The Merciful

A merchant brig out of Nassau, 1715. Five days to Kingston.

Thou art the cook. Thy fire is the warmest place aboard, and the crew trust the hand that fills their bowls. They never ask what else it feeds.

Every night the thing beneath the hull asks for something: stores, blood, a thing beloved. Every day you keep the watch, cook the meals, and keep five God-fearing men from learning what you pray to.

• Every minute counts. Your duties take most of each watch. What's left over is yours to steal, search, pray, or sneak below.
• The crew come to you. Timed conversations, lies that must hold, and men who remember everything. Earn their trust and they tell you their pasts. Push too hard and they tell the mate.
• A god with two voices. One hungers and one is merciful. Meet its asks, bargain for time, or refuse and pay for it.
• The ship fights back. Curfews, locks, a count of the stores, a hearing on deck.
• Weather rolls in mid-watch. Fog hides you, rain washes the deck, and a storm calls all hands.
• Many endings. Reach landfall, hang from the yard, or steer her somewhere deeper.

Playtest build (0.1.0)

This is an early private build. Thank you for playing.

Install (Windows): Unzip into one folder, keeping TheMerciful.pck next to TheMerciful.exe. Windows will say "Windows protected your PC" because the game isn't signed yet. Click More info, then Run anyway.

Please send your playtest log back. The game records your session and asks "How was it?" at the end. To find the log, pause and choose Playtest Log, or open %APPDATA%\Godot\app_userdata\The Merciful\playtest\. Send everything in that folder, even after a crash.

Music composed for the game. Rendered with Muse Sounds.