face off against some computers.

Again, this won’t net you the same thrilling experience that you’d get facing off against others, but it is seriously fun. The fact that there are 12 different modes and a handful of ships to choose from prevents this game from getting stale at all. Furthermore, the only thing really missing from this game is that there is no online support for it, so you’ll have to play couch co-op if that is your wish to do so. No matter though, Sea King is an amazing, fun game and is more than worthy of a spot in your digital library.