Ship of Fools Review

Overview

Ship of Fools is a co-op-focused rogue-lite about fighting monsters from your ship using a variety of cannons and combo-oriented power-ups. You can play the game solo, and if you do, you’re given an extra automated cannon to help you out. But Ship of Fools really shines in co-op, especially couch co-op.

Each run pits you against three zones and several boss fights. Whether you succeed or fail you earn tentacles that can be spent to unlock new power-ups and upgrade your cannons. There is a massive amount of power-ups between ammo types, trinkets that buff the person they are equipped to, and artifacts that generally buff the whole ship.

You can find a video version of this review on YouTube!

Ship of Fools leans more into the crazy combo side of the genre, where you can put together completely broken item combinations. However, it’s balanced out by the fact that you can’t reliably obtain the same broken combo from run to run.

The runs themselves are actually pretty short and can be completed in under an hour. However, you’re first victory is far from your last as there is an ever-increasing scale of difficulty for you to tackle, and you unlock even more stuff as you do.

Gideon’s Bias	Ship of Fools
Review Copy Used: Yes	Publisher: Team 17
Hours Played: 16+	Type: Full Game
Reviewed On: Xbox Series X	Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch
Fan of Genre: Yes	Genre: Co-op Rogue-lite
Mode Played: N/A	Price: $21.99

Cannon Fodder

You have to appreciate how simple Ship of Fools is on the surface. Rogue-lite games are notoriously difficult because a steep challenge is inherent to their identity. Ship of Fools has no qualms about sinking your ship over, and over again, but anyone can pick it up and start playing.

Each encounter is simply a gauntlet of enemies attacking your ship as it sails. You load your cannons with ammo and blast away at them. If any pesky boarders land on deck or beasties get too close to the ship, you can give them a nice paddle-whack combo. Ranged attacks can even be reflected back at enemies by charging up a paddle swing.

The game’s various enemies telegraph their attacks and can be interrupted with cannon fire or a good old paddle bonk most of the time. There is a pretty good variety of enemies too. Each one has its own quirks on how to deal with them, from Pufferfish that blow themselves up, to toads that play peeka-boo in the water waiting for the right opportunity to give your ship a good licking.

What makes Ship of Fools so fun is how it takes that simplistic baseline and alters it with an absolute ton of different power-ups. Ammo types vary between exploding eggs, heavy anchors, bouncing spuds, and more. Each ammo type can interact with the various cannon models you can place on your ship differently. A scattershot cannon filled with oil barrels feels different than a chargeable cannon using the same ammo.

On the other hand. Trinkets and artifacts can alter other aspects of the game, such as increasing the reach of your paddle, or earning you money for each monster kill. Each character can carry several trinkets, but you have limited slots on your ship, and anything not slotted into them is lost between encounters.

Ammo, artifacts, bombs, and even wood that can be used to repair the ship can be slotted into those spots, and you have to carefully decide how to outfit your ship. Finding powerful combos is the dream in Ship of Fools, and there are a lot of ways to accomplish that. For example, each playable character has its own unique strengths, and one of the ways you get loot is by harpooning it out of the water in the heat of battle.

I preferred playing as a character that refunded a spent harpoon whenever you landed a hit with one. However, there are also trinkets and artifacts that alter harpoons. At one point, my harpoons dealt extra damage, bounced between enemies, were fired in a wave of three, and lit enemies on fire.

Since my character refunded Harpoons on a hit, I earned more harpoons than I used, dealt more damage than any ammo I had, and melted the final boss before it even had the chance to react. It was a ton of fun, but if I could do that every run the game would get boring quickly. However, thanks to Ship of Fools’ luck factor, I have to try to seek out other types of busted combos each run, and that helps keep it fresh.

Luck & Muck

Ship of Fools is very random, but you do guide that randomness to some degree by carefully choosing your path, which dictates the types of rewards you will earn. You can choose to try and go for money, random treasure, shops, trinkets, ammo, or whatever. You never really know what you’re gonna get, but you can aim for a specific category. That helps give you some agency in your playstyle which is great.

That said, sometimes you just get screwed over, your power-ups don’t mesh together, and you end up slapping the final boss with a wet noodle. Runs aren’t very long, so it’s not really much of an annoyance, but it does happen.

What is an annoyance is a bit of inconsistent jank. The number of times I have walked up to a cannon, hit the button to pick it up, and then walked away without that cannon in my hands is frustratingly high. You have to practically hump the cannons in order to pick them up, and the game’s perspective doesn’t always make it clear that you aren’t close enough. Especially when the screen is full of chaos.

I swear I have swatted out a fire only for it to still be there. There have also been a few instances where I have charged up a melee attack to reflect an incoming projectile, only for there to be a noticeable delay between me releasing the button, and my character doing the animation.

The worst offender, however, is the fact that you can slap your co-op partner with your paddle. I’m usually a fan of friendly fire in games because it’s almost always a strategic consideration. In Ship of Fools, it feels like it’s there for the funnies, except it’s anything but funny. Things get very hectic in Ship of Fools, and sometimes you have to run around swinging to put fires out or to repel enemies.

There is nothing more frustrating than your partner slapping you out of a pivotal charge attack, off of a cannon, or away from an emergency you desperately need to address.

Verdict

Ship of Fools is definitely a solid co-op game that should keep any rogue-lite fans occupied for a while. There is a long ladder of ascending challenges that continually unlock new things, although Ship of Fools gets a little repetitive faster than I would like as you inevitably fight the same four bosses again and again. As cool as they may be.

However, there are an absolute ton of items to unlock. Each one is exciting and always earned the same reaction from me, which was “Oooo what does THIS button do”. I always looked forward to seeing what kinds of crazy new ammo I had gotten my hands on, or how I could combo a new artifact with something else.

I also like how you have to work together in co-op and the synergy you can have between builds. For example, my partner tried to set herself up with bonuses for loading cannons and would try to keep them restocked while I blasted away.

Ship of Fools has a few annoying control issues but is an otherwise fun co-op rogue-lite with an absolute ship-ton of unlockable items that can be combined together for explosive results.