Explore a universe steeped in celestial horror and ravaged by Victorian ambition in this literary RPG for PC, Mac and Linux. The successor to Sunless Sea.
It is the dawn of the 20th century, and London has taken to the stars! As the captain of a spacefaring locomotive you'll behold wonders and battle cosmic abominations in the furthest heavens. Stake your claim. Fight to survive. Speak to storms. Murder a sun. Face judgement.
Ten years have passed since Sunless Sea, and Queen Victoria has led an exodus from London to the heavens. There, a revitalised British Empire - ambitious and authoritarian - begins to expand across the skies.
The stars are alive. They are the Judgements: vast intelligences that govern all things. But they are dying. One by one, something is snuffing them out, leaving their thrones empty. An opportunistic Victorian Empire is colonising the domains they leave behind, painting its industrial vision upon the fabric of the heavens.
Travel between distant ports, unravelling stories, bearing passengers and news, and trading in exotic celestial cargoes.
Your every foray into space is as precarious as a Polar expedition. You’ll need to balance your resources carefully and keep an eye on your crew’s Terror to avoid mutiny and death.
Your captain's actions could tip the precarious political balance of a region. Will you run guns for the Independents? Or spies for the Empire? Choose wisely – your decisions will affect the story; not just for yourself, but for your future captains as well.
Leave your mark on the universe, and be marked in return. When you are creating your captain, every decision is a story, and every story has a consequence.
Equip your vessel as you see fit. Would you benefit more from reinforced armour plating, or the additional manpower allowed by external crew pods? ("Soundproof! Cosy! Detachable!")
It is not safe in the skies. A captain will need to defend themselves against pirates, scorn-flukes, the Cyst of Faces, and worse.
Recruit a gallery of unpredictable characters to crew your locomotive as First Officer, Chief Engineer, Signaller, or Surgeon. Each brings their own skills and stories to your adventures.
Last edited by prudislav on Thu, 24th Jan 2019 14:09; edited 6 times in total
There’s very little we can say at this early stage, but to whet your appetites:
7 facts about Sunless Skies
As with Sunless Sea, it’ll be rich with stories. The Victorian Empire in space – the High Wilderness – a “blistering, wonderful night” among the thrones and domains of the stars. The Empress has abandoned London and led an exodus to the High Wilderness, to carve out a new British Empire. With the Empire being increasingly authoritarian, bohemians, revolutionaries and outcasts – like you – are trying to make a life for themselves on its fringes.
It will elaborate on Sunless Sea. We’re enhancing the stuff we liked, and refining the experience. It will be a punishing game, but respectful of your time.
At full release, it will be available on the same platforms at launch which Sunless Sea is available on now: Windows, Mac and Linux.
We will use Early Access again, taking on board all of the lessons we learned from Sunless Sea.
Why the name? The stars are dying. The stars are the Judgements: the inventors, arbiters and enforcers of the universe’s laws – but a revolution has begun, and the stars are being murdered.
Our influences include: the science fiction of H G Wells and C S Lewis, the planetary romances of Leigh Brackett, Art Nouveau, Event Horizon, trains.
We are running a Kickstarter for it in February! Stop the clocks, mark your diaries, save your pennies!
At the moment we are in pre-production: art concepts, topline story, weekly seminars looking at different aspects of Sunless Sea that we want to renew or update. We learned a lot creating SS, we’re looking forward to using that knowledge to make a smoother, more engaging sequel.
Sounds good. I definitely enjoyed Sunless Sea for what it was, the atmosphere and sense of exploration were superb despite a bit too much rinse and repetitiveness (mostly because of the rogueformula itself). Here's hoping they improve the fairly basic combat and offer more options than the traditional 'circle around and surprise buttsecs'
Yeah I wish they'd do away with the roguelike aspect, it did nothing but annoy and distract me from the atmosphere and the stories. Still was worth it though.
The main thing to take away from the post is that, unlike Sea, there won't be one main port in the game, but multiple. This changes the dynamic of exploration, and should hopefully make navigating the map less of a chore over time.
"The tension created by having to struggle back to a major port will still be there, and the threat of overreaching and dying in the cold, uncaring vastness of space will be just as present as it was in Sunless Sea," writes director of game development Liam Welton. "But your journeys will be shorter and more varied, and the new opportunities awaiting you in ports even more tantalising. For those brave enough to leave the safety of their known region, there will be other, perhaps greater, civilisations to explore in adjacent regions."
Failbetter describes Skies' world, the High Wilderness, as "the Victorian Empire in space" and is inspired by the science fiction of H.G. Wells and C.S. Lewis.
i loved sunless sea and the submarine addon, but i gotta admit that i modded it a bit so the fuel and food depletion was a bit lower. Cool to see a new game from them. The atmosphere was really cool.
Currently replaying Sunless Sea with the Zubmarine add-on, really like the atmosphere and I always enjoy 'choose your own adventure' stuff.
Also starting playing Fallen London, the browsergame variant that came first, but it plays better on a mobile device than in a browser. Also pretty fun, but the grind is more than in SS
There must have been a door there in the wall, when I came in.
Truly gone fishing.
i love love looooooooooved sunless sea, but a: some of this doesnt look as good visually as i would expect from these guys (given the obviously talented artists they have, and the experience they have), it doesnt look like theyre raising the bar like id hoped... (though that murder a sun bit looked fricken sweet!) and b: not too sure how i feel about them doing a kickstarter when i think they obviously have the cash to make the game... sunless seas was apparently quite successful for them
Sunless Sky is trying to think about how we can keep up the level of risk, but you don't find yourself trawling through the same contents over and over again
not really joke per se ... just compariion to what Irrational did aka first sea based game and later sky based one, is it that hard to grasp?
It's not hard to grasp. You made an incorrect comparison there so it makes no sense. Should have used Irrational instead of Bioshock then...
Everyone knows about Irrational here and "Failbetter doing an Irrational" would also have gotten your point across.
Sunless Skies will be coming to Steam Early Access and GOG Games in Development the 30th of August! The feedback we received in Early Access for Sunless Sea was pivotal to its development, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts on Sunless Skies over the coming months.
Kickstarter backers, keep your eyes on whichever email you used for Kickstarter for your key. Anyone else who’d like to join at this early stage will be able to purchase the game for 10% off its full price of £18.99 / $24.99 during the first week of Early Access / Games in Development.
Initially, players will be able to explore the Reach, one of the four regions of the High Wilderness, with other regions being added in throughout development:
The Reach is a verdant, sunless frontier. London pioneers—spearheaded by the avaricious Windward Company—establish far-flung colonies and plunder the riches of the region's ruins and wild gardens. But many colonists crave independence from the Empire, and the Reach is rife with conflict. Will you be one of the lucky few who strikes it rich? Or one of the masses broken amidst the green wastes?
Mechanically, players can expect a broad skeleton of gameplay features to be available. You’ll be able to explore the skies, dock at ports, interact with stories, trade, fight and die. Opening the game to players in Early Access / Games in Development will provide us with crucial feedback and data to help us create a game that's delicious, delightful, and dangerous.
We are incredibly excited to send you amongst the stars and look forward to experiencing this next chapter of development with you.
Note: Please do keep in mind that like any Early Access / Games in Development game, Sunless Skies will not be in a complete state, and will go through changes ahead of its full release, based on player feedback and our development of the game. If you would like to wait until the bugs are ironed out, the gameplay is final and the stories are finished, we suggest that you wait until the official game release.
Sunless Sea developer Failbetter Games has delayed the launch of its upcoming crowdfunded sequel, Sunless Skies.
There's no new delivery date, but Failbetter has assured fans there was "no danger of us failing to deliver the project you backed".
The decision to delay the game from its previously-announced May arrival comes after a disappointing 2017 for the studio, with lower-than-expected sales of the game on Steam Early Access and four of the small team's staff being laid off as a result.
Skies "sold about 15 per cent as many copies as Sunless Sea in the comparable time period", Failbetter said in a Kickstarter update.
The studio said the game had gone into Early Access too quickly and blamed a "hugely different" marketplace to the one which Sunless Seas launched into back in 2014.
"Sunless Skies just isn't as visible as Sunless Sea was," Failbetter continued.
"With much regret, we have just completed a redundancy consultancy process and four of us are leaving as a result."
They banked on the early access milking cash cow and lost. They should have known better, given how niche their games are. You can only pull that move and succeed if you appeal to the lowest common denominator of players.
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Their 'shitty first game' was brilliant, IMO, not to everyone's taste, I'll admit, but it was great for what it was, and there are a lot more 'shitty' piss games, and Dev's out there, before I would put 'Sunless Sea' in that category.
Failbetter Games has an update for the Early Access title Sunless Skies. On April 4, 2018, the company will add a second region to the game, Albion. This will bring just over half of the expected stories and places to the game. It also announced that the game wouldexit Early Access and be released proper sometime in September 2018.
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