The wind is real. The sea wants to sink you. The note comes due whether you made port or not.

Leeway is a trading sim of the age of sail, built on a sailing model you have to learn. Every wind shift and every shot is simulated, and the sea does not wait for you to be ready.

THE WIND IS THE MECHANIC

• Apparent wind. Sail faster and the breeze you feel moves forward and hardens.

• A no-go zone you tack out of. No rig sails into the eye of the wind, and a square rig cannot point as high as a fore-and-aft one.

• Trim, reef and heel. Sheet in too hard in a blow and she lies over and stops pulling. Reef down and she drives again.

• Leeway, which gave the game its name. She does not go where she points. She goes where the water lets her.

• Cargo is weight. A full hold makes her slow to gather way, lets a rogue sea swamp her sooner, and can shift and put a list on her.

THE NOTE COMES DUE

The boat is not yours. You sign a note for her, and interest runs on what you owe. Fall far enough behind and the harbour takes your cargo to cover it.

• Nineteen goods across a chain of island ports, three of them contraband.

• Prices move with supply, with festivals and trade wars, and with how well the harbourmaster knows your face.

• Commissions, blockades, wrecks and dig sites.

• Merchants do not win gunfights. Run, dump a decoy, signal the navy, or get behind the headland before she does.

OR FLY THE BLACK FLAG

A second campaign with its own economy, on the same sea.

• Hunt merchants for what is in the hold. Round shot, chain and grape each cut a different way.

• Subdue, do not sink: a ship on the bottom pays nothing, so board her.

• Five black-flag hulls, from the Corsair sloop to the three-masted Leviathan.

• Heat, bounty, fences and a black market, and a navy that escalates until somebody comes for you by name.

THE SEA

• Every campaign is a new archipelago, with its own wind, currents, storms and wrecks.

• Storm cells you see coming from far off, to dodge or drive through.

• Rain, fog, squalls, and a barometer that reads the weather before you can see it.

• Three endings, earned three ways: brave the Eye, break your rival, or take the host that holds El Dorado.

SAIL WITH FRIENDS

Share a sea with friends over a private room code, or open it for anyone to join. Play is peer to peer and best effort: merchants in co-op, or the pirate hunting the merchant. There is no dedicated server. The whole game is there for one player, offline, and always will be.

AT A GLANCE

• Not a survival game: no crafting, no hunger bar, no base building.

• Four presets from Calm to Maelstrom (Maelstrom opens once you have won on Intense), plus separate raider aggression.

• Seamanship from Deckhand, where the hands trim and reef for you, to Master, with no autotrim at all.

• Five save slots, photo mode, Steam achievements, Low, Medium and High graphics presets.

• Colour-blind modes, high contrast, text scaling, captions and reduced motion.

• Interface translated into every language Steam lists for this game; a few of the newest sailing lessons are still in English.