You Must Build a Boat Made Me Ache For the Past

You Must Build A Boat is a sort of weird cross between an endless runner and a puzzle game from developer EightyEight Games released back in 2015 on Steam and mobile phones. 

The gameplay is neat. On the very top of the screen is a side-scrolling representation of your little guy going through a dungeon. Each dungeon has monsters to defeat, chests to open, and traps to disarm. The rest of the screen is taken up by a 6x8 grid of puzzle tiles. These tiles are a mix of sword, staff, key, shield, brain, muscle, and box tiles. Simply drag rows or columns any number of spaces to create matches of 3-5 tiles to use the item shown on the tiles.

For example, If there's an enemy in front of you on the top of the screen, you better match some swords and staffs to damage them and deplete their health bar. A chest in your way? Match some key tiles to open the locks. Shield tiles can be used any time and protect you from getting hit by enemies. Matching brain and muscle tiles earns you a currency to make purchases that I’ll discuss later. Regular box tiles often do nothing but take up space, but sometimes they contain one-time-use items like a bow and arrow, fireball, lightning spell, and more.

Each level lasts as long as you survive. The longer you take to defeat enemies and open chests, the more your little guy gets “pushed” back to the left side of the screen. If your little guy falls all the way to the edge of the screen, your run ends and you're kicked back to your boat.

Honestly, the moment to moment gameplay can feel very frenetic and overwhelming. Even by the end of the game I felt like I was often struggling to match tiles when it mattered and never felt like there was a grand strategy to be better at the game. There was just too much going on at all times.

What makes the gameplay from getting stale, however, is how many modifiers there are to each run. Before entering a dungeon, you can pick up 1-3 missions. Each mission gives you an objective for your run, such as “unlock 5 chests” or “defeat a frozen enemy with a fireball.” As you select more quests, the difficulty modifier for the dungeon goes up as well. Surprisingly, these missions aren't randomly generated. They are set in stone from beginning to end.

Each mission also adds one of dozens of modifier to the dungeon. For example, the “misty” modifier adds a layer of mist to the dungeon, making it harder to see what's in front of you. Or the “stronger enemies” modifier makes…enemies…stronger. As you complete each floor of a dungeon, a new modifier gets added to your run. Some of them obviously make your run more difficult, but there's a handful that actually benefit you and make your run easier.

But isn't this game about building a boat? Yes! It is! Between dungeon runs you spend gold, brain, muscle, and silver dust on upgrading your weapons and abilities and unlocking additional rooms for your boat. None of the currencies can be purchased with real money. They are all earned in game and earned at a quick pace. I never had to grind for upgrades. There was always something new to purchase or do between every run.

The number of rooms and options available to you are surprisingly deep. For example, before my last run of the game, I invested some of my gold into an investment plan that had a chance of returning income for me, I drank a potion at a bar that made the next run 40% easier in exchange for not allowing me to earn any gold, and I offered a hefty amount of gold, brain, and muscle to a deity to make my next run easier. There’s a room aboard the boat that allows you to recruit defeated enemies to join your crew and give you passive boosts, a room that lets you pay to upgrade tiles, a room where you can sell your collected treasures from past runs, and more.

Again, it can be quite overwhelming, but I appreciate that there's always something new to do.

But what kept me coming back to You Must Build a Boat wasn't the mechanics, puzzle gameplay, or numerous unlockables, it was how it transported me back in time to when mobile games weren't just created with the intent of nickel and diming the player at every turn. You Must Build a Boat costs something like $3-$5 depending on the platform and that's it. No microtransactions, no timers, no boosts, no battle pass. You just pay a few bucks and the full game is yours. Even more so, despite being an “endless” runner and a puzzle game, there's a definite end to the game. I saw credits after just over 8 hours of gameplay.

I felt a weird twinge of nostalgia playing this nearly decade old game. I almost felt like I was back in college. Back when the internet had actual unique websites to visit every day instead of different content aggregators. Back when YouTube was just a platform for creative people to make fun videos, not a full time job where people create videos most likely to please The Algorithm. Back when I didn't have so many damn bills to pay and had near endless free time. Back when games, specifically mobile games, weren't made to make money, they were made to be fun.

As a game, honestly You Must Build a Boat isn't that special. I felt neither immense joy nor boredom from its gameplay. It was fine. But what it represents for me is an era of games and my life that I realized I dearly miss and dread will never return. It's bittersweet, in a way.

I originally planned to stop playing the game after defeating it, but one of my boat denizens offered me to rewind to the beginning of the game, but with slightly more difficult enemies. And you know what, I think I might take him up on his offer. It might be kind of nice to spend some time back in 2015 again.