[Introduction]
Labelling itself as a "gothic horror roleplay game," Sunless Skies is a sequel to Sunless Sea, both in terms of release dates and the actual in-game setting. It also happens to be something of a rollercoaster ride, starting out fairly straightforward - at least as straightforward as captaining a flying locomotive in space can be - and alternating between insane revelations and rather mundane transit between ports.
[First Impressions]
I won't lie, when I first played it, I really wasn't into this game. It took a couple tries before it gripped me, and I think it's largely due to the starting area of the first region being fairly standard, despite the supposed fantastical nature of the game. There were a couple interesting tidbits, but I didn't return to it after ending what amounts to the tutorial for a long time.
Then, when I did return, I started exploring more, and what I found intrigued me enough to keep going.
[Development]
A year after its predecessor was released in 2015, Sunless Skies was announced at the EGX Expo. A year after that, a Kickstarter was launched. That's right, Sunless Skies qualifies as a Kickstarter game. Out of the initial goal of £100,000, a whopping £377,952 was raised from 11,739 backers, beating the development cost by almost £50,000. Not bad.
The game itself runs on Unity, which may explain some optimisation issues still present to this day, into which FailBetter have integrated their own proprietary narrative platform called StoryNexus. How exactly this works is a mystery I won't pretend to hold the answer to - suffice it to say that it works.
What didn't work so well was the initial release date. While the early access was successfully scheduled for 2017, the full 2018 release got pushed back to 2019, with the game finally releasing in January of that year. However, development didn't stop then; in fact, it never stopped. Despite periods of silence from the developers, patches were released through 2019, 2020 and 2021, albeit irregularly.
Most significantly, and happening to coincide with this review, FailBetter released a monster of an update in the form of the Sovereign Edition May 19th 2021. PC players who already owned Sunless Skies received this edition free of charge and a similar release is expected across all remaining platforms (meaning Xbox One, Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch).
While not quite a total overhaul, the Sovereign Edition does feature all previous content released for the game, as well as new narrative elements and general improvements to gameplay. Although this is expected to be the final update, it should be said that it's readily apparent that Sunless Skies has been a labor of love, which is much rarer than I care to think about much these days.
[Game Mechanics]
The player takes the role of a captain who inherits a flying locomotive (i.e. "Engine") from the previous captain following their untimely and apparently excruciating demise. At least I assume it was excruciating, given she was literally vomiting flames, but I digress.
With this engine, you'll be doing whatever you want. I don't mean that as in "this is a sandbox, do whatever" but rather "choose a goal and work towards it." You see, during character creation, you not only pick a past and a portrait, you also choose an ambition, which will determine your victory condition for the playthrough.
In that sense, Sunless Skies is open ended, because there's really no ending to the game itself, only your character's story. Everything around you will keep going, after all, we're talking about a world where the Queen of England has moved London into space, destroyed a sun and become the immortal Renewed Empress. One dude (or dudette) with a space train isn't gonna put much of a dent in that.
That's not to say you won't have any impact at all, however. The game is heavily story-driven and focuses primarily on story and exploration. There's combat, but frankly it's just kind of there. It can be satisfying, don't misunderstand, but it's probably not the main reason you're playing the game.
During your travels, you'll need to keep your engine and its crew going with fuel and supplies respectively. As you acquire new engines, equipment and crew, requirements will change, usually in the sense that you'll need more fuel to keep going and more supplies to feed the crew. Granted, you can survive for a while without supplies, and there will be opportunities for... improvising, let's say, but if your fuel runs out you only get a few chances to remedy that. And those chances might go horribly wrong.
Other than that, your main concern is terror and nightmares. The High Wilderness is a scary place, regardless of whether you're in the Reach or any of the other regions. During your commute to deliver trade goods to a port, you can encounter all sorts of horrors that want you dead, whether they be pirates or enormous sea urchin (space urchin?) that will do their damnedest to make sure you don't arrive in one piece.
Exploration, needless to say, is hazardous to your health, both physical and mental, but every discovery is well worth facing the menaces on the way and never feel recycled or underwhelming. Similarly, visiting a new port for the first time never stops being exciting. On top of that, it's all incredibly well-complemented by the game's soundscape.
Something so simple as the sound of rain will change depending on region and locale. It might sound insignificant, but across the board, I was impressed by the quality of the sound effects and music. It's not only enjoyable, it's also thoroughly immersive. In addition, the music is outstanding as well, and the transition between regional soundscapes is seamless.
Granted, it's not all fun and games. Everything costs you something, most frequently money, and to acquire most things, you'll have to work for them. Particularly money. This means you'll spend a great deal of your time in transit between ports, not necessarily exploring, because before you can explore, some groundwork must be laid.
That said, it's possible to tweak the difficulty to be more lenient in terms of fuel and supply consumption, so if you're less interested in dire circumstances and just want the exploration element, that's entirely possible, and a very welcome addition to the game's options menu.
Finally, as stated earlier, the game has some performance issues. They're not crippling or gamebreaking, but it can be frustrating to have the game freeze for several seconds for no apparent reason. I have also experienced extended loading times for port menus after running the game for extended periods, and while it never made me want to stop playing, it's something to keep in mind.
[Graphics]
This is a gorgeous game.
The art is hand-drawn and is the end product of a tremendous artistic endeavor to bring the setting to life. The otherworldly and fantastical nature of the setting can make certain elements hard to grasp entirely, and although the writing is descriptive, I very much appreciate the effort to provide visuals that are as closely aligned to the writers' vision as possible.
[Story]
Welcome to the High Wilderness of Fallen London.
What we have here is a weird mix between outer space and the sky. Maybe. It's unclear. A lot of things are unclear, including what the hell happened to concepts such as "directions" and "time" and "workers' rights." I'm not kidding, either. Compasses are literally useless now, time exists as a physical resource that can be exploited and the aforementioned time can be used to dilate the flow of time, enabling the working class to accomplish a year's worth of work in only a month.
That's not to say they work faster. It's more like they're put in a bubble of accelerated time. They still feel a year go by. The outside just doesn't. It might even still age them by a year, even though the rest of the world only experienced a month passing. So time is fucky, and so is everything else.
Pretty much anything that used to be considered fantastical or supernatural is now mundane. For example, Hell is real and the devils who live there make an inordinate amount of money by selling cheap fuel and removing flaws from people's souls. Sometimes they straight up remove the souls from people if they're tired of having one. It's a seller's market.
The Fallen London setting is weird and freaky and I love it. Every time I learn more about it, I get more excited to find out what other weird shit is waiting for me. Incidentally, this is why I haven't attached any screenshots to this review. I don't want to spoil anything if I can help it. I only tentatively added any real details to the review in the first place because it would be barren otherwise, seeing how the story and the setting are the main draws for the game.
As for your character's own story, that's entirely up to you. Every lineage gets a unique version of the world. What I mean by this is that every starting character also comes with a "lineage," so if you die, you instead take over as someone who is somehow related to or acquainted with the late captain, similar to how your first character inherited the locomotive in the first place.
Everything your character experiences and does gets passed on. If you helped a port build anything, then that building is still there for whoever is next in line. I hesitate to call the game a roguelike, but this particular feature is definitely roguelike in nature. So roguelike-like, I guess.
[SPOILERS]
I won't go into too much detail here, but I will tell you about a realisation I had upon reaching Albion. You see, prior to leaving the Reach, I was pretty much clueless about why the Tacketies were fighting the Stovepipes. I just picked a side, mostly arbitrarily, and kept going. Later, I understood why some people want independence from London.
I thought New Manchester was supposed to be a busy port. It's not. Not compared to London. No, because London has become a weird multi-layer steampunk megacity floating in space above the husk of a dead sun, next to an artificial clockwork sun. It's like a hive city from Warhammer 40,000, except it took part of a Victorian space program in the early 1900s.
People here are literally worked to death by exploiting time being all fucky. Workers have no rights beyond their usefulness as cogs in a machine and no function beyond labor. The upper classes extend their lives almost endlessly while feuding amongst one another for the favor of the Renewed Empress.
And that clockwork sun I mentioned? Turns out the light from it is straight up poison. It literally turns people into glass, and if you approach it (yes, it's an actual location that can be visited), you'll see that there's something off about its light. It's a pale white, and it looks almost out of focus, like it's washed out.
Similarly, London's Great Bell,, popularly known as Big Ben, is still around. But its chimes are... wrong. They sound out of tune. It's a nice audible indication that, as implied and even confirmed throughout the game, time is out of whack.
No wonder people wanted to get away from London's influence. It's a horrid and dismal place.
I love it.
[Pros]
- The setting is bizarre, unique and highly enjoyable
- Exploration is very rewarding and consistently yields amazing experiences
- Combat is passable at worst and much better than Sunless Sea
- The soundscape is phenomenal
[Cons]
- Occasional stutters and freezes
- Transit can be quite mundane
- You'll spend a lot of time in transit
- Combat is the least interesting part of the game
[Conclusion]
Sunless Skies is not without its flaws, and it's not for everyone. Which is a shame, because I sincerely wish that everyone could experience this insane hodgepodge of gothic horror and excitement for exploration. I speak no hyperbole when I say that I've never quite experienced anything like Sunless Skies, and I don't think I ever will again.
May God be with us, for a thousand deaths wait in the sky. Moral compass optional.
/DUX
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