Ahoy everyone!
Welcome to our latest developer journal! Today, we’re taking a look ahead at the future timeline of Sea Trials and Arena, and a more detailed look at our release plan for both stages of development and the various steps in between.
Since our last journal, the work of Sea Trials is stronger than it’s ever been. That said, we owe you an honest conversation about the timeline for Sea Trials and beyond. Sea Trials will not be releasing in Q1 as originally planned. Our revised target is July 2026.
We know this isn’t what many of you were hoping to hear and will likely be a disappointment to many. We want to be upfront about why this has happened, as there are several reasons behind this decision, and while we don’t want this to read as a list of justifications, we believe you deserve the full context.
When we set forth with the original targeted releases (Q1 and Q4 2026) things were very much in a different place within the project. We were pre-Kickstarter, and had a much different set of ambitions for what Sea Trials and Arena would look like for an initial release. As you’ll know, our original campaign goal was a fraction of what we ended up raising. Our original plans for Sea Trials were far too stripped back and minimal for our new audience.
After seeing the level of support for the project, we felt it would not do to simply release something like an internal development build as we had originally planned for Sea Trials. Missing or broken features, an empty ocean to sail in and no formal method of learning how to sail to begin with would simply not suffice.
Right after the campaign took off, we revaluated the work to see what more we could achieve in what we thought would be the same time as previously planned. That way, what we presented on day one of Sea Trials’ release was proportionate to the support received and provided an even stronger basis for it’s continued development over the months that would follow. This meant hiring more people to fill in the additional work requirements, and it meant reassessing our release requirements for every stage of the project.
Of course, what we hadn’t anticipated was that the time we had allotted for Sea Trials during the original campaign plan would be much more restricted and pre-occupied after the campaign than we could have reasonably expected. The Kickstarter campaign’s funding arrived later than we had anticipated and there was a great deal of uncertainty about the taxation of those funds and how much was actually available for us to use, which meant we were late to begin hiring the additional team members necessary for Sea Trials development.
Compounding this, we were sadly let down by some of our initial hires. This cost us further time as we worked to find the right replacement candidates in those critical roles. A significant amount of time was also consumed by the managing of the project financials, finding new accountants who could deal with our increased complexity, solicitors (lawyers, for you US folks) to assist with contracts… An area I took responsibility for personally of course, but as a result meant I was less available for the team who needed my support in the initial months after Kickstarter.
With all of this in mind, here is our revised roadmap:
We’re of course willing to take responsibility for this delay. There was a naivety on my own part about how quickly we’d be back in the saddle after Kickstarter. Having not run a Kickstarter campaign before, it was impossible to anticipate every step of the process. Sadly, much of this delay has simply been the result of unforeseen additional background work that drained time from the team.
Much of our feeling of a lack of content in Sea Trials has now been addressed within our revised release plan. Players will begin with a cinematic, immersive tutorial that teaches the fundamentals of sailing aboard their first ship, the Bumblebee, ensuring that no one is without guidance. This opening is designed to establish an understanding of the mechanics of sailing, the terminology of the maritime world and the atmosphere of the world of Ahoy from the very first moments.
Following the tutorial, players will be free to explore a new location built specifically for Sea Trials and all of what that new location brings with it. There is considerably more taking shape behind the scenes, some of which this Journal may hint at, and much of which we look forward to showcasing between now and July.
In truth, the targeted dates announced during the campaign were always estimates, and the likelihood of delay was high from the outset. We did attempt to message this in the original campaign material, though our wording was not as clear as it needed to be, and that’s on us.
I would like to personally apologise for the time it took to announce this delay. We should have been more forthcoming with that announcement at the start of this year, or perhaps towards the end of last year when certain things started to show signs of delay from what we had planned. With each passing month rocketing by, the time from “We have time enough to announce a delay!” to “we’re in Q1 already!” felt like blinking would miss it. Naturally the reluctance to delay at all also remained strong. We’ll do better in future to signal these kinds of changes to our timelines earlier.
The important thing now is that the team is in the right place. We have the right people, the work is progressing well, and we’re confident in the revised timeline.
We’d also love to further clarify a few points regarding the updated roadmap:
The Regatta racing mode, one of our Kickstarter stretch goals will arrive as part of Sea Trials in the December 2026 window. We moved this work forward from the stretch goals as it provides the perfect foundation for testing the competitive nature of sailing, both in and out of combat.
Regatta will enable you and friends to designate the start and finish line of your own races, along with various waypoints that each ship must pass to avoid being disqualified to place in the final results. Each race will therefore be a unique challenge based on the conditions supplied by it’s creator, and we’ll have a few default race paths available from the start to allow you to compare your times.
Eventually, race results will be provided as a shareable URL which shows the path each ship took, as well as a map-based replay of the race itself and the results of those who took part. Our hope is that a small but passionate competitive scene will form out of this Regatta mode, allowing people to compete and hone their sailing capabilities throughout Sea Trials and beyond.
Chases are an iconic part of the Age of Sail, and as such we want to put your seamanship (and our ship’s systems) to the test as soon as possible. This means competitive racing will be available sooner than we had previously planned and provides a new flavour of Sea Trials while Arena itself is still in active development.
Regatta will remain part of Sea Trials (and of Arena and the hopeful Open World) long into the future.
For our supporters who backed at the tiers providing access to Arena: You will not have to wait until the public release to experience naval combat. Supporters will receive access as soon as naval combat features are introduced into Sea Trials. During this period, access will be provided through the Ahoy Launcher, ahead of the game’s availability on Steam and Epic during the public release window.
The Arena delay is more significant in some respects than the Sea Trials delay, and we’re aware of this. We simply believe that if we were out on our estimates on Sea Trials then it follows that we were likely out on our estimates on Arena as well. A three month delay to Sea Trials is therefore naturally a six month delay to Arena. This accounts for an offset by three months of the start of Arena work due to Sea Trials’ own delay, and then a further three months to account for our misjudgement of Sea Trials, and therefore likely, the Arena timelines.
We understand that delays are never welcome news, and we don’t take your patience for granted. It seems like every game released these days is subject to delays, and it was never in our plans to join them.
Every day the team is working to make Sea Trials the best possible introduction to Ahoy, and the additional time will be spent doing exactly that. As we’ve always said, we will prioritise quality over speed, and this is no different.
Recent developments in the industry have understandably led to questions about the future of independent online games like ours, and it is never ideal to pair that atmosphere with news of a delay. We want to be clear: we remain a small, independent, and focused team building Ahoy with care. While progress may at times appear measured from the outside, it is intentional. As an independent studio, we must balance long term vision, technical stability, and financial reality. That means strengthening core systems before expanding outward and ensuring that everything we release meets the standard Ahoy deserves. There is still much to build to realize the full vision of Ahoy, but our course is steady and our commitment remains firm.
Constructive discussion within the community continues to shape development and strengthen the world we are creating. For those who choose to support the project financially, that support directly sustains development and the dedicated artists and developers behind it. At the same time, simply being present, engaged, and invested in the journey is deeply meaningful to us. Ahoy is being built for the long voyage, and a committed community is as essential to its future as any feature on our roadmap.
With all of that in mind, we’ve heard your call for a look at gameplay footage. We’ve been putting off showing Sea Trials so far in an effort to showcase it as a fuller, more complete package. We understand that people are desperate to see the results of those efforts, and it is clear to us that we should adjust our method of showcasing gameplay going forward.
We’re pleased to announce that we will be releasing the much anticipated and requested gameplay video showcasing the work towards Sea Trials in our next Journal. We believe the showcase will offer a good look at what the development of Sea Trials is looking like. We’re really looking forward to giving you a proper look at what we’ve been building!
Now onto the progress reports!
With the expanded scope for Sea Trials, we needed to capture a little more than just the words and lifestyle of your average sloop’s crew. Life on land and sea deserve just as much attention, and in fact can make all the difference to your voyage if the place you leave or arrive in feels alive and worth sailing for.
Each new location requires a new set of voices! In Ahoy, if you visit a French port, you’ll hear French voices. If you visit a Spanish port, you’ll hear Spanish voices. We take great care to represent the world as it should be, and remove some of the layers of abstraction that is so common in other experiences.
Of course, there will be subtitles in as many languages as we can manage to provide, but we want the auditory experience to be authentic to the time and place you’re visiting as much as possible.
This video gives a little preview of the work going on in the background to prepare for many living, breathing NPC characters that will inhabit the world of Ahoy.
As you might imagine, this is a significant undertaking in and of itself. Writing hundreds of lines of dialogue, making sure these dialogue lines works in multiple languages, bringing together actors with our director to capture their voice and face performances.
We have two more recording sessions planned over March and April. We’ll be sure to share more snippets of this work in the future. We’re really excited for you to see the results of these efforts along with the release of Sea Trials, even if we’re not quite ready to share where exactly these NPCs will be living just yet. There are clues out there, though!
Our first batch of hand-made cocked hats are making their way to us from our wonderful Hatter as I write this. We’ll be coordinating with those of you who have physical hats as part of your campaign rewards to ensure the delivery addresses are still fine and to provide an estimate on when your hats should arrive.
Please allow some time for the shipping to take place, this will be our first time shipping internationally in bulk. Needless to say we’ll be in touch with each recipient throughout the process as soon as it’s time to send your hats to you.
On our physical and digital book reward – The Ships & Boats of Ahoy: Volume One, our Lead Historical Advisor and the author of the book, John, is finalising for print while we await availability from the print shop we’ve identified for this work.
In an effort to provide you with a look at how the book is taking shape, we are providing you with a chapter preview focused on Nemesis and more generally the French privateer cutters of the late 18th century.
You can download this preview in PDF form here.
The preview will showcase the level of research and detail John has placed within the writing of the book, and an indication of how much larger of a task it was to prepare than the simple picture book we had originally imagined. We believe the expanded content of the book, providing detailed backstory for many of Ahoy’s ships will be a great companion piece when you are able to sail them.
As soon as we have a finalised print date, we can update you all on the estimated shipping times. As with the shipping of the hats, we’ll be in touch with each of you to confirm final delivery addresses as soon as possible.
While work is developing elsewhere, we’re continuing to broaden our coverage of character wardrobes for characters we plan to represent as early as Sea Trials, but of course also long into the lifetime of Ahoy.
This work is not a distraction from Sea Trials’ release, but something we’re able to achieve alongside the existing work being undertaken there. The additional time afforded to us by the need for more time on tech means that we can further improve and increase the representation of characters across all walks of life.
All clothing takes an enormous amount of time to research and ensure we’re approaching each set with the same level of feedback and consideration. While we prepare clothing for some of the characters you meet during Sea Trials, we’re also thinking ahead to what will be necessary to depict life on land in the Caribbean.
And then we move onto characters who will occupy the storyline of Sea Trials and introduce you to the world of Ahoy. We’re not quite ready to share information about the characters themselves. We feel it would be better if they are left to do that for themselves when you meet them. That said, the work going into their depiction is really second to none.
On top of this, there is no depiction of the 18th century Caribbean without a faithful representation of the enslaved population of the sugar islands. It was an enormous effort to gather as much reference material and advise as possible on our depictions, and we’re really proud of the depth of detail and authenticity we’ve been able to achieve.
A slave’s clothing was often expected to last a significant amount of time, and therefore we felt it appropriate to show the level of use and reuse, recycling and repair work that would go into enabling an approximation of the European fashion of this period.
It is an uneasy truth that even where resources were scarce, cloth was poor, and equipment remained minimal, the expectation persisted that each person present themselves in the most respectable manner possible. Scarcity did not diminish the social demand for order, dignity, and outward composure, even when circumstances we’re intentionally made such that these standards were difficult to uphold.
In fact, we see many of the European fashion traditions of the time echoed in the clothing worn by slaves. You can see this in the details – Buttons missing from otherwise fairly standard pattern breaches, likely sold on or removed before being provided. Cloth being regularly patched and repaired to make the garment last that extra length of time. A lack of or minimal amount of dye or pattern work throughout the fabrics, often left plain.
For us, Ahoy is about creating a meaningful and accurate depiction of the world of the 18th century, and we’re really pleased with how far the art team has come in this regard. Populating towns and villages is vital to giving the world that lived-in feel, and we’ve taken great inspiration from games like Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 in that regard. We want the world to feel alive, and the people in it to feel real.
We’re hopeful you’ll get to experience those living spaces a little sooner than you might anticipate, as well! This isn’t just work for the Open World ahead, but for much of the content we plan in the months to come.
This month we’ve taken a different approach to your questions, pairing them with a preview of the progress within the rest of the project. We’ve picked out some of your community questions and used those as the jumping off point to talk more in-depth about areas of the project and what the team has been working on.
On Sea Trials Tutorial:
– Respondent, Journal Questionnaire.
- Will Ahoy have an exhaustive tutorial for sailing or will the mechanics be taught progressively? (And what would a tutorial look like?)
The tutorial has been one of the more significant additions to Sea Trials during its extended development phase, and one we felt was necessary to get right before release.
Sailing a ship from this period is not something most people will have any prior experience with, and we didn't want players' first moments in Ahoy to be spent confused or overwhelmed by unfamiliar terminology and mechanics. Rather than a simple overlay of instructions or a random wiki or pdf you have to open every five minutes, we've opted to introduce Ahoy's sailing mechanics through a fully scripted, story experience.
The tutorial will take the form of a dialogue-driven sequence between the player and multiple other characters, each with their own story, voice acting and performance capture. The mechanics are taught progressively throughout this experience, with each stage introducing new concepts at a pace that allows you to practice and become comfortable before moving on. The aim is for this to feel like a natural part of the world. You'll learn the fundamentals of seamanship from characters who feel real, in a way that we hope sets the tone for the rest of the experience.
It has been a substantial undertaking, and it is part of the reason behind Sea Trials' extended development. But we believe it will make a meaningful difference to how new players are introduced to Ahoy.
On Coding Progress:
– Respondent, Journal Questionnaire.
- How goes the games coding, what have you found challenging and how have you resolved these challenges?
Work within gameplay and systems development has been moving forward since the very start of the project, and it continues to be one of our most active areas of focus.
The biggest challenges have centred around finding the most robust methods for several of Ahoy's foundational systems. Dynamic ship rigging, buoyancy, and sail physics have all required extensive iteration. These are areas where no off-the-shelf solution exists. Nothing in Unreal Engine or otherwise provides a ready-made system for the kind of complex, physically driven sailing simulation we're building, and so everything has had to be designed and built from the ground up.
A significant amount of time has also gone into building out custom tools within Unreal Engine to support ongoing development. These tools allow the team to work more efficiently across the project, and while they aren't the kind of thing you'd ever see as a player, they are essential to how we build and iterate on Ahoy's systems day to day.
While we're happy with the outcome of this work now, it has taken a significant amount of time to develop. That said, getting these foundations right is something we feel strongly about. Everything else in Ahoy is built on top of these systems, and the time invested here will pay dividends as we continue to expand the experience.
On VOIP:
– Respondent, Journal Questionnaire.
- Will the game have proximity voip?
Voice and text chat will both feature in Sea Trials from the very start.
For text communication, you'll have access to a global channel that connects everyone currently playing Sea Trials, a local channel for those on your current server, and private messaging between individual players regardless of which server they're on.
For voice, VOIP will be proximity based. You'll only hear the voices of players who are physically nearby in the game world. Whether you're calling out orders from the quarterdeck or having a quiet word below, the experience will reflect that sense of distance and presence naturally.
While it may not be possible in the earliest versions of Sea Trials, we also have ambitions to implement Voice-to-Face animation as well, allowing you to drive your character's facial motion from your webcam or possibly through just the sound of your voice.
We're trying to keep the impact on immersion as low as possible, so there will be ways to reduce the UI and hide or mute certain speakers as you like.
The backend work is in place for global (cross-server) and local (server-only) text chat, with VOIP following swiftly. We have some work to do to tie your user profile to your in-game profile (along with your player identity information, hence the placeholder names!)
On Sound on Ships:
– Respondent, Journal Questionnaire.
- In regards to the sound environment: There are many sounds on a living ship. From the crew themselves, to the wind in the rigging, the creaking and groaning of the many complex machinery and components, to the sea itself. Can we expect the full range of an auditory maritime experience?
Work on the sound of ships has been a major focus for our sound designer, Andrew. His work has centred primarily on building out an ambience that surrounds you while aboard the ship.
You'll hear the sound of water rushing past the hull, which shifts dynamically based on the speed of travel. The air passing through your ears changes depending on whether you're looking into the wind or away from it -- a good way to tell the wind's direction, as well! Beneath it all, the creaks and groans of the ship's structure and rigging provide a constant reminder that you're aboard a living, breathing vessel.
Layering all of this together, along with the Sea Trials soundtrack, has produced something we're genuinely proud of. It's become such an immersive experience that we're actually convinced the sound and music would work as a standalone sleeping aid. Or perhaps that's just me, having used it that way for the past few months...
On Kickstarter Survey Responses:
– Respondent, Journal Questionnaire.
- As of December, 25, you say 900 have not submitted and you can’t proceed. It seems obvious that some of those are no longer interested or have died. You need a cut-off date and then proceed. Don’t hold everyone hostage.
Fear not! The notices around Kickstarter survey responses remaining incomplete is not a question of delivering rewards to those who have successfully answered the survey questions, but instead a notice (via email with each new Journal) to those who have yet to complete theirs. We will not wait to deliver on Kickstarter rewards because some people haven't yet completed their surveys.
Submit your questions:
https://forms.gle/1w9MRgU3qrvTNkqn7
Until next time, good day!
Sincerely your most humble servant,
Tyler – Project Lead
Our Journal updates are often discussed at length in the official Ahoy Discord server. Whether you have questions about the topics covered in this update, or you would like to leave your own feedback or suggestions, please join our Discord server to discuss!
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