How to Play

Your first voyage

Ship Busters is a side-on naval artillery game. You and an enemy captain sail a 2D sea, and each ship is built from destructible sections. Where your shots land decides what breaks.

1. Take the guided tutorial. Captain Barnaby Quill walks you through sailing, firing, the Broadside, specials, powder barrels and ramming against a practice hulk. It costs no energy and you can replay it from the main menu any time.
2. Visit the shipyard. Maren the Shipwright hands you your father's old Sloop, a first mast and enough silver for your first level-up, and shows you how to fit and level gear.
3. Open Battles and pick Campaign. Sea 1, the Coral Shallows, is your first stop. Each battle costs 8 energy.
4. Win, collect, refit. Victories pay silver and a gear part. Fit the part, level it with silver, and sail again.

Controls

There is no aiming arc to draw. You tap or click the spot you want hit, and every loaded gun fires at it.

Mouse and keyboard

Touch

Settings and accessibility

The settings screen carries the game's accessibility options: separate sliders for master, effects and music volume, and a screen shake slider you can turn right down if the shaking bothers you. Ship Busters is in English, with full audio.

How a battle works

The start

The two ships open far apart and a 3, 2, 1 countdown runs before anyone can fire or sail. Boss battles are a climb: waves of her guards come first, and the captain herself only sails in once they are on the bottom.

Firing

• Where you tap is what dies. Every gun that is loaded fires at the spot you tapped, one after another in a quick roll, with a little scatter. A gold ring marks where the order landed.
• If every gun is still reloading, the game says RELOADING and nothing fires.
• Each gun reloads on its own clock. Your crew's weapons decide how fast (see Crew).
• Mortars take a high arc; everything else takes the flatter shot to the spot you picked.

Eight ways to ruin a ship

What leaves your guns depends on who crews them (see Crew). Between them, the gun crews fire eight kinds of ordnance:

Find her magazine with any of them and the fire runs cell to cell until the whole ship comes apart.

What breaks, and when a ship sinks

• Every ship is a grid of sections: hull, support beams, decks and gun stations, masts, sails and a powder magazine. The health bar is the sum of all of them.
• A ship is sunk when her structure falls to 10%. That is the only way a battle ends. There is no battle timer.
• Damage is permanent for the battle. Break a support and what it held up comes down.
• No shot is wasted. Damage a section cannot absorb carries on into the nearest section behind it.
• Guns never fall silent. Crew never die, and a shot-out station keeps firing until the ship goes down. Losing a station still costs you the "all guns intact" bonus and the top star.
• Sails are a canopy. Shots tear through canvas and lose some damage on the way. Shredded sails are the only thing that slows a ship: stripped bare, she keeps half of the speed her sails were giving her. Hull damage never slows you.
• The magazine is a weak point. Destroy it and it explodes, and the blast chains through the cells around it.

Things in the water

• Powder barrels drift past during a fight. Shoot one and it goes off in a blast that hits harder than a Broadside and reaches further than a magazine. A barrel that drifts into a hull explodes on its own.
• Treasure chests float by too. Shoot one for 150 to 350 silver of salvaged loot, which you keep even if you lose.
• Terrain. Many battles put rocks and crates between the ships, and some hang them from the sky. Mixed in are TNT blocks that explode, gold blocks that pay loot as your shot smashes through, and boost blocks that multiply the damage of the ball that breaks them by 3, 5 or 10.

Combos

Destroy enemy sections within 2.5 seconds of each other to build a combo. From x3 up it shows on screen, and your best combo pays 250 silver per step when you win.

Ramming

• Ramming Speed is a special every ship carries. Sail within reach and its button blinks. Tap it and your ship dashes the last of the water and drives her bow into the enemy, throwing her back. Your own bow takes about a third of the blow back. Out of reach, the order is refused.
• Simply sailing into a hull is a scrape: a quarter of a ram's bite, some of it back into your own bow, and no knockback.
• Enemy captains wind up before they ram: a shout, a bow wave, and the water they are aiming for is marked. Move and they hit empty sea.

Winning and losing

• A win pays silver and, outside the tutorial, a gear part.
• A loss pays nothing except loot you salvaged mid-fight.
• Enemy specials are announced with a warning flare before they land. Watch for it.

Broadside and specials

The Broadside

The BROADSIDE button (or B) fires a seven-round aimed salvo, rolled off your guns one after another, at the nearest enemy. It aims itself and runs on its own 11 second cooldown, separate from your guns.

Specials

Specials sit on the bar beside the Broadside. A pulsing button is loaded; a small grey one is reloading. Each special has a cooldown, and a short delay after the battle opens before it can be used for the first time.

Every ship you captain carries the base kit: Rail Fire, Chain Volley, Full Broadside and Ramming Speed. On top of that, each hull carries her own specials, and every Legendary has a signature special no other ship can use.

The shared arsenal

Special	Cooldown	First ready	What it does
Ramming Speed	18 s	6 s	Close the last of the water and drive your bow through her. Base kit.
Chain Volley	20 s	8 s	Rigging-wrecker. Tears sails and masts to ribbons. Base kit.
Rail Fire	22 s	9 s	A ranging beam walks her deck, then a wall of iron follows it. Base kit.
Full Broadside	26 s	12 s	Seven aimed rounds, rolled off every gun in turn. Base kit.
Mortar Rain	24 s	11 s	Shells drop out of the sky across her position.
Storm Call	30 s	14 s	Whips the sea up to spoil her aim, and calls lightning down on her.
Brace & Patch	34 s	16 s	Shores up the worst of your damage and douses fires.

Signature specials

Each of these belongs to exactly one ship.

Hammer Blow 36 s

A mast-sized steam piston falls on her deck, and her guns go quiet for a moment. The Black Hammer

Talon Dive 16 s

A raking dive that goes for her gun stations and nothing else. Bright Eagle

Heaven's Verdict 24 s

A column of starlight, and what it touches keeps burning. The Celestial

Pearlescent Veil 28 s

A pearl mist: incoming shot slides off and she picks up speed. White Pearl

Storm Caller 22 s

Five bolts of forked lightning land as one crack. Lightning Jewel

Grapple & Ram 30 s

Chain and anchor across the water, the winch hauls her in, and the bow goes through her. Steam Hammer

Line of Battle 30 s

Shot glances off her timber while her guns keep rolling. Man-o'-War

Aegis of Wings 28 s

Golden wings blunt incoming shot and answer every hit with a radiant dart. Heavenly Brig

Reef Breaker 30 s

One colossal ball, slow enough to dodge and ruinous to catch. Dark Pearl

Anchors of Ruin 32 s

Two anchors thrown in arcs smash what they land on and drag her pace. Capital Ship

Full Press 24 s

Every sail at once: speed and reload surge, but her hull is thinner while she runs. Christian Radich

Runewake 26 s

A wave of rune-fire runs the waterline into her hull. Sea Dragon

Moonstorm Flurry 18 s

A long stream of quick silver shot, gun after gun. Moth of the Sea

Sting Bloom 26 s

Drifting spores sting over time and weigh down her sails. Jelly Belly

Dawn Raid 20 s

She lays alongside and rakes the length of the deck. The closer she dares, the worse it gets. Red Dawn

Cannon Rain 34 s

Thirteen shells burst over her deck and rain shot straight down. The Crown

Sanctum Bell 26 s

A peal crosses the water, cracks her waterline and stops her guns. The Temple Ship

Scrapstorm 24 s

Scalding steam and rusted scrap, and a rot that keeps eating. The Rust Bucket

Eruption 32 s

The sea splits beneath her and lava comes up through her keel. The Inferno

Ships and rarity

There are 21 ships you can own, in three rarities. Every ship of a rarity sits in the same band on every figure, so ships within a tier stay close in raw power; what sets each one apart is her guns, her specials and her signature.

Figures are for a bare ship with no gear fitted. In the shipyard, frames tell you the rarity at a glance: blue is Rare, purple is Epic, gold is Legendary.

The fleet

Every ship also carries the base kit (Rail Fire, Chain Volley, Full Broadside, Ramming Speed). The Sloop's own list is the base kit.

The Ship Index

The Ship Index on the main menu is the codex of every ship: its rarity, its role, how it is won, and whether it is in your fleet. It also shows four campaign enemies you can study but never own: Verdant Corsair, Gearhawk, Cinderwing and Frostfang.

The shipyard

The shipyard is where you choose your flagship and fit her. Your fleet sits on one side, the ship in the middle, and her equipment, specials and figures beside her. A red dot marks new gear in the hold.

The six figures

Under every ship: Health, Volley (what your whole gun line lands in one discharge), Speed, Reload, Ram and Resist. These are the same numbers the Arena compares before a duel.

Six gear slots

Each ship takes one part per slot. A part does nothing in the hold; it only works fitted.

Stars and levels

• Stars (1★ to 7★) are what a part is. Each star multiplies its effect by 1.2, so a 7★ is about three times a 1★.
• Levels (1 to 12) are what you make of it. Each level adds another 10% of the part's star value, so level 12 is 2.1 times level 1.
• Levelling costs silver. A 1★ part's first level costs 5,000; each level after costs 1.35 times the one before, and higher stars cost more. Taking one part from level 1 to 12 costs about 373,000 silver at 1★, 645,000 at 4★ and 1.1 million at 7★.
• Guns never cycle more than twice as fast, and resist tops out at 30% of incoming damage.

Selling parts

Parts drop often, so any part can be sold for silver or destroyed. The price is set by stars, and a levelled part sells for up to 80% more. A fully levelled part never sells for as much as a fresh part one star higher.

Gear sets and rigs

Twelve sets, six pieces each: cannon, hull, sail, mast, ram and keel. Mix pieces for the stats you want, or run a full set for the bonus. Set bonuses cover speed, hull strength, raw damage, dodge and ambush damage, so you can build a gunline that holds the range or a hunter that closes fast and hits first.

Parts can belong to a set. Fit 3 pieces of one set on a ship to wake its bonus; fit all 6 and the full bonus replaces the 3-piece one (they never stack). The fitted gun's set also decides who crews your guns.

• Dodge is a burst of sail acceleration for getting out of the way.
• Ambush damage is extra damage on your first shot after repositioning.

Sets you will meet

Sets include these, from the campaign seas, the reward tracks and the Dungeons (coming soon):

Reefrunner Rare

Campaign Sea 1 · Daily Plunder days 1 to 6

3pc +14% speed, +8% dodge
6pc +20% speed, +12% dodge, +15% ambush damage

Shrouded Deep Rare

Campaign Sea 2 · Voyage 30-day leg

3pc +15% dodge, +18% ambush damage
6pc +18% dodge, +32% ambush damage, +6% toughness

Living Wood Epic

Campaign Sea 3

3pc +14% toughness
6pc +26% toughness, +15% dodge

Sovereign Epic

Campaign Sea 4 · Voyage 60-day leg

3pc +12% damage, +5% toughness
6pc +18% damage, +18% toughness

Cindermaw Epic

Campaign Sea 5

3pc +16% damage, +10% ambush damage
6pc +30% damage, +28% ambush damage

Frostmere Epic

Campaign Sea 6

3pc +18% toughness, +5% damage
6pc +34% toughness, +15% damage

Tempest Legendary

Campaign Sea 7 · Voyage 90- and 120-day legs

3pc +24% speed, +16% damage
6pc +45% speed, +30% dodge, +26% damage, +20% ambush damage

Sirensong Legendary

Dungeon set, the Siren Shallows (coming soon) · Voyage 150-day leg

3pc 11% of damage dealt mends your hull
6pc 22% of damage dealt mends your hull, +15% reload speed

Maelstrom Legendary

Dungeon set, the Kraken Maelstrom (coming soon)

3pc +22% damage
6pc +40% damage, +30% ambush damage

Bonecage Legendary

Dungeon set, the Leviathan Deep (coming soon)

3pc 22% less damage from special attacks
6pc 45% less from special attacks, +30% toughness

Hull mending can never bring back a destroyed section. Mending tops out at 50% and special-attack resistance at 60%.

Premium rigs

The Shop also sells four six-piece rigs. They work like sets (3 pieces wake a bonus, 6 replace it), and each leans a different way.

Crew

You do not hire or train crew. Your crew is the visible face of the gun you fit. Fit a set's gun and that set's gunners man every station; fit a plain gun (or none) and you sail with the plain starting line.

• Who mans the guns comes from the fitted gun's set.
• How good they are (crew level 1 to 5) comes from that gun's stars and level, stars counting for a little more. A higher crew level hits harder and throws more rounds per shot.
• Station one is always a firing gun, so no ship sails without something that shoots.

Gun crews

Which set brings which line

The line repeats to fill ships with more than six stations, and is cut short on ships with fewer.

The campaign At launch

Seven seas, seven battles each: 49 battles. Each sea drops one gear set. Battles 1 to 6 each drop one slot of it, so clearing a sea assembles the whole set. Battle 7 is the sea's boss.

Kinds of fight

Every battle has a character. Sea 1 shows them in order:

Bosses sail oversized ships, with a bigger target to match.

What a win pays

• Silver. Every battle has a base purse that grows through the campaign; bosses add a bigger one. The first clear pays in full, and a repeat clear pays 40% of the base. The first battle of Sea 1 pays 3,000 silver on a first clear.
• Bonuses on top: Swift victory (won within 75 seconds) +1,500, All guns intact +2,200, Shipshape hull (70% or more left) +1,200, plus loot you salvaged and your combo pay.
• A part. Battles 1 to 6 drop their slot from the sea's set at 1★ (70% of the time) or 2★. The boss drops a set gun at 3★ in Seas 1 to 3, 4★ in Seas 4 to 6 and 5★ in Sea 7.

Stars and flourishes

• ★ for winning
• ★★ for winning with more than 60% of your hull left
• ★★★ for more than 90% hull and no gun stations lost
• A Flourish for winning after landing a special. It counts separately from the stars.

The mastery track

Stars plus flourishes are mastery points: up to 4 per battle, 196 in all. Prizes wait along the track and are claimed from the chart.

The capstone sits at 170, not 196, so you do not need every star and every flourish to reach it.

Sea-clear rewards

Difficulties

Each difficulty is its own run through all 49 battles, sailed on its own painted chart. Enemies get better gear and a steadier aim, and the purse grows to match.

A fourth rung, Nightmare, appears on the selector as locked. It is not playable yet.

The Hard mode track

Hard has its own ladder, counted in Hard battles won:

Coming soon: Gauntlet, Daily Challenge and Dungeons

At launch you can play two modes: the seven-sea Campaign and live Arena duels. Coming soon: Gauntlet, Daily Challenge and Dungeons. None of the three is in the launch build; here is what each will be.

Gauntlet Coming soon

An endless wave mode. You will sail your own fitted ship against one captain after another until you break, and your best run will be counted in waves.

Each wave will be tougher than the last: bigger hulls (sloop, then brigantine, galleon and finally a man-o'-war), more guns, sharper aim, escorts from the fourth wave and reinforcements from the seventh.

Daily Challenge Coming soon

Every captain in the world will get the same fight on the same seed, so the only variable is you. The day's seed will pick your ship and gun line, the rival, her guns and the sky you fight under.

A win will be scored on the hull you kept, the guns you kept and how fast you sank her, and your best score of the day will count.

Dungeons Coming soon

A separate, run-based mode with its own encounters and rewards. Three dungeons of 20 stages each are planned: the Siren Shallows, the Kraken Maelstrom and the Leviathan Deep.

A run will be escorts, then a boss: one escort in the first stages, up to five by the deepest. Each dungeon will drop its own Legendary set (Sirensong, Maelstrom, Bonecage).

Daily Plunder and the Voyage

Both are login rewards. The daily reset is at 7:00 PM EST. Missing a day never resets your progress; the next login simply claims the next reward.

Daily Plunder (7 days, once)

The DAILY button on the main menu opens it, and it glows when a claim is waiting. One claim per day, seven days, and then it is finished for good.

Six days build a full 3★ Reefrunner set, and day 7 is a ship. If you already own the Lightning Jewel, day 7 pays 10,000 silver instead.

The Voyage (five legs, 450 days)

The VOYAGE button opens a long journey counted in total days logged in, not a streak. It has five legs sailed in order. Each leg has 30 slots, every fifth slot is a bigger milestone, and slot 30 is always a ship. You can claim one slot per leg per day. The Voyage pays silver, energy and gear, and never gold. Claims need you to be signed in.

Each leg's milestones assemble a complete six-piece set. Silver slots run from 6,000 on the first leg to 400,000 on the last, and energy slots from 50 to 150.

Silver, gold and energy

Fleets

A fleet is a company of captains who pool silver into upgrades that help every member. Open it from JOIN A FLEET (or FLEET DETAILS) on the main menu.

• 50 seats in every fleet. One leader, up to 5 officers, and members. You belong to one fleet at a time.
• Fleets are open (join outright) or apply (an officer or the leader approves).
• Donations are silver only: 5,000, 25,000 or 100,000 at a time, up to 200,000 a day. Every 1,000 silver donated is 1 fleet XP, and fleets level up to 20.
• The leader spends the treasury on four upgrade tracks, each with 10 ranks of +0.5%: Gunnery (damage), Hull (hull HP), Rigging (reload) and Fortune (silver from battles). Higher ranks need a higher fleet level; rank 10 needs level 20.
• Fleet bonuses apply in the campaign and voyage (and in Dungeons, once they arrive), never in duels. Donations are not refunded if you leave or are removed.
• Fleet chat is marked coming soon.

Captain's Charter

The Charter is an optional monthly standing, found in the Shop. While you hold it:

• 3,000,000 silver each charter month
• Energy tank of 300 instead of 100, refilling about 35% faster
• Your fitted parts count as +1 level against the sea (charter levels 1 to 4), +2 (levels 5 to 8) or +3 (levels 9 to 12), never past level 12
• One extra daily claim, +100 part storage, and no forced ads

It can be bought for 99 gold for 30 days (buying again extends it, up to 90 days ahead), or as an auto-renewing monthly subscription where one is offered. Your charter level is how many months in a row you have held it, up to 12. A lapse freezes the level; a lapse longer than 90 days resets it. When a charter ends the perks stop, and nothing you own is taken away. Charter perks never apply in duels.

Steam achievements

The Steam version tracks achievements across the whole game. They include:

Ship collection achievements count fixed totals rather than "collect them all", so new ships never lock one again.

Platforms

1. Oct 19-26, 2026Free demo during Steam Next FestSteam: Windows and macOS
2. Oct 29, 2026Full launch, free to playWindows, macOS, iOS, Android and web, all at once

Every platform runs the same game, built from one codebase: combat, ships, modes and rewards match everywhere. The phone apps load the same build as the browser.

Play free in your browser from Oct 29

After launch

At launch you can play two modes: the seven-sea Campaign and live multiplayer duels in the Arena (the newest part). Coming soon: Gauntlet, Daily Challenge and Dungeons. Balance and content will keep being updated after launch, and the work goes four ways: finish the seven-seas campaign, complete the twelve sets, grow online Arena play, and widen the ordnance, the daily and endless modes, the accessibility options and the languages. The game is free to play for good; purchases are optional, and nothing sold is needed to finish the campaign or win a duel. Talk to us in the Steam discussions or on Discord.

The Next Fest demo

The free Ship Busters Demo is playable on Steam during Steam Next Fest, Oct 19-26, 2026, then the full game launches on Oct 29, 2026 on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and the web. The demo is on Steam only (Windows and macOS) and includes:

• The tutorial and the shipyard tutorial
• The shipyard and settings
• Sea 1, the Coral Shallows, on Normal: all seven battles, ending with Reef-Wraith Rena

Sink Rena and the demo ends with a screen to wishlist the full game and join the community. The demo has no shop, purchases, transfers, Daily Plunder, Voyage, fleets, Ship Index, Arena, dungeons or Hard and Brutal modes, and no account screens. Demo progress does not carry over to the full game.

Wishlist on Steam

Captain's tips

• Pick one section and stay on it. Damage carries through into the sections behind, so focused fire opens a ship up fastest.
• Chain Volley the fast ones. Shredded sails are the only thing that slows a ship.
• Shoot the barrels when she is next to one. A powder barrel hits harder than a Broadside.
• Crack the boost blocks. The ball that breaks one hits for 3, 5 or even 10 times its damage.
• Dash when the flare goes up. Enemy specials and rams are announced first, and a moving ship is hard to hit.
• Land a special in every fight. It is the Flourish, and the mastery track counts it.
• Protect your stations for three stars. Guns keep firing when shot out, but the top star needs every station intact.
• Think about your gun first. It sets your damage and decides your whole crew line.
• Log in, even for a minute. The Voyage counts days, not streaks, and every leg ends in a ship.