The water is the wild west with satellites
Open sea lawlessness running into a surveillance state. Every trip is a negotiation between speed, cover and how visible you are willing to be.
The game
A smuggling sim with a surveillance problem.
Everything below is the design as it stands today. Some of it is built, most of it is not, and the parts that survive contact with playtesting are the parts that will ship.
What is Dead Water?
Dead Water is a persistent online maritime crime game about smuggling cargo across open water while a surveillance state watches from orbit. You load a boat, run the cargo, and deal with what it costs you: stolen goods are only worth what you can get away with laundering, and every run leaves evidence a task force can assemble into a case against you. It is first person, solo or with a crew, built on a realistic cargo economy.
What is Dead Water
Dead Water is a maritime crime game where you load a boat and run cargo past a surveillance state watching from orbit.
A boat smuggling video game set in a persistent online world. First person, with a crew if you want one, or solo if you do not.
Games like GTA but on boats: open water, cargo runs, player competition, laundering what you steal. No release date yet.
An upcoming indie smuggling game from NoQuarterLabs, self-published. No promises on timeline, only honest updates in the devlog.
A persistent online boat game in development. Prototype is playable, design is solid, shipping timeline is not fixed.
Modern day pirate and smuggling games, or games about running contraband by sea: Dead Water builds on those ideas in a realistic cargo economy.
A new nautical multiplayer game for 2026 and beyond, built around the ocean economy and what happens when someone runs the shipping lanes without permission.
A realistic cargo shipping game where the cargo is not yours, the money is not clean, and both are worth dying for.
What it is about
Loot is not real until it is clean
Stolen cargo becomes cash. Cash becomes clean money. Each conversion is a place to get caught and a place to lose a cut. The game is about conversion.
The crew is the ship
Roles, contracts, votes, betrayal. A bigger hull needs more hands doing separate jobs at the same moment, which means it needs people you trust.
Ports are sin and information
You sail to get rich. You dock to spend, to hire, to buy a patrol schedule off a fixer, and to find out who has been asking about you.
The roster
Six arguments about risk
There is no upgrade path that ends in a best boat. Price buys you a different set of problems, not a bigger number.
- Go-fast Pure sprint
- Fast and fragile, with no cover story whatsoever.
- Fishing trawler Cover
- Slow and scannable, and completely believable. Hidden holds.
- RHIB Boarding
- Cheap, mid speed, and the one you take when you intend to climb onto something else.
- Yacht Access
- Expensive. Opens ports that will never let a working boat tie up.
- Narco-sub Invisible
- Nearly untrackable, one way, and no defence at all. Terrifying to crew.
- Captured freighter Platform
- Endgame. Needs a full crew just to move it anywhere.
Heat
They are building a case, not filling a meter.
A task force assembles evidence about you from separate sources, and each kind clears differently. Outrunning a patrol does nothing about the paperwork.
Clears fast
Being seen. Break line of sight, wait it out, change what you look like.
Clears slowly
Track history and port logs. Time, or a new identity, or a different hull.
Does not clear
Witnesses, forensics and money. You cannot outrun a pattern in your own accounts.
Ports
Where the money goes to die.
Every port has one number that matters: who will buy from you here, at what cut, and what does dealing with them cost you later. On top of that sits everything you spend it on, which is most of it.
Bars and clubs are where you hire crew and buy manifests and patrol schedules. The fixer selling you a rival's departure time will happily sell them yours.
No storefront, no wishlist button
Get the demo when it drops
One email when the free demo is playable. One more when the game is out. That is the whole plan, and you can leave any time.
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