|OT| Sunless Skies (Failbetter Games) - Betray your Queen!. Murder a Sun!

[prudis]

Sunless Skies · Failbetter Games
AIL THE STARS. BETRAY YOUR QUEEN. MURDER A SUN.
Sunless Skies is a Gothic Horror roleplay game with a focus on exploration and exquisite storytelling for PC, Mac and Linux.

It's not long until you'll be able to traverse the full, horrifying breadth of the Victorian cosmos - have one last look before Sunless Skies is released on January 31.

Command a flying steam locomotive

The only thing between you and the waste-winds, storms and cosmic lightning is your engine. Tend and upgrade it, buy weaponry and exotic equipment, and keep her hull in good shape to hold the hostile Heavens at bay.

Explore a unique and dangerous universe

You play the captain of a locomotive, a steam engine fitted for off-rail travel: sailing the stars, leading your crew into trouble and out of their minds. Smuggle souls, barter for crates of time, stop for cricket and a cup of tea.

Discover more of the deep, dark and marvellous Fallen London Universe, as seen in our previous game, SUNLESS SEA. (You can play either game first, the stories coexist happily.)

Fight her majesty's agents, pirates and abominations of the skies

Face ships of differing factions and unknowable beasts each with different attacks and agendas.

Survive starvation, madness and terror.

Manage your crew’s condition and your captain’s nightmares. Balance fuel and supplies against your desire for new horizons, knowledge or riches. Struggle with sights never meant for human eyes. How will the dark change you?

Recruit officers on your adventures

Populate your ship with unique, upgradeable officers, each with their own quest to fulfill: an incautious driver, an incognito princess, a repentant devil, and - dear god! - your Aunt?! How did she get out here?

Discover your captain’s past through narrative levelling

Reveal your captain’s past deeds as facets of their personality as you progress. Most captains will perish, but their actions will leave a mark on the world for their descendants - for better or worse. Pass on some effects, and return anew to deal with events that your previous captain put into motion.

THE WORLD

The High Wilderness is a wondrous vision of space: shifting, wind-swept ruins where the laws of the cosmos are not as we imagined.

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.

Unfettered by trivial things like gravity, the Victorian Empire have pushed their tendrils into this new world, and their ambition is savage. They have built a new Sun. The Empress Victoria reigns from the Throne of Hours, which gives her control over time.

Your Captain and crew must carve out a life between the stars. Will you support her majesty and the establishment, or the working class rebels who yearn for freedom from the Workworlds?

FEATURES

• Multiple, intertwining stories with a depth and richness unlike anything else in games, inspired by CS Lewis, Jules Verne, Lovecraft and HG Wells
  
  
• Lush, hand-drawn 2d art to match
  
  
• Four giant regions to explore: celestial wilderness, impossible industrial empire, pagan midnight expanse, and the mysterious Blue Kingdom.
  
  
• A choice of play styles: build a lineage of captains as each dies, or reload your most recent captain and continue
  
  
• Key remapping and full controller support

Who are Failbetter Games?
We’re a boutique games studio based in London, UK. We’ve been making indie games since 2009. If you’ve read this far, this game is almost certainly for you. Come with us into the dark, delicious friend.

 

[prudis]

Reviews are up

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

Good to see it get good reviews so far. I love Sunless Seas and Zubmariner and bought them when kickstarted, sunless Skies too. I have Cultist Simulator which has the same author working on it but haven't played it yet.

I was playing this last week but just as i was getting into it the game would crash. I seem to be having issues with Unity games lately which is the only thing making me cautious for Praey for the gods.

Update: Since the release patch i no longer crash where i used to crash. Yay! Managed to get to the first port for the first time in ages and create my character backstory and a save spot. Tidy.

 

[Ex-User (307)]

Dumb question: can you jump into this without having played Sunless Seas?

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

I'd say yes. Mechanically they play very similarly but so far i wouldn't say you need to play the first two to get a handle on the narrative. I hadn't played Fallen London before Sunless Seas and didn't feel i'd missed anything important. Playing the other two will add flavour and some familiarity but i doubt they're essential.

 

[Casper]

Dumb question: can you jump into this without having played Sunless Seas?

I'd say yes as well, as it is what I did. You would likely have a better grip on the step by step mechanics of the game if you please Seas, but since things are explained to you in Skies it isn't like they just drop you in the deep end. That said, I am already near dead because I can't find the first trading settlement after the main hub haha! I am a horrible horrible captain and everyone is dying.

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

Casper Welcome to the Sunless Skies! Rags to Riches to Glory or insanity with death but a breath away at every step.

If it's anything like the others there are consistent systems like Trade routes and items, certain types of discovery or information collected etc but locations of places and items change between runs which impact what routes are worth taking in this world at that time. There will always be a town or ruin at Location X but which one might change slightly, i think some of the more important "hubs" are consistent but the smaller places change places.

It's like the world has changed a little while you were growing up.

 

[lashman]

... and reviews via OpenCritic:

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Game Information

Game Title: Sunless Skies

Platforms:

• PC (Jan 31, 2019)

Trailer:

• Sunless Skies: Albion Launch Trailer

Developer: Failbetter Games

Review Aggregator:

OpenCritic - 83 average - 91% recommended

Critic Reviews


PC Gamer - Chris Schilling - 90 / 100

The sharpest writing around, wrapped inside a surprising adventure that's tough but rarely unfair. Failbetter's finest hour.

Wccftech - Rosh Kelly - 9 / 10

Sunless Skies delivers in ways you don't even expect it to. The atmosphere is incredible, and the stories almost addictive. The world is beautiful and the danger is tantalizing. It might be deadly, but it's well worth the trip.

Slant Magazine - Steven Scaife - 4.5 / 5 stars

The world the game shares with its predecessors is detailed and bizarre in equal measure.

Windows Central - Brendan Lowry - 4.5 / 5 stars

Sunless Skies is a wild, mysterious RPG that blends together a plethora of traits from multiple genres. The result is something unique, engaging, and incredibly fun.

Metro GameCentral - 9 / 10

A wonderfully refined sequel that takes everything that was great about the original and expands and improves upon it, making for a much more accessible experience for everyone.

Guardian - Alec Meer - 4 / 5 stars

This imaginative and darkly humorous sci-fi survival game has you fearfully chart a vast, hostile universe

PC Invasion - Jason Rodriguez - 4 / 5 stars

At times serene and at times unnerving, Sunless Skies epitomizes an atmospheric narrative-driven exploration into strange and unknown locales, only marred by the tedium that grows as the novelty eventually wears off after a few hours.

OnlySP - Damien Lawardorn - 4 / 5 stars

The comparison to Joss Whedon’s short-lived television series is apt, with similarities extending beyond the music to the genre-bending space adventure and focus on stories that explore humanity in straits. Imperialism, the value of time, the tenuous nature of reality, and the mysteries of the cosmos are just some of the themes that emerge in the strange world of Sunless Skies, contributing to a tapestry of a richness almost unparalleled in the world of video games. The overall pace of the game is staid, but its brilliant simplicity is to be commended, and, come year’s end, it could prove enough to make Sunless Skies a strong Game of the Year contender.

TechRaptor - Courtney Ehrenhofler - 7 / 10

Sunless Skies is a fun romp with enough plot variety to keep you entertained. While the writing lacks the sharpness of previous installments, this is a good series introduction for beginners.

Jump Dash Roll - Shaun McHugh - 7 / 10

Looking past its flaws, if you're a fan of narrative storytelling, steampunk and weird wobbly Lovecraftian things – this game is worth your cash.

Eurogamer - Edwin Evans-Thirlwell - Essential

All the verbal artistry of Sunless Sea scattered across a gorgeous steampunk cosmos that's a little easier to navigate and thrive in.

 

[Alexandros]

Fantastic OP. I really, really, really want to play this but I have an important question: Does the game have text and interface scaling options for TV gameplay? I play on a TV with a Steam Controller and I don't want to strain my eyes since the game has a lot of reading. Did Sunless Sea have such an option?

 

[EdwardTivrusky]

I know Sunless Skies has an option to change text size between Standard and Large but how useful that would be to you i've no idea as i play at a desk on a 27" monitor @1080.
Sunless Seas has both Font Scaling slider and UI Scaling slider. Again, can't say if they're any use to you as i'm not on a TV and comfy couch.

 

[prudis]

 

[prudis]

new update

 

[Chance Hale]

Game is amazing and the writing/lore in a class of its own. I need to order another steam controller so I can get back to it on my tv. Left paddle no longer registers and that's what I had left thrust mapped to. Game has normal controller support but still very broken and nigh unusable.

 

[Chance Hale]

By the way regular controllers are actually very usable now so I take back the previous comment. Must have been an issue from launch but once I enabled controller support and used the dpad to scroll to the bottom in options and restored defaults it remapped every action and it works like a charm now. Just had to be the controller to choose default and not the mouse shrug

Very playable on a TV and a standard controller so definitely jump in on the next sale for those that applies to.