Great Lakes Simulator Reviews

I took my first trip up the St. Mary's River today. I thought it was pretty relaxing to be along for the ride at this point. Frame rate was good, graphics were good. I could see all of the instructions just fine in the help. My screen is 3840x1600 and I am using a 1080 TI. The only tweaks I could ask for at this time is working on the lights on the front of the boats and adding wake. I am looking forward to further development and expanding the Great Lakes. Great job!

The description indicates that you get to "drive" freighters through the Great Lakes. I guess if your definition of "drive" means changing the throttle and camera, then that's accurate. It would be cool to see some things like: 1. Steering 2. Planning out a new route 3. An active economy 4. Ship ownership/trading 5. Multiplayer 6. Better graphics 7. A tutorial 8. The ability to walk through and around the ship for things like maintenance, crew care, etc 9. The ability to jump to nearby ships, or at least identify them My 5-year-old son LOVES Great lakes freighters, and I was really looking forward to being able to set up a shipping company with him, and combat the dynamic weather systems and waterways of the Great Lakes as we plan out our routes, and fight to turn a profit with our massive iron hauler, but this game just didn't deliver. I am a massive fan of the Farming Simulator series, and I was really looking forward to finding something similar here, as that series takes a fairly mundane, repetitive, and time-consuming activity, and makes it incredibly fun and engaging. This...was not that. This is, for better or worse, an incredibly under-detailed set of videos documenting several ship routes with very little extraneous information provided. I hesitate to even classify it as a "game". The textures are extremely low quality for a game released in 2021, they tear constantly when you zoom in to view passing ships or countryside, you can see the rails the ships travel on if you rotate the camera underwater, and the "HUD" is little more than developer details overlaid on the screen (although it does show you your current throttle setting). I was incredibly disappointed at how lackluster this was. If there is one saving grace, it's that my son, loving freighters as much as he does, was happy watching the passing ships and tooting the horn, but even he asked why the ships looked weird (due to the tearing textures).

Look, I'm not going to say whether the game itself is necessarily bad or not, I will just be giving my opinion and any advice to people looking to play it. I've been looking forward to the release of this game for weeks now and quite frankly I feel slightly ripped off. $25 is far over what this game is worth as of now, $5 might even be a bit much. The description provided with the game is overly optimistic as well. There isn't much in the game itself but I did expect this, it only came out a day before I made this comment so I highly doubt it's up to its full potential just yet. However, if the game gets updates (which many are needed), there is a high possibility that this game will meet the expectations of the players. I'm only leaving a positive review because of hope, hope that this isn't the final result of what I and other boatnerds were looking forward to. TL;DR If you wish to play this game, wait, and just maybe it'll be worth it, but not now.

You cannot pilot the ships and this makes the game pretty pointless. I've been waiting a long time for a ship simulation game based on the Great Lakes, so this was quite a disappointment.

Poorly designed game but a great concept. Would be nice to have a ships wheel and a status message or something to indicate the keys pressed were doing anything (for example, the anchor - is it going up or down? Is it up or down?) Choppy video and the graphics are from the early 2000s. Please improve ASAP.

this game is the worst game in my entire steam library. it's not a real game, it's horrendous, there's nothing to actually do, this is a scam. furious i actually paid money for this and didn't refund it fast enough.

UPDATE: Dev has completely abandoned his game, maybe he accepted the truth... ("Digital Light" links won't work anymore, proof it's all dead) Don't want to play more than 10 minutes, I've seen all the game. Just don't buy and refund while you can! I won't talk about the fact that all his "games" are downloading at 1 mb/s if not less (It's not my connection, I'm downloading Steam games at about 40-45 mb/s, EXCEPTED "games" from this dev...) This thing is a joke, the gameplay is rigid and graphics are from another century! "Great Lakes Simulator will set the standard for PC simulation games for years to come." Are you serious? The dev dared to tell us that his "game" has photorealistic textures. Are you sure your game has "Photorealistic textures"? The dev even add "surrealistic" and "realistic" tags on Steam store! Are you kidding me!? A dev who lies to customers! There's a big lack of action, it's uninteresting and seriously lack of work. There are not even waves in this, only flat water with 90s textures all around, and you can't even walk around your ship! You can't even steer the ships and you call it a simulator!! Play Great Lakes Simulator and you'll feel like you are playing a game from the 90's! You really think it worth 20 bucks, not even worth 1$. Go buy Ship Simulator 2006-2008-Extremes or even Virtual Sailor 7 if you want to have something better than this. Virtual Sailor 7 (the oldest one) was released in 1999, and it is better in all aspects than this thing released almost in 2022! To conclude, this thing was made by a developer who can't accept criticism and don't even wanna update his "games". Also, he will ban you if you dare to say negative stuff on his "games". For my case, I was banned for asking dev this question: "Why did you write in the trailer of Great lakes simulator that textures are photorealistic when it's absolutely not the case?" I was banned from Steam discussions for this, I swear XD. I can tell you something, the dev won't even answer you by mail or by the ban message. I don't think his video game company is that popular to miss the one and only email/message he received ;) I'm still waiting for the dev to answer me about my silly ban without reason, of course he won't. A week and still nothing; whether from Steam or mail. I also wrote on december 2 on his Steam group, still no answer while he's still answering to people on Steam ;) As you can the see the dev is very helpful and ban all things he doesn't want other to see ;) I'll ask Steam support for his case, lies to customers like this is forbidden Just watch the first trailer, do you see his "photorealistic textures" in this video? I see lies to customers. I can see you can't take criticism, this is why I'm posting a negative review and warn people about you and your "games". PSA: Still no answer from the dev on this day. Like the fact he tells people in Steam discussion to send him an email: "Email me at support if you have any questions. -greatlakesdev" I emailed you my question about my abusive ban on the 9 december and still nothing. So I conclude you don't have any reason for banning me.

This is ...just terrible. I know it is billed as a "simulator" and not a game, but it isn't a game, and it isn't even a simulator. Hardly interactive stuttery screen saver, perhaps. You cannot control any of the ships, I don't even see a way to choose your ship, except by choosing a different route on the clunkiest UI I've ever used. I still can't figure out how to speed up time, so it looks like if you want to finish a trip, its just days of looking at low res ca. 2000 graphics. Huge overprice for what it is, great concept but terrible execution.

Pros: 1. a cool concept and the only Simulator that I know of that allows you to sail cargo ships Neutral: 1. The only ships right now are salties 2. The graphics aren't anything to write home about Cons: 1. Low FPS 2. Its an on rails game more than it is a simulator. By that I mean you have little actual control over the vessel and are just along for the ride. 3. The UI needs some work, a lot of the text is unreadable as it goes off screen I'm interested to see the continuation of this project and hope that the Developer continues to work on this game. Making it as great as it could be.

The concept is nice... The interface and execution failed. The graphics are pretty bad - 2001 era maybe - and there are so many problems with text not showing on the screen, the controls being bad, etc.