One ship. One crew. Every station a player. Here is what Keels & Kingdoms is, what is already sailing, and what we are building next.
Keels & Kingdoms is a co-op age-of-sail game built around a single idea: a ship is too much for one person.
There is no autopilot and no first mate NPC filling the gap. Someone has to hold the wheel. Someone has to read the wind and call the trim. Someone has to run out the guns, and while they are doing that they are not doing anything else. The ship moves as well as the crew that sails her, and no better.
That constraint is the whole design. Every system is built to make the crew talk to each other.
Deterministic sailing. The sea is computed rather than transmitted, so every player’s ship sits in the same water without the rubber-banding that plagues multiplayer sailing. Point of sail matters — beating to windward is slow work, and a broad reach is where she flies.
A living sea. Storms build upwind and blow down on you, so weather arrives from a direction you can read and sail around. Calm water sits around three metres of swell; a storm core reaches seventeen. Harbours and coves shelter naturally.
Working stations. The helm, both gun decks, the mortar nest and the lookout nest are all real positions a player takes, holds and hands over.
Broadsides. Fifteen guns a side, run out by hand, fired as a rolling barrage that sweeps bow to stern — or, if you would rather, every gun at will. The lower deck carries twelve-pounders, the upper deck nines, and they sound like it.
Ships that break. Cannon fire damages hulls, people and scenery, and does it selectively — a cutlass will never hole a ship. A beaten hull settles under, throws her crew clear, and comes back.
Swimming. Go over the side and you swim, riding the real swell rather than a flat plane. Stay under too long and you will find out how long you can hold your breath.
Movement that reads. Motion-matched locomotion with vaulting, mantling and climbing on land — and a character who stands, walks and lands jumps correctly on a deck that is heaving and rolling under way.
Shove and tackle. The melee is close, physical and appropriate to a crowded deck.
A chart of your own. A world map with discovery fog, waypoints and a compass.
Karissa — the main world. A tropical island with a town, a tavern, a harbour and a pier, ringed by open ocean and sheltered coves. This is where the game is played.
Skull Arena — two brigs, six hundred metres apart, broadside to broadside off the beach of Skull Island. No stations to walk to, no voyage to make. Just the guns.
Keels & Kingdoms is in active development and is not for sale.
The systems above are built and tested. What has not happened yet is enough play — most of the co-operative work has been proven on one machine and is waiting on real crews on real connections. That is the next milestone, and it is the honest gap between “built” and “finished”.
Some of the newest systems — ship damage and sinking, the world map, the rolling barrage and Skull Arena — are finished and verified but have not yet reached a build testers can play.
Development runs in the open. The roadmap tracks it as it happens.
Unreal Engine 5.8. A solo developer working alongside AI agent sessions, with every change verified against the running engine before it lands.
