fp.

I posted an early beta of this game a few months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48180924 - May 2026 (45 comments) and today released the full version.

You all gave extremely valuable and helpful feedback back then - thank you so much for that. It led to a lot of improvements:

* I reworked the onboarding tutorials multiple times for clarity, adding protections to stop players from shooting themselves in the foot

* I dropped the Comic Sans-reminiscent font and replaced it with Barlow Condensed

* I improved the layout of the dials for all screen sizes to keep players on top of things

* I added an "Angle-on-Bow recognition trainer" for practicing estimates of ship angles

For the full version, I fleshed out a full campaign with radio intelligence, patrol zones, and lots of historical events impacting things like which naval bases still exist, which types of missions are given, and how reliable your torpedoes are. (And just for fun, I added a full cribbage mini-game as well!)

Now, just minutes ago - almost exactly six months after I started development - I fully released Silent Shark on Steam (Windows, macOS, and Linux) and can't wait to see where things go from here. I have lots of ideas that could work well with this more map-centered approach.

The Steam page is here => https://store.steampowered.com/app/4705650

The landing page is here => https://silentshark.app

I'd be really interested in whether you think the onboarding is clear enough now, and if you have related game ideas that might benefit from a more map-based UI.

Comments

serious_angel•1d ago

[flagged]

Neekerer•1d ago

>This is not art.

Correct, this is a sim game, a genre of game that typically puts data at the forefront and art on the burners.

kelsolaar•1d ago

I did the tutorial, it was good, I think that what would help is maybe have the arrows where people need to look at have some animation, e.g., pulsating scale or colour, something elegant but hard to miss, took a little bit at times to find them.

epaga•22h ago

Thanks for trying it out and for the feedback! I used to have the red arrows be pulsating and got feedback that it felt "too much" and kind of out of place in the game... probably need to find a middle ground.

magistr4te•23h ago

The game has quite the AI smell, which I think does it a disservice. The website feels AI designed, the game (transparently) uses AI graphics; it's hard to tell where the line between handcrafted and generated lies. Immediate question that shoots in my mind is: "How much of the game design is just LLM hallucinations?" As someone who's played around with using AI for games too, this makes me not even want to give the game a chance. Which is a shame, because I think the concept is really cool. Its just tainted by something that subconciously signals me that you dont really care much about your creation.

budsniffer952•22h ago

I can explain: it's another person "too good for AI". It happens it happens in every single thread now.

These people think that "hand written code" is superior, and they would prefer no product exist at all then something be AI assisted. They say idiotic things like, "is the whole game hallucinated?" as if they've never used an LLM before, and that having AI help code means you don't spend time play testing (when in fact you can spend more time there).

Most of these people are simply angry gatekeepers who can't stand that "writing code" is no longer their personal advantage, and they are bitter. They will tell you, "you need to write and code by hand, like me" and then point you to their utterly mediocre work. It's tiring.

llm_nerd•22h ago

Not to do the <- this, thing, but <- this.

It is astonishing how many submissions on HN now have a top comment doing the AI sniff test bullshit, usually based upon literally nothing. Aside from being angry gatekeeping assholes, these people really want to show how super advanced their AI-dar is, but it's just a gigantic waste of time for everyone else and just false positive matches everything: Every comment, image, website, game or app, book, and so on, it's all AI to these people.

Many haven't yet caught on that these people think everything is AI now -- that they desperately want everyone to know that they haven't been "had" -- so people still sincerely ask "why?" like some secret tell will be revealed, when really it's just worthless nonsense.

speerer•20h ago

I think normally it's just that someone has the thought and shares it for discussion. Not every comment is performative.

llm_nerd•17h ago

Hrmmm, is your comment AI? Are you a bot? Just being honest here, but your comment and your history on AI has a real "AI smell" to it.

speerer•10h ago

...but yes, some comments are performative.

broken-kebab•19h ago

There are two extremes though. On one side people who feel immediately offended if they believe they are served LLM-made something. On other people deeply hurt when anybody notices LLM work, and pretending it's impossible to say.

I suppose, the healthy position is not to deny reality:

1) LLM leaves its signs in texts, code, and imagery.

2) It's not necessary a reason to be outraged. Like, for a game it's not a major thing to judge really.

llm_nerd•17h ago

Ah, a made up dichotomy. Did the AI generate it for you? Hilarious stuff. Then implying that I'm "denying reality" for pointing out that people are declaring everything AI.

There are things that are obviously "AI", in a detrimental sense. But there are many, many more things where asshats doing a purity test are running around declaring everything AI.

Clean website that follows norms and expectations of affordances? AI!

Text that you spent time to try to refine? AI!

Basically anything that doesn't look dogshit, amateur hour garbage? AI!

That is where HN is at, and these "AI purity test" comments appear constantly, in basically every show HN. You aren't seeing the "signs", you're backwards luddites that think you can shame people actually creating things, and it has reached a farcical point where it's just noisy nonsense.

Every "this looks like AI" comment should be flagged to oblivion if HN wasn't basically a retirement home for industry washouts. But it is, so they always rise to the top. Every discussion ends up tied up in worthless noise where people who've created nothing try to dismiss everything.

broken-kebab•12h ago

A range is not a dichotomy (just a nerdy note). Apparently, you're so mad at me. I'm just not sure why. You can contribute to HN being nicer place by just answering what is written, really.

customguy•21h ago

> They say idiotic things like, "is the whole game hallucinated?"

You say this as if you can't even faithfully reproduce text that is at the top of your context window, which would explain the rest, such as hallucinating anyone saying anything about play testing.

> angry [..] bitter [..] mediocre

I detect no trace of that in the comment that sent you, and all the more in yours. Probably a coincidence.

epaga•22h ago

I'd also like to hear what AI smells you are picking up in the game.

The only AI graphics in the game (as described on Steam) are literally just clean-up jobs of existing historical maps. That is it.

This is very much a hand crafted game. The design is my own - what I heavily used AI for was the coding side of things as well as for creating my own tools for myself to design things like ships, instrument dials, shipping lanes, etc.

xpct•20h ago

Not OP. I can't claim whether it's AI or not, just why it could possibly raise such concerns.

I think the UI elements and layout look very similar to how LLMs like to create them. It's hard to describe, but something about the rounded-edge, thick outline buttons equidistantly placed on the side bars, and heavily dependent on tabbed layouts in sub-menus. I'd argue there's parts where menus have too much empty space, which typically hints that a menu hasn't been thought out completely. It's also the most common type of game/dashboard view that LLMs are capable of: canvas in the middle with interactive buttons on the sides.

For an example of an immersive and good looking UI I'd look to something like Sunless Sea. It's a different type of game and is more narrative driven, but it doesn't have any of the more web-like UI qualities.

epaga•19h ago

Wow, hadn't heard of Sunless Sea till now, what I'm seeing of it looks gorgeous, thanks.

For Silent Shark, the map being kind of the "protagonist" if you will and then having the trays of buttons or instruments on the side was also kind of the idea in my head from the beginning.

Till now at least from sub sim fans I've heard nearly only praise for the design. But to be fair, most of the more famous submarine sims aren't necessarily known for beautiful clean UI anyways, so it's not like there are high expectations I suppose. :)

xpct•19h ago

Sure, I completely understand that UI has different needs from a sim's perspective. Given that I haven't tried a sub sim before, I have yours bookmarked to try out :)

dash2•18h ago

I just wanted to say that I too got the AI vibe. Which doesn't mean I would hate it! I don't care how you code. But it probably does send a slight signal of the level of effort and professionalism.

I think part of it is the UI/website text: AI tends to be verbose. And the look just feels slightly off, like the parts don't fit together. (I think AIs are better at image generation than at visual UI generation right now.)

You've got a promising product... could you hire someone to polish the UI side?

its-summertime•17h ago

If AI is used for the code, why isn't it disclosed? Or did Valve remove the disclosure?

epaga•2h ago

They very wisely removed the code part and specify you only need to disclose GenAI stuff.