ShipShaper Is a Chill Boat Builder with a Demo You Can Use to Make Sleek Sloops or Beastly Barges
•February 12, 2026
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Why It Matters
ShipShaper gives indie developers and modders a low‑barrier way to generate custom ships, expanding user‑generated content pipelines for games and tabletop projects. Its open‑license promise could spark new revenue streams and community‑driven innovation in nautical game design.
Key Takeaways
- •ShipShaper demo lets users sculpt any vessel shape.
- •No grid or preset; pure creative freedom.
- •Built by The Falconeer and Bulwark creator Tomas Sala.
- •Future version promises open license for game and mod use.
- •Ships can be 3D‑printed or imported into Bulwark.
Pulse Analysis
The emergence of lightweight, purpose‑built creative tools like ShipShaper reflects a broader shift in the indie gaming ecosystem toward modular, user‑generated assets. By stripping away traditional constraints such as grid snapping and predefined templates, the platform encourages designers to experiment with hull geometry, balance, and aesthetic detail in a way that mirrors real‑world naval architecture. This hands‑on approach not only lowers the entry barrier for hobbyists but also provides a rapid prototyping environment for studios seeking to iterate on ship designs without extensive 3D modeling pipelines.
Beyond its sandbox appeal, ShipShaper’s roadmap promises an open creative license that could fundamentally alter how developers integrate community content. The ability to export ships for use in Bulwark, other game engines, or even physical 3D‑printing opens cross‑medium opportunities, from tabletop wargames to virtual reality simulations. Such flexibility aligns with the growing demand for customizable assets, allowing modders to tailor vessels to specific gameplay mechanics or narrative settings, thereby extending the lifespan and replayability of existing titles.
From a market perspective, the Steam demo serves as a low‑risk entry point that gauges interest while building a community around ship design. Early adopters can generate shareable screenshots and models, fostering organic promotion and feedback loops. If the full version delivers on its open‑license promise, it could become a staple in the toolkit of indie developers, educational programs, and hobbyist creators alike, positioning ShipShaper as a niche yet influential player in the creative‑software landscape.
ShipShaper is a chill boat builder with a demo you can use to make sleek sloops or beastly barges
And every type of vessel between those two extremes
Image credit: Tomas Sala
The fine frigate which serves as the featured image for this article is called the Stately Gunwale. That's not a name I, the boat's creator, gave it. It's a name ShipShaper's demo automatically assigned my vessel when I picked the set of colours I wished it to be painted. Quite frankly, I doubt I could have dreamed up a more fitting moniker for my deliberate attempt to fling something funky onto the high seas.
ShipShaper's the latest creation of The Falconeer and Bulwark developer Tomas Sala, who describes it thusly:
I’ve always loved ships and boats, perhaps it's the idea of going off to explore or an enduring fascination with the ocean. But I love ships. Over the last years I've known that ships would be at the centre of any Falconeer/Bulwark follow up, and what started out as a little folly made for Bulwark has grown into its own thing. ShipShaper is a small, explorative shipbuilder I made for the simple pleasure of shaping boats and ships. You pull, push, and drag forms into place, creating everything from humble fishing vessels to tall ships, ironclads, and early dreadnoughts. There’s no grid, no ‘meta’, and no right answer. Just shapes, balance, and the slow satisfaction of something coming together.
Starting off with a small, bare template, you stretch and bend your boat into whatever shape you like. I stuck a big hump in the middle of the deck, because that's practical, then peppered masts, exhausts, and gun turrets about with reckless abandon. The engine cover is wedged halfway through the hull, and the sides are stocked with protruding galley oars which don't touch the water and cannons pointed at impractical angles. An anchor and some flaps round out a ship that should fare well at sea, when its prow isn't jutting underwater.
Once you've built the thing, you can snap some screenshots of it in a waterborne diorama. Sala has teased that "the full game will come with an open creative license to use the ships you create in any way you want for your own game development, boardgame or modding venture." You'll also be able to 3D‑print your ship or import it into Bulwark.
It's well worth spending at least five minutes playing around with ShipShaper, which doesn't have a release date as of writing. You can find its demo and wishlist it on Steam, if you're so inclined.
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