FEBRUARY 2019 PCWorld 73sloop. And she was gorgeous—at the time, I
hadn’t seen anything else like her in the
game. We sailed back to the freeport where
we spawned so we could fill our skins with the
freshwater pools there. We logged out in the
harbor, partly out of weariness, and partly to
let everyone else on their sad rafts see what
was possible when you worked together with
friends. We were inspirational, we thought.
So you can imagine our horror when we
logged on the next day and found our mighty
sloop scuttled in the harbor. All that work; all
for nothing. Apparently those little rafts had
accidentally (intentionally?) sunk our fair ship
by bumping into it. That, fortunately, has been
taken out of the game as well.
But we rebuilt. Maybe that says something
about the human spirit. Or maybe it just
means that Captain Bradford is reviewing it for
a major publication and couldn’t easily back
away. Besides, we’d already spent way too
much time to get a Steam refund.
Let’s fast forward a few hours—past the
mindless harvesting, past the scouring for
water. The two Joes built not only another ship
they named the Vingilot, but an entire dry
dock and some materials for a larger ship that
they crammed into the cargo hold’s tiny
chest. (Hey, it’s a video game.) Captain Joe
was sick of this joint. He got it in his head that
better fortunes awaited us around five squares
away on the map and so we set off in the
pursuit of happiness.A STAR TO STEER HER BY
I can’t deny I felt a little thrill. For everything
else Atlas gets wrong, it nails the wonder of
building a ship and that initial excitement of
setting out on adventures
unknown. It’s glorious to
watch the ship take shape
as we first construct the
skeleton, then the hull,
and finally the masts and
helm. Filling its containers
with food and weapons
feels every bit like
preparing for a voyage of
discovery. And then there’s
the actual act of sailing,
which in our case meant
Captain Joe manned the
Sigh. helm and Joe M. and I