I'm not the biggest fan of most Euro type games as I find the subject matter often gets too abstracted in favour of conforming to the game's ruleset.
If the game can still manage to impart a reasonably grounded sense of reality, then my reservations are overcome and I end up finding them quite fun to play. For instance, I think
Puerto Rico is an amazingly fun game to play.
Anyway, one of my FLGS's does up a new sale every Wednesday and this week, they had Shipyard as one of their discounted titles. I've never yet seen it played at any of the local nerd sessions but I remembered watching a play-through video on BGG in which they were very effusive about it so, at 4 am on a night shift when my willpower is weakest, I ordered a copy.
The basic concept of the game is that you manage a ship building company in Europe in the 1870s and you're trying to capitalize on the boom in these new-fangled steam driven ships. Your firm's goal is to design the best possible ship based on secret contracts you receive and once the design is complete, take it out onto a canal for a shakedown cruise in order to evaluate it.
I've only had a chance to play it once but, much like
Puerto Rico, I really like this game! the rules are fairly simple but there are lots of different plates to keep spinning. Even though you feel pressure to complete different tasks, I rarely felt trapped by the game and there was always something I could do to keep advancing.
Sounds like an interesting concept, if the theme still shows through to some extent.