The ShipShaper weekly challenge is a recurring, theme-based shipbuilding event hosted directly inside Tomas Sala's naval design sandbox ShipShaper: Falconeer Chronicles. Players have seven days to design a vessel tailored to a randomly generated prompt, upload their entry to the Steam Workshop, and compete for community votes. Developer Tomas Sala and publisher Wired Productions review the highest-voted designs each week to pick an official winner.
How the Weekly Challenge Works
Every weekly challenge runs on a strict seven-day cycle that resets every Monday. The system automatically issues a themed prompt that combines naval types, historical eras, or fictional concepts.
Entering a design into the running involves the following in-game steps:
- Build or adapt a vessel inside the shipbuilder that adheres to the week's theme.
- Open the sharing menu by selecting the heart icon in the interface.
- Submit the ship to publish it to the Steam Workshop under the active challenge category.
- Browse other players' entries in 3D directly from the in-game challenge browser to view and upvote competing designs.
Submissions are also published as regular Steam Workshop items. This allows other players to download your design, inspect the layout, or export it to compatible titles such as Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles.
Leaderboard Voting and Winner Selection
The competition relies on a hybrid format combining community popularity and developer judging:
- The Top 10 Leaderboard: As players browse submitted ships in-game and on the Steam Workshop, their upvotes generate a live leaderboard. The ten designs with the most community likes by the Monday reset advance to the judging pool.
- Official Evaluation: At the start of each new reset, Tomas Sala and the Wired Productions team inspect the top 10 finalists. They select a single winning vessel that best captures the spirit of ShipShaper.
- Selection Criteria: Judging does not prioritize one specific style. Winning builds have qualified through strict historical accuracy, creative problem-solving under odd constraints, or extreme, outlandish aesthetics.
- Top 10 Spotlights: Even if a boat is not selected as the overall winner, Wired Productions features the top 10 submissions in weekly compilation blogs and social showcases.
Because leaderboard placement depends on accumulating community votes during the seven-day window, submitting an entry earlier in the week provides more visibility on the Workshop browsing list.
Weekly Competition Prizes
The reward structure for the weekly challenge was revised during Early Access due to physical manufacturing constraints:
- Original Reward: When the contest launched, the weekly winner was offered a custom 3D-printed physical model of their submitted ship accompanied by a paint kit to assemble and detail the vessel at home.
- Revised Reward: Starting with the announcement of the third challenge winner, Wired Productions retired the 3D-printing prize. Highly complex hulls, intricate decorative parts, and rigging pushed past the structural tolerances of consumer-grade FDM printing, leading to multiple failed print attempts.
- Current Prize Package: Winners receive a high-quality printed postcard featuring their winning design, alongside physical merchandise loot from Wired Productions. Winners are contacted directly through the developer or distributor to provide shipping details.
Past Challenge Themes and Confirmed Winners
The table below outlines the confirmed weekly challenge winners, their submitted vessels, and the random themes generated by the system.
| Challenge Round | Theme Prompt | Winner Handle | Winning Ship Name | Workshop ID |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Challenge 1 | Venetian Catamaran of the Storm | Hoju Eructus | Sibyl Heritage | 3794651280 |
| Challenge 2 | Captain Flint's Oar-driven Frigate | Sin-nosuke | The Vermilion Oarsplasher | 3805979894 |
| Challenge 3 | Captain Flint's Pirate Monitor of the Fleet | Jakoman3 | The Matchless Galley | 3810368805 |
| Challenge 4 | Iron Age Torpedo Boat of the Grand Armada | Lindemo | Emperor Anchordragger | 3814874337 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I submit more than one ship per challenge?
The submission interface allows players to upload multiple design candidates during a challenge window. Each entry is treated as an individual Steam Workshop item that competes independently on the vote leaderboard.
Why do some challenge themes feature ship types not natively built into the editor?
Challenge prompts are generated from randomized combinations of nautical terms and historical descriptors. Some prompts, such as catamarans, reference configurations that the game's hull generator does not supply as a single hull preset. Players build these designs by minimizing the central hull scale and placing large outrigger floats on the flanks to simulate multi-hull configurations.
Do I need to own Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles to participate?
No. The weekly challenge is hosted entirely within ShipShaper: Falconeer Chronicles on Steam. While ShipShaper includes export pipelines to import ships into Bulwark or export 3D models via FBX and STL, all challenge participation and voting happen within ShipShaper and the Steam Workshop.
