Have a Bloody Good Time on The Ship!

Remember when I tried to appeal to Reloaded Productions to help them get APB: Vendetta off of the ground last month? Well surprise, I seem to be back at it with now a different case. A much more…depressing one.


Alright, hands up who here is familiar with Outerlight Ltd. Don’t tell me that raising your hand is a pointless venture because I cannot see you from here through this text, just do it! Now then, for the rest of you who are less enlightened, Outerlight Ltd was a Scottish game developer that was responsible for the creation of the Half-Life mod-turned-full-fledged-game The Ship. The Ship is a multiplayer game that takes place on the 1920s where players are assigned the task of killing their unique targets in as many different and rewarding ways as possible (a revolver is far less rewarding in points as a cricket bat) whilst all the while avoiding imprisonment by the on-board security, your fellow assassin trying to kill you and your basic daily needs killing you.

I am not joking: if you don't get your sleep in time, you'll be sleeping with the fishes...

It was a cool game. It was almost methodical with how you had to plan your assassinations around security as well as your own need to eat, drink and so on, all the while making it hard for your own assassin to kill you. I’d say it was like the multiplayer mode in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, only The Ship was released as a full game 4 whole years before Brotherhood.

Scotland 1, France 0.

But enough about that, where is the “depressing” portion of Outerlight’s story? Well, here’s the thing: it’s dead…almost.

It’s almost ceased to be…It’s nearly kicked the bucket; it likely shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible!! THIS IS AN ALMOST EX-COMPANY!!

You see, from what I could gather, when making Bloody Good Time, Outerlight Ltd chose to go with getting a publisher to help them get their game onto Steam, while The Ship was rather successful given the circumstances of being one of the first original titles released on Steam (and this was WAY before Greenlight existed, people). The money generated from it alone was not adequate enough to budge Bloody Good Time, so they decided to enlist the help of the publishing company, Ubiso- oh...the guys behind Assassin’s Creed?

Well, that might explain some things.

Namely, according to Outerlight’s co-founder Chris Peck in an interview with BigDownload, Outerlight felt distanced from Ubisoft and the milestone focused nature felt to them open to abuse by Ubisoft especially on very subjective results. In fact, Peck said it best when he commented, “...try to define "good" & "fun" in a contract!”

On the plus side, at least the Romanian Q&A team was excellent!

As a result, Outerlight collapsed after the 2010 release of Bloody Good Time, which left them in such a state that Peck ended up selling The Ship over to fellow Scottish indie studio Blazing Griffin, who now intend to make a sequel titled The Ship: Full Steam Ahead and post it onto Steam Greenlight. Peck is said to be now the only employee in Outerlight left as he tries to recuperate from the royalties for Bloody Good Time. Of course, you could just stop reading now and take this as a cautionary tale about publishers but I’d rather end on a more positive note. Is there anything that can be done for Peck and Outerlight? I hope so. In an ideal world, a billionaire with a proud Scottish heritage and a love for The Ship would come in, invest in any and all of Peck’s new ideas and basically kick-start Outerlight’s dying heartbeat! But we haven't found that person yet.

Now, what can we do in the meantime to help Outerlight? Simple: BUY BLOODY GOOD TIME!

Currently, Bloody Good Time is selling for £3.99 on Steam and 400 Microsoft points on Xbox Live Arcade. While I imagine Peck would not receive a large portion of our money from purchases due to Ubisoft’s publishing, it’s the least you can do for Outerlight, especially if you are financially challenged…like me…and the rest of the Amber Glass Broadcast team…who I’ll be possibly blackmailing into buying a copy of on Steam.

Hopefully, Outerlight does recover from its "kafuffle" and Peck starts getting in the news about a new game that involves players playing as Brian Blessed whilst punching explosive moons into his enemi- NO I WILL NOT GET OVER THAT!

Greg Baxter
Amber Glass Broadcast