Blue Horizon

Blue Horizon
N/A
Metacritic
47
Steam
28.5
xDR
Our rating is calculated based on the reviews and popularity of the game.
Price
$2.69
Release date
18 August 2017
Steam reviews score
Total
47 (72 votes)

A story driven open world first person, single player game. A fantasy action adventure set in the Golden age of Caribbean Piracy. Fight Pirates and creatures, discover islands and caves, ports and tribal villages. Build up your inventory, craft ships and rule the waves, Blue Horizon has it all!

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Blue Horizon system requirements

Minimum:

  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows 7 64-Bit
  • Processor: AMX A6/Intel i5
  • Memory: 4096 MB RAM
  • Graphics: 1 Gig VRAM
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Storage: 3800 MB available space
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Mohammed Shifan
Mohammed Shifan

The game is not in EA so in regards of optimization and performance it works good. The game does have kind of a polished graphics look but I suggest to fix the Movement of the character because it feels sluggish and tooo slow when walking which is way too annoying and make us not to play the game. It takes around 1 to 2 sec to the character to move after pressing any directional keys. Please fix it ASAP and make it move like other games. The ocean is beautiful and the Island is filled with resources, green vegetation, plants etc. I would also recommend the Devs to include a guide on what to do next. Like it shows in the screen what to do or where to go next. Other than that game looks really good and has lot of potentials. I really wanted this game to fix the issues mentioned above cause it has the Pirates/Survival/Crafting & Adventure type feel. Good luck to the team :)

choglit
choglit

Well for some reason i really like this game. It has ships and swords, crafting , sailing and the game seems to run nice on my pc. I have not been playing it for a long time but its a game that im looking forward to putting many hours into and see what this game has to offer and it has sharks......happy days.

Euly
Euly

Update: I no longer recommend Blue Horison.
The updates have practically stopped. There were a few after the game went live, and I think there was one a couple months ago, but there have not been significant changes to the game. Even with bug fixes, there are fundamental problems with Blue Horizon and it seems the developer is done with the game, which is a shame.

As far as stability, the game is solid. Visually, the game is pleasing and immersive (and less clunky than it was initially), but the functions within the game work against the immersion by smearing it with a feeling of low-budget-indie-developer who has reached the limits of his talent. Look up MDickie.com as an example. I don't mean to be cruel here, it's just that the player has minimal impact on the in-game world which limits interaction and the developers are okay with that, as if the game is a prof of concept demo. I understand that the game is Story-Driven, but it detracts heavily from RPG elements. I prefer to see a labor of love with the developers churning out patches and updates, you know, actual development that says this is a project more than a product. In this case, the game feels like a product on rails intended for a quick and incidental sale. Maybe this game will be a stepping stone in Blue Horizon Studios' journey into the single-player pirate genre (a genre long neglected), hopefully with something ground breaking later.
If you can get this for super cheap on a Steam sale (like < $5) and you have time to burn, then cool, otherwise, save your money or go buy Sea Dogs to Each His Own (it's old and rough around the edges, but its sandbox depth will give you over 100 hours). Sail and Sacrifice looks intresting too.

[Original review]:
TLDR Pros Cons at the bottom

Overall, the game is worth the $18 price tag and it has the potential to be the go-to pirate RPG if Blue Horizon Studios listens to the community and continues developing the game, which is exactly what they are doing right now. The game in its current state is very stable, I have not experienced a crash yet and I constantly tab in and out of the game. I'm on a Core-I5 4690K, GTX 980TI, 16gb RAM, and Win 10 64bit. Even though the game is not Early Access, the developers are churning out patches and treating it as a work-in-progress.

The start of the game is highly immersive. The game is clearly working hard to give the player a sense of being stuck on a remote island, even though the larger island is, like, a half of a mile away; it's within sight. Swimming over there, or even getting in the water is a bad idea because the sharks are there waiting for you, and you alone. The sharks don't prey on anything else, which I hope changes. Flocks of brids do move away from you as you get close to them, but they don't scare or fly away like normal birds.The environment with the sounds, wildlife, lighting, and water effects really create a decent first-person simulation of the Caribbean during the Age of Sail. I applaud the developers for creating Blue Horizon because there are not enough modern games in the classic pirate genre, but the developers definitely need to go play Sea Dogs: To Each His Own and take notes. Not to say that Sea Dogs (POTC, AoP, AoP2, AoPCT, et al) is perfect, but Akella really took the spirit of Sid Meier’s Pirates and ran with it throughout the early 2000's.

The first issues I noticed in Blue Horizon are the controls and movement are clunky, especially take-off. The movement between start and full speed is not linear, so it's a weird acceleration slope in how the player reaches full speed. I think the developers are aware and working on the movement, but right now, movement seems labored, like I’m pressing and holding W with extra effort. Initially, swimming was problemic and felt like a ball and chain attached to my leg, but the devs are working on it to be more fluid. As of now, swimming seems more akin to typical RPGs. Finding a weapon was relatively easy, but swinging and chopping is about as slow and clunky as the movement, so it's clear this isn't going to be a rapid-fire hack-n-slash game, but that also takes away from potential sword-play and and limits tactics while fighting. I hope the devs eventually allow the the player holster the weapon, especially while swimming, which would add a more realistic effect of swimming. I like how I can climb slim structures, such as the ship masts in the water, but the game appears to hesitate in movement while on those structures. I wouldn’t want traveling speed to appear artificial, but it doesn’t seem accurate just yet and the player has no body or shadow, so there’s a sort of unnatural floating. Perhaps the focus of the game at this point is more on exploration and ship combat than hand to hand fighting.

Firing cannons is definitely fun and one of the reasons I bought the game. There doesn't seem to be any problems with the cannons other than they are like Blood and Gold: Caribbean! - no reload animation, just a cool down bar, but they do have realistic recoil and thunderous sounds.

I have not sailed a larger ship yet because I'm having a hard time figuring out how, but the crafted raft in the beginning does not behave like a sail boat. I was surprised that I have to press and hold the movement keys to drive the raft, rather than pressing W to lower the sails and have the raft realistically sail. This broke the immersion a bit along with the choppy sailing sounds, but using the raft is very brief, so I suppose it’s not a big deal.

The day & night sequences are definitely welcome and add to the atmosphere, but they tend to not be seamless and often result in periods of lighting in which the environment is impossible to navigate. The developers are aware of this issue and working on it, but I wish I could just use a torch.
Speaking of holding items, because there does not seem to be any way to holster the weapon, the immersion takes a hit since having a drawn weapon doesn’t appear to matter to the NPC's. Interact is the same function as attack (Mouse 1), so I tend to have a lot of unnecesary weapon swinging/slashing. but the AI doesn't care. I can run around town swinging my axe at people, smashing boxes, firing fort cannons, and raising hell without consequences. Maybe I haven’t played long enough and this changes, but this early in the game, none of the NPCs appear to care that I’m acting like a complete troll.
That brings me to my point that the AI is not strategically employed, like in a way to influence the player’s actions in specific locations or encourage acceptable behavior, such as guards reacting to player hostility. This challenges the player to distinguish the difference between walking through an area with a bunch of structures versus a living town. The game does not provide much guidance beyond the inventory and tasks, so NPCs autonomously interacting with the player would minimize inconsistent immersion.

Some of my criticisms may seem like this is a negative review, but I think the game is worth the investment to be part of some really good future developments in a first-person pirate RPG, and at the very least, it is playable now, just don't go into it thinking it's a AAA title. In closing, I hope the developers allow the game to be modded, which will increase its longevity.

TL:DR
The game has a number of issues, but none of them are game breaking. I recommend the game because the developers placed a lot of throught into the design of this Caribbean environment and provide the means for the player to enjoy the immersion, action, and exploration in first-person. Blue Horizon Studios is on to something great and the game has the potential to be fantastic if they just listen to the community and continue developing the game.

Pros:
Environment is immersive
Game is stable
Graphics are very nice
Relaxing to play

Cons:
Movement is clunky
NPC interaction is lacking
Weapon/Tool usage is over-simplified
Guidance is lacking

ƸӁƷ ♥Hot Lips♥ ƸӁƷ
ƸӁƷ ♥Hot Lips♥ ƸӁƷ

Well what can i say it's a good game but has many bugs and issues but they are getting sorted by the Developer

PLEASE NOTE...this game is playable to a point in the game as the patch 1.0.8 has not corrected all the issues with the save and load process you still can't save upgrades bought from a shop keeper in the city also the quest you get from the pirate in the inn where you pay 50 gold pieces for the quest he marks it on your map but when you save and load back up it is no longer there on your map, also it does not save any provisions you have collected.

I have tested this new patch 1.0.8 and i have narrowed down the issue with losing your provisions after saving, when you have collected some provisions and save your game then load back the game your provisions is still there but if you buy anything from the 1st trader in the city you come too such as rings or horns then save your game that is when you lose your provisions so it apears there is some sort of conflict with the data or rendering or saving process.

Your provisions is SAFE only if you don't buy items from the 1st trader in the city, may be wise to check this out also with the weapon smith trader too.

any items you had in a saved file when using patch 1.0.7 are safe and load up ok with the patch 1.0.8 file but as long as you don't buy from the jewelry trader then save your game that is when you lose all your provisions and any new map markers on your map and also the new items you buy from the jewlery trader are GONE, It could be that these items don't save within the saved game file.but it does without buying anything from the jewlery trader so my guess is it is a conflict somewhere.

WARNING! be carefull what you say to the Developers with anything good or bad regarding this game as they seem not to be able to handle any constructive criticism regarding their game even if you apear polite and direct in your remarks in their discussions thread as the DEVELOPER of this game Banned me from their discussion thread page for informing them of the bugs in patch 1.0.5 and 1.0.6 claiming i was rude and insulting which i was not i was trying to be constructive but very direct and helpful as much as i can be but if i apeared rude in any sort of manner then i am sorry as it was not my intention to offend you, but i have said sorry many times and requested from the developer that the discussion ban on me be lifted but sadly he has not responded to my appoligy and lifted the ban.

I could not post these issues on the games discussion thread because they banned me from all thread discussions.

I have deleted some of my comments here as it does no longer apply to this game and i have revised my remarks here and updated my review on 26/08/2017

I am sure there will be some more bugs to iron out as we progress further into the game as it's the law of averages in all things but it looks like the developer is sorting them out as they arise.

The game is still a bit jerky mostly when inside a town and we realy do need a type of saving the game anywhere as this is a open world game but i am sure this will follow soon.

My review is still Negative at the present until the ship at sea crash is sorted and this load and save bug is sorted and laid to rest once and for all.

My overall advice is stay well clear of this game no matter how cheap it is and it's developers and any future new game releases that Blue Horizon may or could release in the future also do not engage any conversation with them or leave any feedback of any discription as they are bad developers with a chip on their shoulders and if they don't like what you say (even politely) they will give you a life ban.

try2bcool69
try2bcool69

I wouldn't buy this game yet, it's not been labeled as Early Access, yet I felt like I was playing an Alpha of a game instead of a finished product.
The game is fundamentally flawed from the lighting during day/night cycles, the odd acceleration when you move forward, the floaty mouselook, the illogical way you interact with objects and people in the world, and the fact that you get stuck on things in the terrain (don't get me started on the abyssmal swimming physics). I'm sure all this can be fixed, eventually, but I'm not willing to wait and see in this case. Refunded.

Barely_Able
Barely_Able

Well, I waited for V1.0.7 before purchasing the game and I still had to ask for a refund after playing for 76 minutes. The game seems fun, but has a major problem. I'm in the starter area, Dead Mann's Island. You have one major task to accomplish, build something, and you have to find materials to do it. I accomplished all but one final step of the task when I saved and quit. I come back and the game doesn't recognize the steps I accomplished on the task, says I still have to do them; even though the thing I built is right there, on screen, and the materials I used are right there also. The bad part is that I already used the materials so they are no longer available. Of course, this means I can't complete the task and can't progress in the game. I respect all they work they've done patching the game so quickly, but clearly this game isn't ready for release.

Dr.FragensteinM.D.
Dr.FragensteinM.D.

good concept, poor execution. buggy, graphics and animations are from the early 2000's, sound and voice acting is amature at best. It's not worth the price even for a non early access game, I have playd many early access games for the same price that are a lot better. It looks as though this is a pay to play beta test

LallePalle
LallePalle

This game looks like it could be fun... but it is not.

There are so many bugs, it gives the impression that the developer did not even try the game before publishing it.
The updates are many, but every step into the game you get, the more bugs you find. It is not playable.

Blackdeath
Blackdeath

I've enjoyed the game. Most of the game is intact and playable and whatever isn't, the developers stay on top of and make updates for. I would reccomend this to anyone with a passion for the high seas and adventure.

Kill The Kraken
Kill The Kraken

I've waited to buy this game until the bugs seemed to be ironed out as I saw the developers produced a lot of patches the first week. Well so far I really like the game, there are tasks to do, animals to kill/food to collect and enemies to defeat. I like that you can fire the cannons at the enemy ships yourself. I haven't found it to be buggy and the story seems well developed which makes a nice change from some games I've played in the past. This is good and I think its worth the £14.99 price tag.

ConseQuence
ConseQuence

20fps with 960.
I can wait for bugfixes and better performance patches, but the game now isn't good.

5Andysalive
5Andysalive

It's a nice idea. A story driven sea and pirates game.
WITHOUT the usual survival mechanics.
There is a health bar you can refill with food. And that's it. No hunger, no thirst no heat or cold... I like that. And with that, there aren't much alternative games.

Graphics are ok, not more. Sound as well.
So are the controls, except swimming feels weird.

So while looking a bit like stranded deep, it's quite different. While that feels kinda similar at first and looks a bit better i think,Stranded Deep is (just) the usual procedural Survival/Crafting blueprint.

It's not early access, it's a full game.
It's still fixed and extended by active devs so that's a plus. And problems are reliably fixed. As were my issues with the game. They patched a game breaking UI (in 21:9) bug within 1 day. Probably my first personal patch It works now ( as far as i am into it) ok in 21:9. There is something below the horizon in the main menu but nothing vital it seems.

It's the same asking price as Subnautica, Empyrion, Rebel Galaxy and others. But i think it's rather unique and worth a go.

Aidan
Aidan

Unfinished game. Do not bother!

Licopolis
Licopolis

Although it is still buggy and sometimes unrealistic, I would say - it is totally original (the flaws of the plot and mechanics tell for themselves). I like this game because of that. Maybe you will find it less acceptable because of sid nugs and overall craziness.

Samsquanch Witness
Samsquanch Witness

"Sigh"...not really sure where to start, I think id first have to say that this is a pirate game and isnt a pirate game at the same time, yes youre in the carribean yes its the 16th century yes you have a boat with cannons yes theyre are pirates but you yourself are not a pirate, you cannot plunder enemy ships you cannot commandere enemy vessels you can not raid towns or villages and you can not do anything that would make you a pirate......now with this being said the developers dont want you to be a pirate cause its a story driven game about you getting revenge on a pirate named blood beard, so its intentional....to be honest im not even really sure what to consider this game, theyre is no economy and theyre are no trade goods which means being a trader or a smuggler is completely out of the question at this point, theyre are no factions only freindly and non freindly npcs, trade consits of you going to a town and selling "plunder" (useless items picked up from smashing crates or barrels or finding some hidden chests) which can be sold to a merchant for coins, what can you buy with coins u might ask.......food, ammo, some cool melee weapons(which is a positive for me), and thats about it the rest of your money goes to paying a navigator to chart your course to a newly found island (which theyre is 8 main islands, as per developers own words, i have not discovered all 8 yet) and docking fees which is equivalent to 25 coins, theyre is the odd thing youll need to spend money on EX..rum to complete a mission, aside from that not much else from what ive gathered. As far as crafting survival its nearly non existant. you can craft a campfire and a twig sleeping shelter...thats literaly it the only other craftable thing is a raft to get of the marooned island you start on and thats a 1 time thing only, i havent been able to build another raft and doubt i will ever need to or be able to again. Hunger and thirst are not in the game at all and considering the state of the games content id say thats for the better, you can cook food but food is only for selling or restoring health points, As far as sailing.....well its not marketed as a open world sailing game for a reason and thats cause you cant sail your own ship, the only vessel you get to sail is the raft at the start of the game and like i said once you get from point A to B thats it for the raft (an invisible barrier prevents you from using the raft to freely sail and explore, instead your locked into a tight bubble from the first island youre on to the next). So instead of sailing youre boat you have some other guy do it for you while you just stand theyre, ofcourse your ship does have cannons you can fire but the naval combat has been less than stellar, basically an enemy vessel will be putt-ing about randomly and if it gets close enough to you it may or may not open fire on you, ive even fired at non aggroed vessels and they some times just ignore me and keep putt-ing on till theyre out of range which is frustarting cause to battle the ship you have to hope you can kill it before youre own captain drives off with boat mid combat or you can tell your boat captain to stop and hope the enemy stays close enough to fight but more often than not the enemy fights you for a minute then just dicks off but the entire time youve got battle music going on in the background like youre still in the fight, ive killed 1 pirate ship so far cause the rest just ignored me or sailed away halway through the battle, also want to note that once youre captain has his orders from you and sets his course theyres no turning the boat around till you get to your destination so if u over shot youre distance while trying to engage another vessel too bad youre not going back that direction till youve reached youre original destination. so if the ship combat isnt bad enough just wait till you get to melee.....oh god the melee is abismal, im really sorry devs but this is 1 thing i have just got to put my foot down, the melee is so clunky that half the time i swing and connect the enemy is only starting to pull back for a swing and yet i take damage but he dosent and just trying to connect the hits is over the top ridiculous not to mention the only ranged weapon being a flintlock pistol cant even hurt enemies with a direct hit, ive walked in a staright line backwards and shot my foe in the same exact spot 10 -12 times only to have one bullet land despite seeing the bullet tracer go straight through them, i dont understand how the hit box works only 5 % of time, as far as sword play the only way to be able to hit your oppenent is to block his first attack hit him after (u will take damage) then time every consecutive hit so that the enemy staggers or falls over but dosent have enough time to attack you before getting hit agian, and it sorta takes the fun out of combat when its the only way to do battle without being torn to shreads due to clunky hit boxes and timing, also want to note that to be able to hit an enemy you have to be standing right in front of them even when using weapons like the spear. Now i cant say every enemy will be like this cause i havent fought them all but so far this is how my melee combat has been fighting skeletons, rats, snakes, crocs, and giant crabs. Anyways back to the subject of what this game is....id say if anything its sort of an open world single player fantasy exploration game, kind of like the opposite of no mans sky in the sense of instead of having a vastly huge world to explore with nothing in it you have a smaller world with lots of detail put into every area. as far as bugs and glitches i can definatley say that i havent found anything game breaking and i havent gotten stuck anywhere i cant get out of ...ofcourse i havent been trying to do that and have avoided ify looking areas with a 10 foot pole, ive only had my game crash once and i played it for 4 hours straight before that happened....i think the worse glitch(not really a glitch) i encountered was a pit u have to climb out of and every time you go to climb out using the rope you teleport to the top only to fall back down to your death. The most glitchy things i have to deal with seem to be movement and combat, sometimes when swimming or running through caves your screen will bob up and down rapidly like youre guy is on adrenaline shots, swimming can be painful cause your speed varies fro normal to super slow and sometimes you get stuck on the occean floor and have to spuradicaly jump and run just to be able to resurface before drowning( my guess is the game has hot spots where the water isnt actulay theyre so youre guy switches between swimming and walking mid water). All in all i whish i had better stuff to say, Some good notes to make is that the envoirment is nicely designged ( some parts look like it was made with a farcry instincts map editor where somenone used the smoothing tool a little too much without checking varriying terrain hieghts, like a bunch of round little pillars and pockets of land) for the most part the detail is nice, every island ive been to looks very different in shape and design like each island is individual to its own (just like in real life), i feel like the really put alot of work into making realistic looking islands. another plus is the game is stable i havent seen anything to glitchy which says alot for an early access title. I could say the voice acting is awful but i havent played a single pirate game with good voice acting so its like a Cheesey cliche ARRRR! lol
Anyways to recap major cons are ...
- Not being able to sail your own ship (not including raft)
- No economy really
- No pirating (tho again thats meant to be like that)
- Clunky as hell melee combat
- No ship crafting aside from the 1 and only raft
Random Pros
- you can ride atop of sharks if ur brave enough
- Indigenous black ppl have tons of Water melons (racist?) maybe melons grow naturaly in the carribean not realy sure

Oberst_Mayer
Oberst_Mayer

At this point I can not decide wether I like this game or not. I won't go that far to recommend it but it sure has a particular flair. On the one hand I'm a fan of tropical surviving/Open World games, such as Salt (it's nice) or Stranded Deep (not nice), on the other I'm a ship/boat/water (-games) fan, e.g. Hold Fast:Nations at War, Subnautica (both very nice) etc.
For me this game is a mixture of the games I mentioned, but so far: not a good one. The big idea of a FP Open World RPG in the caribbean is literally a dream come true (actually that's what Salt is, but with childish, shitty graphics and no story) and the devs did great work in WHAT you can do, but it seems they don't care or don't know HOW you should do it. Remember: This game is out of EA! See the following list:
PRO:
+ acceptable graphics
+ story (although it's quite cheap)
+ you can shoot cannons at pirates
+ crafting system (useless though)

CON:
- no help or clues how to finish the buggy quests
- pistols deal no damage
- awkward combat controlls
- awkward controls in water
- odd controlls in water (randomly stuck, float, sink)
- quicksave + relaod = full health
- loot respawns after ~2-3 minutes (you'll be rich as F*** in 2 hours)
- same with merchants respawn goods (you don't need food; you'll by only the best stuff, because you're rich)
- linear seaways (second mate AI) so not really Open World
- catastrophic day/night circle
- medieval voice acting
- after a island is clear of quests, there is no reason to visit it again

I'll still give it a thumb up because: the price is quite low NOW, when you read earlier comments it was about 20€. I guess the devs thought: "OK, no more working on this, let's decrease the price so anyone will give it a try." (And actually they are right: you can give it a try, but don't except too much. Let's hope the devs spend their potential on a new project.)

TheCosmicCamel
TheCosmicCamel

This is a great game! The graphics are amazing, and it's a large open world I recommend it very much.

caveman
caveman

worst 4 bucks i have ever spent u cant control the ship apart from giveing the captan a heading aka pick a islan then u sale and all u doo is fire a cannon if i piret comes near and the sale off absalutly crap dont buy u would be better off spendiny money on a happy meal from mackers for a random toy u would have more fun with that..... sorry devs but comon no one wants to be a deck mate on a ship with so litle to do already

elesperado
elesperado

"interesting" graphics and bad contolling! The translation is weird, so you often dont know what the actual quest is. Cant recommend it to anyone!

Attilio
Attilio

This is NOT a survival, RPG or immersive game. It's a cheap action "arcade" game that entertains for 20-25 hours. To buy if discounted.

Positive aspects:
-Good Graphic
-Atmosphere
-Price of the game
-Easy to play

Negative aspects:
-Many bugs
-Bad Combat
-Broken Steam Achievements
-Lack interaction, crafting,survival
-Not refined in various aspects(many useless objects, too much useless gold )
-Not realistic (You can swim indefinitely, can't sleep, can't buy house etc.)

Dimzo
Dimzo

I think the developers gave up on this project :(