Windward

Windward, released in May of 2015, is an indie seafaring game played from a fixed camera, third person perspective. It begins with choosing a name and creating a randomly generated world. There are several options for this, including world size and faction locations. Oh yeah, when you start a new game you have to choose a faction. There are four and each specializes in different areas, such as military might and trading.
After you actually begin the game, you're given a ship and not much else. In this game, there is no set objective, it's rather more of a sandbox where you choose your own objectives. You can build a trade empire and get rich, or explore the vast world and fight pirates.
In any case, the ship you begin with is not good for much. To get a better ship, you'll need to earn money. After you do that you can purchase a better ship, or upgrades for your current ship.
And that's the main part of the game, the way I played, at least. Venture into an area, earn money, buy upgrades, repeat. But it's enjoyable.
Back to what you can do in the game. The game, while lacking in any main objective, does have quests, which can be started by accepting them at any town or by finding random notes floating out in the water. But this is the most lacking part of the game. Most of the quests are something like picking up cargo in another port, hunting down a pirate, or establishing another port, which you can name.

Overall, the game is fun and at a ten dollar price on Steam, it's well worth it if you enjoy a good seafaring adventure, and as a bonus it even has a multiplayer mode.