They can be steered using the arrow keys or by clicking and dragging elements in the interface. In the walkthrough mode players can fully explore the ship and walk to areas such as the helmsman position to take control of the ship. Ships can be controlled from different perspectives, both external and internal. Some ships are famous models, such as the RMS Titanic (updated from the previous version), Pride of Rotterdam or ADF Vermaas.

The selection of ships include a container vessel, a patrol boat, a pilot boat, a powerboat, ferries, a rescue boat, an incident response vessel, tug boats, a supertanker, an ocean liner and more. The weather conditions can be configured in detail, including wind force, wind direction, rain, thunder, fog, stars, the height of the waves and the shape of the clouds. There are five main classes (special, motorboat, cargo, passenger or yacht and tugs), with five levels each. Completing missions improves the player's ranking. Apart from routes, boats will need to be towed with a tug boat, players need to load containers, do a sight-seeing tour, participate in a stunt show, unload contains, or rescue other ships or swimmers during disasters. In easy missions only a single ship needs to be controlled with only a few goals, while harder missions have the player steer multiple ships at once with different goals altogether. In the mission mode objectives need to be completed without damaging the ships. There are no goals in this mode, but players can set waypoints to define routes, and sail from Amsterdam to New York for instance.

In Free Roam, players choose a ship, an environment, weather conditions and time, and start sailing. The game is divided into a free roaming and a mission mode. The stress is purely on the simulation, there are no fighting elements with opponents and as such the gameplay is recreational in design, although there are action-based missions. In the 2008 edition of the Ship Simulator series players can manoeuvre ships in different kinds of environments.

Free ship simulator 2008 add ons