The Ship blends traditional first and third person gameplay with a Sims-style day-to-day needs system including food, sleep and social interaction. An intriguing game featuring exploration, investigation, survival, stealth, and murder, The Ship is set on beautifully crafted decking and highly polished interactive environments.

The crux of The Ship"s gameplay is "the Hunt." Each player is given the name of one of the other contestants on-board and must hunt them down and kill them with any weapon they can find, while avoiding being caught by security, or killed by their own hunter. Depending on the game mode, the winner is either the last hunter alive or the one with the most money in his bank account.

In order to be a successful hunter, it will be necessary for players to know their way around all of the liners, each of which has its own secrets. Among such secret features are extra weapons, hidden rooms, passages and tunnels, "extra special" ways of murdering foes, and environmental traps.