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STAFF REVIEW of Ship Graveyard Simulator (Xbox One)


Wednesday, December 14, 2022.
by Kirsten Naughton

Ship Graveyard Simulator Box art Have you ever wanted to sit down on the couch after a long day of work or school and just turn your brain off? Ship Graveyard Simulator has you covered. Destroying scrap metal, mopping up oil spills, wielding a blowtorch to destroy an electrical panel or driving an old truck around a pretty decently sized world that you’ll be sucked into quite quickly. There’s no storyline to follow, you simply get plopped into a world, taken through a very short tutorial and badabing badaboom! You’re a salvager now! Just to be clear - Ship Graveyard Simulator doesn’t title you as a salvager, but I’m basically calling your character one. There are three main points to being a salvager; destroy, collect and sell. Later on, I’m going to get into the forging, the skill points, the upgrading, the casual orders and the buying of ships, so hold tight.

With regards to destroying things, while it is fun, there’s often a spot on the item where it’s the 'critical point' of destruction. Generally, if you find this specific spot, the destruction will be a bit bigger than if you destroyed something normally. Which, I rarely had that occurrence, so I could have lived without it. What I can’t live without telling you though is that several times during gameplay I would be in front of an item that stated I could destroy it, but was lit up white. I would move around trying to trigger the green light and often I would be moving around for minutes at a time just scrambling to find the spot to trigger the light to go green. This was one of the biggest problems I had with Ship Graveyard Simulator. I do agree that precision is important, but precision belongs in a game where I have to shoot things with a gun, not breaking things with a hammer.


There are several different types of materials for you to collect on the ground as you start walking around the area outside the little 'town' where your house, the marketplace, the tool shop, the furnace and the barracks are located. All around the town are shipwrecks, halves of ships, quarters of ships and it literally looks like a shipwreck free-for-all. Which for you as a salvager is a great thing - with one minor problem. You can’t just start throwing your hammer at anything you see. Anything that is collectable will light up in white. You need to ensure that you have the right tool for the job though. When you have the right tool in hand the item will light up green.

A handsaw will saw through a steel beam (I was in awe at that one), while a hammer, or it’s tougher version, the steel hammer, will destroy just about anything else if the game will allow you to. Your blowtorch will take care of electrical business like panels and radiators. The oil mop will clean up oil spills, and you will be left with oil barrels to collect. The types of things you’ll be collecting are things like rusted steel, steel, aluminum, cast iron, copper, etc. Pretty much if you think metal, it’s in the world of Ship Graveyard Simulator. At first, you have a small inventory that you can upgrade over time to make your collecting dreams somewhat come true.

You’ve walked around, destroyed some rusty beams, collected some metal laying on the ground and explored the 'graveyard'. Now, before I explain how to sell things and how that part works, I want to briefly point out your foraging aspect of Ship Graveyard Simulator. You have a furnace nearby your marketplace, home and tool shop. The furnace lets you create things like kerosene and alloyed steel to name a couple items. There will be times where you’ll need to fulfill orders that require different materials that you can’t find on the ground or in a ship.


Selling is fairly simple. You walk up beside the tool shop, the menu pops up, and you can sell your items. The price of the items fluctuates from day to day. There’s not much to talk about honestly. It somewhat was a let down because there’s a lot you could do with the selling aspect that could make things more enticing. Maybe a hot item of the day making it double the price? Perhaps making the experience more lively? I’m not sure. All I know is that there’s something missing there.

There are two main places that you can collect your materials; the area nearby the town where shipwrecks are staged all over the place and ordering ships. The area around the town is fairly broad and will keep you rather busy. If you’re bored though, you can go to your house and order a ship. They range in sizes and the different kind of metals you can get. No matter what time you order the ship, it arrives at 8AM the next morning. I found ordering ships to be the only fresh part of Ship Graveyard Simulator. That’s going to be a problem for those who are looking for some flexibility in what you can do during your time.

One of my main issues aside from what I’ve stated above is that Ship Graveyard Simulator doesn’t offer a whole lot in terms of replayability. I value a video game I can play for a few hours, leave it for a few days, because we all know how busy life gets and I can pick up the controller, and boot up the game like it was the first time again. I have played Ship Graveyard Simulator for a handful of hours before I got honestly tired of it. The gameplay is as follows and does not alter or change; destroy, collect, sell. Sometimes you can have orders from managers that allow you to earn money to change things up slightly though.


There’s not much to Ship Graveyard Simulator in terms of music either. Has anyone been to a funeral home or an actual graveyard? It’s quiet and very peaceful, which I’m game for after a long day of work and stress. However, having said that, I can’t get behind Ship Graveyard Simulator’s music style. I nearly fall asleep listening to the music and playing at the same time after a couple hours. I don’t expect a rave party to happen musically, but I at least need to be energized enough where my focus is where it needs to be, the gameplay. It’s not exactly what I want out of a simulation game.

Graphics wise, Ship Graveyard Simulator looks fairly rough. If I had to compare it to something, I'd compare it to Fallout 76-ish in terms of its tone. The NPCs don't move, don't talk and the vibe is very 'I'm all by myself even though there are people around me'. I don't expect phenomenal graphics, but it would be nice to put more focus on the visuals as you're picking up materials and spending hours on boats and shipwrecks.

In terms of my recommendation, Ship Graveyard Simulator isn't a title that you need to drop whatever you’re doing, clean off your schedule and buy right away. If you want to take a chance and you are highly invested in the simulation or renovation genre, then you may enjoy this whole heartedly, even with its lack of engagement. If you are the type of person that expects to be engaged and want to play a title for hours and hours on end, Ship Graveyard Simulator is then hard to recommend. For myself, I’m already yawning, I’m going to go down for a nap. Wake me up when the music comes back on and I can salvage more materials.

**Ship Graveyard Simulator was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**




Overall: 6.0 / 10
Gameplay: 6.0 / 10
Visuals: 3.0 / 10
Sound: 1.0 / 10

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