Games Like Project Overboard

Project Overboard is a management game where you design a cruise ship deck by deck, hire the crew, then take paying guests out to sea and try to keep them happy. Or at least keep them away from reception.

Build it

Lay out every deck yourself: cabins with balconies, restaurants and the galleys behind them, bars, a theatre, pools with slides, and the lifts and stairs to get everyone about. A yard of contractors builds it while you're in port, and you watch it go up crate by crate.

Run it

Hire the crew and set their shifts. Plan the cruises, from a working harbour to a private island, and sell the excursions at each call. Fares fill the cabins, but what the guests spend aboard is what pays the bills.

Keep them happy

Every guest has a fare, a budget and a few traits of their own. They queue for the buffet, go back for fourths, start congas, hog the sunloungers with towels and complain at reception when you get it wrong. At the end of the cruise they leave a review, and your reputation goes up or down with it.

When it goes wrong

A grubby buffet can set off a norovirus outbreak, and then it's Code Red, confined cabins and stewards with mops. A rough crossing puts the Seasick at the rails. And sooner or later somebody does something in the pool.

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