14 DAY TRIAL // Fishing is an activity well suited for relaxation on a weekend afternoon. Or so everybody thought before watching Deadliest Catch, a Discovery Channel show about the guys that go fishing for King Crab in the waters of the Bering strait. There's a real chance of death and injury there and the sea is pretty unforgiving. But given the rising price of King Crab and the possibility to catch, in a week, a normal fisherman's salary for a year, there is no shortage of people that try their luck and skill in the Bering.
Now, the experience that is widely documented in the TV show is set to also hit the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. Liquid Dragon Studios, a casual game developer, has taken on this ambitious project. Ambitious because they want to accurately recreate the conditions of the Bering Sea. And that means the high winds and their unexpected shifts, the 40-meter waves and their effects on boats and the way the crab moves around in the area. It seems like a huge undertaking. The studio will also model 20 different fishermen, all of them based on real life characters, and 6 boats, all of them already seen in the TV show battling for crab and glory in the Bering Sea.
The player will be thrown into the shoes... err, boots of one crab fishing boat captain and he'll have all the options open to him. He can select the boat or he can build it up from scratch, he can select the crew, the supplies he takes aboard and the areas he wants to fish in. And then, he has to battle the sea, the weather and other captains, in his search for his prised catch, the King crab.
Sig Hansen, captain of one fishing boat, the Northwestern, was given a preview of the game. He said: "It may not be life or death, but chills went up my spine the first time I saw the Northwestern sink in the game". So, it sounds like the realism is there.
The game has been in development since late 2005, but so far no release date has been announced by Liquid Dragon Studios. Check back to see if more news pops up.