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Bootleg Steamer takes you back in time to the 20's during the prohibition era, tasking you to trade your way to success through the buying and selling of goods, legal or otherwise. In this Bootleg Steamer review, we talk about how much fun you could get from this very simple premise of trading illegal goods for profit.
Bootleg Steamer Review: What is Bootleg Steamer
Bootleg Steamer is a roguelike real-time strategy game with light business simulation mechanics. The game was released on April 25, 2024, exclusively on PC through Steam. The game was developed and published by Junkfish.
Bootleg Steamer has players taking control of a captain and their ship, trading goods from port to port to gain profit. There are several captains to choose from, each one with their strengths and weaknesses, as well as multiple ships to command, similarly with their own stats, strengths, and weaknesses. The ships are characterized by their storage capacity and maneuverability.
Ships can be upgraded with new parts, increasing storage, adding mobility, or otherwise giving the ship bonuses that will help you in your trading career. Meanwhile, crew members can be recruited for bonuses.
Players then visit factory cities where they can purchase goods, legal or otherwise, which they can then offload to prohibition cities. As players travel rivers, creeks, and lakes, they will have to evade the Coast Guard. Get caught and you run the risk of getting apprehended for smuggling prohibited goods. You also have to worry about storms and whirlpools that hazard the waters.
The game is divided into multiple smuggling seasons, with a few months consisting each season. Players will have to accomplish tasks and earn as much as they can during the season, and then they will have to move to a different map once the season ends. Each map has its own geographical quirks, as well as different kinds of prohibited material for the player to trade.
On top of trading, players can also pimp up their ships and make them attractive enough for sea parties. This is done by having your ship approach a luxury ship, and if you have the prerequisite Glamour stat and the corresponding alcohol needed by the luxury ship, you'd be able to initiate a party and earn money without having to dock.
A run ends when the player runs out of lives, represented by jail keys, which they use as a “Get Out of Jail” card when they get caught by the authorities. The player starts each run with a certain amount of jail keys, but they can also buy more from the Mafia at a hefty price.
Bootleg Steamer's game loop revolves around trading between ports and avoiding capture, whilst trying to earn as much as you can, either through the sale of contraband or through the rowdy partying in luxury ships of the elite.
Bootleg Steamer Gameplay
It was hard to get into the groove of Bootleg Steamer at first. The game throws a lot of statistics and data to you right away without giving much of a tutorial. It's information overload. Worse, when you begin your very first run, there is little when it comes to tutorials and gameplay scaffolding. That works for many games, and it could here, too, but it's entirely unnecessary.
The game just dropping you into the game without much of an explanation of what you're here for, what your short-term and long-term objectives are, and how you are supposed to accomplish them was jarring. Granted, the game has a very low learning curve, but the lack of explanation anywhere in the beginning will surely put off some gamers.
Now, once you've gotten past the initial barrier, the game picks up quite fast. Navigating through the rivers, lakes, and creeks of the United States is as easy as pointing your cursor somewhere and clicking a mouse button. Trading is just as easy as parking your vessel at the coast and clicking the name of the city or port, and so on and so forth.
The game also packs a lot of “secrets” for players to discover. Secrets not so much because they are hard to find or need to be unlocked, but because of the aforementioned lack of tutorials and gameplay scaffolding. These secrets include the game's mafia mechanics, partying with other vessels, scavenging shipwrecks, recruiting crew members, dealing with the Mafia, and even adopting pets.
One issue I have with the game's core loop, however, is how floaty everything feels. Navigating through water feels like my ship is slipping across ice rather than drifting through water. Some chases I had with the Coast Guard patrols felt ridiculous with how the Coast Guard seemingly can't control their ships well, bumping into other ships or getting themselves stuck in awkward places.
Heck, the game's UI also prevents you from completely enjoying the game, as there are a lot of times when the button you need to press to trade with a city or a port is tucked away off-screen even if your ship already is right beside the dock. There's also this weird design choice not allowing players to keybind controls, and not having a dedicated menu button on the keyboard. The escape key also doesn't take you back to previous menus for some odd reason.
In terms of replayability, Bootleg Steamer also offers a lot of customizability for your ship, although the customizability has more options than in-depth. You can make an extremely efficient ship with the right crew and ship parts, but all of these are for the interest of earning even more profit.
The game's unlockable captains and ships also give the game some longevity, and we can imagine the developers adding more options in future updates. The game is fun as long as this loop feels satisfying for you, and there are plenty of unlockables to tide you over.
Overall, the game's entire presentation and clunkiness makes me feel like I'm playing an automated board game. The game has all the manuals and descriptors for you to read and learn about, but it's not going to hold your hand and teach you the ropes as you play it. The way the game's map and overall layout also added to this feeling.
Bootleg Steamer Story
The game's story is a McGuffin. There really isn't any compelling narrative that you could find in Bootleg Steamer. The game's narrative is told through the quest log. You can benefit a lot by just ignoring whatever mumbo jumbo the quest log says about your crew's current situation – it doesn't matter and reading it just eats up on the time you could have been using trading or sailing.
Each captain had their own story to tell, but none of them had one that is engaging enough for me to pay attention. They are all utterly forgettable, although there's still some credit needed to be given to the developers for at least trying.
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Bootleg Steamer Music and Sound Design
One gripe I have about Bootleg Steamer is how monotonous the entire game sounds. The music is fine, it's jazz and it's lively, but there aren't any changes when there should be tension or calmness. Actually, the music doesn't even stop or change in between runs or seasons.
I wish the game would have more intense music, full of trumpets and cymbals when the Coast Guard is hot on my tail and my notoriety is high. Or calmness when I successfully offload all of my illicit materials on one port after holding them for so long. Or even a fever-pitched tune when I'm out there partying out in the sea.
The game's sounds are very video-gamey, which isn't a bad thing. There are a log of sound effects like bubble popping sounds, cash register sounds, and other sounds that feel right at home in a video game. They don't stand out in any regard, but then again it adds to the monotonous tone of the entire game.
Bootleg Steamer Graphics
The game has a very cartoony-stylized feel that suits the prohibition era aesthetic it's going for. Thick, dark lines outline objects that have a papery texture and cel-shaded details. Surprisingly, the game's water looks really good, complete with some light reflection.
However, I think the game should have an option to turn off its sepia filter because it really makes the game less readable. There are times when I wish it had a lighter, whiter look just so that the graphics look clean and hygienic. The aesthetic is there, but I feel that it robs away from the general experience after a while, especially since the graphics get old really fast.
Finally, the game has serious UI issues. The way information is presented, and how many details are only available by hovering your cursor over elements, make some tooltips hard to pin down, especially since there are a lot of moving parts on the screen all the time.
There's also no way to pan or zoom the camera, or even have the minimap zoom in and out. This adds to a lot of frustration that I have with the game's lack of gameplay scaffolding, making it hard to catch a lot of the game's core features at first. Even the way some information is presented, like the exact location of cities on the map, aren't presented well.
Conclusion: Is Bootleg Steamer a good game? Is it Worth Your Time and Money?
Bootleg Steamer is a fun game to play every once in a while. I imagine myself coming back to this every now and then for a quick run. However, I don't get any intrinsic motivation to go deeper into the game after I get my trading fix.
Growing up playing games like Sid Meier's Pirates, the mobile game Age of Marco Polo, and more recently Skull & Bones and Dredge, games like Bootleg Streamer should be right up my alley. But the game's lack of complexity and its refusal to share information to you makes it a hard game to recommend.
Bootleg Steamer is a game that should be fun, but many elements within it make it hard to do so. The UI works against you. The controls (or lack thereof) work against you. Even the game's music and sound design will lull you to sleep even before you progress far into the game.
But if you can look past all of these issues, or maybe when Junkfish manages to iron out these wrinkles through future updates, you can have a lot of fun with Bootleg Steamer. In fact, in small doses, it's extremely satisfying. Getting to unload hundreds of bottles of champagne after narrowly avoiding capture is a blast, but the excitement quickly drains away if you manage to do it over and over again.
It's also worth noting that the game is currently unplayable on the Steam Deck. Not only does it lock you in with trackpad controls for its menus, but it also runs very poorly. Expect low frame rates when playing on the Steam Deck – and with the lack of graphics options available, there really isn't much that you can do about it.
Score: 6/10
Editor's Note:ClutchPoints received review copies to allow us to cover this game. These copies did not, in any way, affect this Bootleg Steamer Review's final score and verdict.
