Blue Horizon

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Blue Horizon is a story driven first person open world game, it has been developed over the last three years to be entertaining and exciting, giving the player a glimpse into a fantasy world of pirates, enemies, plunder, treasure and adventure on the high seas!

The year is 1686, and you have been marooned on a desert island, you must first escape and acquire a ship and the weapons to survive, then hunt down the evil Captain Bloodbeard seeking assistance along the way.

Blue Horizon has been created so the player is in a large open world environment. With each part of the game although separate can be explored without the player noticing.

Gameplay

Many different activities including:

  • Melee and ranged combat;
  • Crafting and maintaining vessels;
  • Charting a course and navigating around the world to the various islands;
  • Utilizing cannons on both ship and land to defeat pirate ships;
  • Dialogues with over 50 other unique characters;
  • Discovering civilized populations and tribal villages;
  • Exploring large cave systems and the interiors of buildings of the settlers and natives;
  • Maintaining an inventory of equipment and items;
  • Trading, buying and selling with currency;
  • Salvage from wrecks on the sea floor using a diving bell;
  • Completing main and side quests with reoccurring tasks;
  • Hunting animals;
  • Harvesting crops and trees;
  • Operating machinery;
  • Finding treasure and plundering loot from destructible containers and environments;
  • Fighting giant bosses;
  • Save your progress at certain points to continue the adventure later;
  • The game will be available in a number of languages;
  • Steam achievements;
The World
There is only one level. Always view able on the horizon. The player must discover each location in order to explore it. Locations can be discovered by talking to NPCs (Non-Playable characters), or following maps found. Once a location has been found it can be traveled to and from using a ship.
Tropical Islands with towns, villages, forts, dunes, mountains, cave systems, giant caverns, ship wrecks, and forests all lay in wait for the player to find and explore.
There is a day-night cycle, dozens of different species of animal, and plant in the sky, land and sea to all add for maximum immersion in the environment.

Inventory and Items
Weapons, equipment, books, valuable loot are found laying around, in containers or purchased from shops and peddlers, looted from enemies, or given as rewards for completing tasks previously given. Keys are required for some doors too.
Equipment or a pistol can also be equipped in the left hand such as the Lantern for seeing in dark caves. Provisions are needed to restore health, (or if you can find a stream), enhancement items can also be found or purchased.

Tasks
To progress, you must complete tasks given from NPCs or from instructions found. The NPCs will be grateful, whether they are for the main quest or side missions. Tasks may involve collecting, farming, building, hunting, slaying or completing another task. Hidden stashes, side quests and Bounty hunting are available too.

Enemies
There are dangerous islands, and relatively safe islands. Unique foes await, be they Pirates, animals or strange creatures, and non-human. Some enemies are weak, some are strong and have various short and long range attacks. Some individuals you encounter will be docile until provoked, in which case they may attack as a group.

Fight

Melee combat with over 20 types of hand held weaponry.
Ranged combat by utilize cannons on your ship or in towns or forts to defeat enemy Pirates.
Use a flintlock pistol to blast your enemies away.

Ships
Build a raft to pilot and escape being marooned. Charter and ship and be in control of its destination, its cannons, and use a diving bell to search the sea bed. Repair your ship when it gets damaged.
Enemy ships plague the player too. Captain Bloodbeard's ship is the main aggressor. The seas contain marauding Pirate ships which you may encounter when going from island to island.

More information.
 
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Almost
so very, very, close.
No way close to Risen 3, but I know this is a far smaller development team

It's playable and the scenery is nice and it is open world - first person viewpoint.

but
combat is far too wonky,
clipping issues on just about all edge of map locations
auto map just barely suffices
the quests are far too loosely defined
and the standard RPG elements are almost non-existant

Still,
I am ecstatic that the Indies are getting close to Might & Magic (4-6) level quality gaming. It's too much to hope for Gothic 3 now, but M&M (4-6) should be reachable. And for me, I can spend the rest of my gaming life with RPG games with that amount of quality.

I got almost 20 hours in, and will probably get a few more but so many aspects seem incomplete that finishing the game might be near impossible at this point.

OTOH,
the development team is extremely response on the steam forums and seems eager to make their game as good as it can be. I might not finish this game but I will be looking forward to their next game. I think they will make great strides in their next effort.
 
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I liked the look of it, but on a previous thread @joxer; (see what I did there? :)) was pretty critical. Although I seem to remember his conclusion was that ultimately it was so bad it was actually quite fun... combined with Dajjer's fairly positive comments, maybe I should give this one another look some time.
 
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I think @joxer; has a soft spot for pirates, though. So long as they have great hair.
 
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I came to read about Blue Horizon and learned that @joxer; likes pirates with great hair!
 
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@joxer; must be loving the new name-mentioning notifications.
 
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*sigh* on notifications.

I liked the look of it, but on a previous thread @joxer; (see what I did there? :)) was pretty critical. Although I seem to remember his conclusion was that ultimately it was so bad it was actually quite fun… combined with Dajjer's fairly positive comments, maybe I should give this one another look some time.

Yes, the game was so unbelievably broken at release it felt like playing a Skyrim parody. We need parodies, SR4 already proved it.
In the meantime another game was released that I actually waited for so I put Blue Horizon on pause, but man, they're patching it, daily. It's not just bugfixes, they listen to suggestions and are reworking previous designs plus adding new stuff!

I think I wrote already, this game is something you want to see, but not just yet. Wishlist it and buy when it's discounted.
I'll return to the game when I'm done with all titles planned to play, just don't be surprised if Blue Horizon gets to be one of my three goty votes at the end of this year. Which of course depends what will they do with it in next few months.
 
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