Inshore by Virtual Regatta

This is by far the best racing games (sailing) on the App Store. It hits on all of the key aspects of racing; fighting for a good start, wind shifts, wind shadow, vmg, etc. The only areas that could use some improvement are the rules and how a penalties are resolved. The basic rules are all there, port/starboard, windward/leeward. I think the rule accuracy at mark roundings could be improved. If I remember correctly a boat has no rights if they are head to wind until they have established at least a close hauled course. Also, (someone already mentioned this in a review but I agree) penalties are payed off immediately with a timed speed reduction. It works pretty well, but it kind of incentivizes sailors to force a penalty rather than sail their proper course. In real racing penalties can be fulfilled by doing circles at anytime between when they occur and when the offender crosses the finish line. I think this should be added into the game, at least for the non foiling boats. My only other comment is that the game is on the verge of “pay to win”. There are certain advantages that you can buy with game tokens. The tokens can be purchased or won and it’s not to hard to win them. But, let’s be honest real life racing is also very much a pay to win sport so think what you want... At the end of the day, if you have been racing for years, just learning to race or just learning to sail; this is a great game for you.

This app has become super popular! It is amazing, for a long time I was searching for a racing sailing app, and here I got it. I’ve been using it for over 6 months. There are several glitches, and it crashes frequently. Also the app kicks you out of a race pretty easily (if you get a call, or any other screen notification, not including messages tabs), this should be fixed. Some rules at the windward mark are strange, many times i get fouls being on starboard with a boat entering the zone in port. Another fix would be that the spinnaker hoisting and dowsing should be able to cancel (sometimes you press the button by mistake and its as bad as taking a penalty). Talking about penalties, penalties in the starting line are very costly (almost seems a double penalty) it is unfair that if you are over-early, you get 12 secs penalty, plus you need to return (slowed down by penalty), this did not happen before in the game, which after you cleared the line, you cleared the penalty (i think this is the correct way).

I’m a sailing instructor and I think that there is some real teaching potential in this game. The sailing is very accurate, to the point that concepts from the game translate smoothly into the real world, and the existing tutorials are already solid. However, I think there are a few things that could be added to make this game a very useful teaching tool. The reason a sailing app would be so helpful is because one of the biggest difficulties that sailing instructors face is communication with their students. It is very difficult for us to give real-time feedback to our students because, on the water, you only have a few seconds to yell helpful information to someone before they have sailed off, unlike with other sports. As such, having this simulator to demonstrate concepts to students on land without the limitations of having to explain everything through a whiteboard or yelling it to them on the water is huge. Furthermore, a video game is far more appealing to kids than a typical chalk talk, so it would make kids more enthusiastic about learning. Making this game into a better teaching tool by making more extensive tutorials which cover concepts such as points of sail, sail trim, sail controls, bad air, or racing strategy would make this game into a popular app I can see a lot of clubs investing in, even if the tutorials cost a little bit of extra money. All-in-all, though, this game is thoroughly well done.