Leeway: Lightkeeper

Leeway is a first-person, story-driven watchkeeping game. As Aiden, you take your shift at Cape Watch Station, at the mouth of the Leeway Strait. Ships pull up in front of your window and ask for passage. All their papers arrive by fax, and not all of them tell the truth.

Papers, binoculars, radio

Check the name, flag and call sign on the Certificate of Identity against the ship you see through your binoculars. Is the ship carrying what the bill of lading says? Look up its registry on the government computer and circle the suspicious lines in red pen. Approve, and the ship goes through. Reject, and you write down the reason for every paper, one by one. A ship you turn away may call on the radio to ask why.

At the desk

The station is small but full. A five-channel VHF console, a marine radar that shows the strait from the north, and a fax machine on the floor that runs out of paper and jams now and then. The day's notices hang on the corkboard. On the desk sits a blue-screened government computer with its directory, flag states and registry records. When night falls, you light the searchlight to find ships in the fog.

When it rains

On clear days Leeway is a calm, slightly melancholy job game. But on rainy days some things don't add up. Radio channels open with no one speaking. An old steam whistle sounds through the fog. Ships that shouldn't be on the register drift toward the anchorage. You may even meet a ship that believes it is living in another year.

Features

• Shifts that move forward day by day. Each day is split into parts, and each part ends with a report that comes in by fax.
• Eight fictional states with their own flags, call signs and ports.
• Every captain has a face of their own on their Certificate of Identity.
• Real paper you pick up, mark, pin to the board and feed into the reader.
• Voiced conversations by phone and radio, with dialogue choices.
• Weather and light that change from daylight to a stormy night.
• Colorblind setting: paper types are told apart by pattern as well as color.