It its current form, Sailaway is an adequate way to learn about complex sailing vessels, travel the world by sea, and race online with other skippers. It is fairly straightforward to learn, but the limitations of controlling a complex boat with a keyboard and mouse are very evident. Sailaway is not for the casual player.

Sailaway: The Sailing Simulator is a great option for the experts of the genre, but it is too technical and short of content for the inexperienced ones, making it boring in the short term.

The more I played, the more I felt like Sailaway wasn’t my kind of game. It seemed to be more for the diehard boat lovers looking to emulate the sailing experience with all its technicalities, warts and all. That is all well and good, but as it is for me, it is simply a game that isn’t all that satisfying to play. It passes on a technical level, but as art, it leans far too heavily on realism for its own good.