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Show HN: Silent Shark – tactical map-based WWII submarine sim (silentshark.app)

78 points by epaga ↗ HN
I posted an early beta of this game a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48180924 - May 2026 (45 comments) and today released the full version.

You all gave extremely valuable and helpful feedback back then - thank you so much for that. It led to a lot of improvements:

* I reworked the onboarding tutorials multiple times for clarity, adding protections to stop players from shooting themselves in the foot

* I dropped the Comic Sans-reminiscent font and replaced it with Barlow Condensed

* I improved the layout of the dials for all screen sizes to keep players on top of things

* I added an "Angle-on-Bow recognition trainer" for practicing estimates of ship angles

For the full version, I fleshed out a full campaign with radio intelligence, patrol zones, and lots of historical events impacting things like which naval bases still exist, which types of missions are given, and how reliable your torpedoes are. (And just for fun, I added a full cribbage mini-game as well!)

Now, just minutes ago - almost exactly six months after I started development - I fully released Silent Shark on Steam (Windows, macOS, and Linux) and can't wait to see where things go from here. I have lots of ideas that could work well with this more map-centered approach.

The Steam page is here => https://store.steampowered.com/app/4705650

The landing page is here => https://silentshark.app

I'd be really interested in whether you think the onboarding is clear enough now, and if you have related game ideas that might benefit from a more map-based UI.

13 comments

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kelsolaar
I did the tutorial, it was good, I think that what would help is maybe have the arrows where people need to look at have some animation, e.g., pulsating scale or colour, something elegant but hard to miss, took a little bit at times to find them.
magistr4te
The game has quite the AI smell, which I think does it a disservice. The website feels AI designed, the game (transparently) uses AI graphics; it's hard to tell where the line between handcrafted and generated lies. Immediate question that shoots in my mind is: "How much of the game design is just LLM hallucinations?" As someone who's played around with using AI for games too, this makes me not even want to give the game a chance. Which is a shame, because I think the concept is really cool. Its just tainted by something that subconciously signals me that you dont really care much about your creation.
subscribed
I don't think "lies" is a fair word to use against a game that doesn't promise historical accuracy.
marvinblum
I bought it a few days ago. Thank you for including native Linux support <3

So far, it's really fun and the tutorial is great! A few things that could potentially be added to the game:

- Crew management (nothing fancy, just a bit, like food management)

- Different kinds of torpedoes (if the US had that, I only know about German submarines)

- Countermeasures (like noise makers)

- Seeing resources (number of torpedoes) on the campaign map

- A better indication whether a ship is sunk or will stay afloat (I resolve and don't know if the ship has been sunk or not)

- And German submarines + campaign of course

ahmedxuhri
This is pretty cool and very detailed , I tried the web browser version and its way more advanced . I think it needs beginners level or (pre-pilot simulation training)
[deleted]
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iroddis
I just bought it, and can’t wait to try it. Red Storm Rising[1] was easily one of my favourite games growing up. The combination of strategy on the war map and tactics during the encounters, weighing the pro/con of using sonar, and weaving around the thermocline was my happy place. Submarine sim games are truly a special niche, and I’m so excited to try this one out!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Storm_Rising_(video_game)?...

thataccount
I don't buy games anymore, but this one looks like the kind I might have bought had it been around when I did. Was a big fan of Sea Wolf and Silent Service.
kai_mac
Games should not be made with ai
terranivium
just watched Das Boot the other day, perfect timing!