▲ 77 points

Show HN: Silent Shark – tactical map-based WWII submarine sim

silentshark.app

by epaga·3d ago·37 comments·view on hn ↗

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.

37 comments

I just bought it, and can’t wait to try it. Red Storm Rising[1] was easily one of my favourite games growing up. The combination of strategy on the war map and tactics during the encounters, weighing the pro/con of using sonar, and weaving around the thermocline was my happy place. Submarine sim games are truly a special niche, and I’m so excited to try this one out!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Storm_Rising_(video_game)?...

That looks really cool, hadn't heard about that.

But I did grow up with Silent Service II. And it turns out, the subsim niche is bigger than I had thought. Very fun!

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.

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.

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.

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. :)

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?

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 :)

> I think the UI elements and layout look very similar to how LLMs like to create them

Yeah. Guess why. Because they parrot what they have seen in training data! Go figure what that implies.

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

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

Can you explain more please? I recognise some Claude-isms when reading text, and I recall image generators that added more fingers than are usual, but I don’t know what the 2-d graphics on the app home page signify in this respect.

> How much of the game design is just LLM hallucinations

Is creativity itself not a type of confabulation? Putting aside my confusion on what AI smells you're picking up, surely this would be desired in a game.

I don't think "lies" is a fair word to use against a game that doesn't promise historical accuracy.

I bought it a few days ago. Thank you for including native Linux support <3

So far, it's really fun and the tutorial is great! A few things that could potentially be added to the game:

- Crew management (nothing fancy, just a bit, like food management)

- Different kinds of torpedoes (if the US had that, I only know about German submarines)

- Countermeasures (like noise makers)

- Seeing resources (number of torpedoes) on the campaign map

- A better indication whether a ship is sunk or will stay afloat (I resolve and don't know if the ship has been sunk or not)

- And German submarines + campaign of course

If you add all that you will have recreated “Silent Hunter 4: Wolves of the Pacific”

https://store.steampowered.com/app/15200/Silent_Hunter_Wolve...

I played Silent Hunter III with the One Onix (or something like that) mod, which is probably the best SH we have today.

Thanks so much! A few of those are on my (very long) list already. It's been so great getting so much positive feedback and ideas coming in.

Love it! I'm looking forward to every update :)

Btw. I found the game by watching Wolfpack345's video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7c9LfWvTt8

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.

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.

I don't buy games anymore, but this one looks like the kind I might have bought had it been around when I did. Was a big fan of Sea Wolf and Silent Service.

This is pretty cool and very detailed , I tried the web browser version and its way more advanced . I think it needs beginners level or (pre-pilot simulation training)

Thanks! The "pre-pilot training" this is pretty much what the Basic Tutorial is all about, have you tried it?

Games should not be made with ai

Love this!

[flagged]

>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.