Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition

I love these games. Like Sunless Sea, this game is hard and impossible to play the same twice. There’s always a better strategy and a new piece of map to uncover. Each journey into new areas forces you to weigh the cost of the journey and yet has you on the edge of your seat to see what new Lovecraftian horrors await.
I personally prefer Sunless Sea for the vibes but this game is a lot of fun and has great stories to tell. Just be prepared to a fly trains in space beteeen places and evade space pirates for hours.

I haven't been able to leave the Reach yet, but I've had a lot of fun trying!

A great game.
Pro tip: make sure to get at least 25 Hearts since most checks in this game are based on this stats and you need to have 25 to equip the most powerful weapon in the game. Go check in the settings to slow down the speed at which your fuel and food are depleted and give your projectiles homing properties. Then your good to go. Prioritise finding safe trade routes before trying to complete your quests. Although helping the circus in the first area ASAP is a good idea).

It sure takes a while before getting to the most interesting things this game has to offer, but it makes you more invested in this strange world, and it rewards you generously if your patient enough.
And alongside Bloodborne it's my favourite lovecraftian game.

If you like this stuff there's no better. It's great

I regret buying this game, too much going back and forth with not enough interesting things happening.

slowwwww

How do you follow up a masterpiece? WIth a good game a lot like the first. Sunless Seas is amazing. Sunless Skies is still great but pales by comparison.

Expect to slowly explore, find new ports, get involved in a bunch of stories and trucking cargo. It's bigger in scope but feels less deep than the predecessor. It's also more accessible. There are only 4 stats instead of 5, and there is a more traditional experience and levelling mechanic. There are far, far fewer random events. Combat is more active with dodging, aiming, and heat management all on the player. Fuel and supplies are always a standard price so getting around is less expensive when you don't have much cargo space.

It's all about currency exchange. Visit a port and get a Port Report. Exchange a Port Report at the Windward Company for $100 and 1 point of Favour. Exchange the Favour for 2 Salon Stewed Gossip. Exchange the Favour at Port Avon for 4 points of Welcome. Exchange the Welcome for 4 chances at Visions of the Heavens. Go to Titania and exchange the Visions of the Heavens for $85 and 50 Experience. Return to the Windward Company with 2 Port Reports (Port Avon and Titania).

That's not a loop you want to do a lot as there are plenty of ways to be more efficient, visiting many ports along the way and incorporating other currencies. You'll find quest-lines that call for stuff so I ended up hoarding a lot, making exchanges as needed.

So, I recommend, with the caveat that you should play Sunless Seas first. A House of Many Doors is also a fine example of this genre with more story weirdness than Sunless Skies (but it's far less polished and has some bugs).

Very, very weak recommend. Sunless Seas was able to carry me further and in better spirits. (Two of those spirits were crewmates we ate along the way.) Sunless Skies has some very nice writing, it has some engaging characters, it also really tries my patience with how it sets up story chains or even the basic grind of making money. For whatever reason, I found Sunless Seas managed to intrigue me into exploring the unknown in ways Sunless Skies has never done, although it would be very wrong not to mention there are a lot of improvements to this game over its predecessor.

Delicious

Was a big fan of Sunless Sea and Skies is a worthy sequel. This is an excellent setting with some of the best writing found in gaming. The music is reserved but does well to set the mood. The core game-play loop can be a bit hard to lock down at first and as the game warns, many of your captains will die early on, but keep at it. Invest in your engine, prioritize finding ports, and then learn to leverage the various economies found within the game. ALWAYS gather a port report as they at minimum can fund your fuel and supply costs.

Fun, but make sure you like to read. Play on merciful mode if you're casual.

Mixed feelings on this one.

Although there are some serious improvements over sunless seas when it comes to the game loop and general QoL,
the game takes some serious steps back regarding atmosphere and moment to moment writing. The more you dig into the world, the less interesting it seems to get, which is completely opposite to the previous game in the series.

It's still pretty good, but yeah.

cant even open the game

It's a neat concept but it just doesn't pan out, nor is it terribly well executed

It has a slow start, you really need to explore in the beginning, no matter how many times you die, after that the game picks up...

--

i love fallen london, so i just HAD to try a sunless game, and i LOVE IT. i'm not very good at it but i love it

PLEASE MAKE MORE OF THESE

One of my favorite games ever made, nothing quite like it.

For me, this is an amazing game, just like its predecessor. A strange and wonderful alternate world you can explore and immerse yourself in, full of interesting stories, places and characters.

Pretty neat

Great game.

if you like sunless sea, you will love this

Much like its predecessor Sunless Sea, this game can be deconstructed down to three styles of gameplay: a point and click RPG adventure, a trading/shipping simulator, and a pew pew fest where you go around torpedoing other ships and monsters. Most of the fun for me is simply revealing the ports on the maps, upgrading my ship and weapons, and blasting giant monsters. The biggest difference between Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies is that there is a character leveling system that caps at level 20 and that you increase your stats via this leveling up.

A very interesting exploration/trading game in the Forgotten London universe.

the writing is not on par with sea. I get why the old writer had to go--but the hubris in thinking anyone can just fill in that role is nuts, and it's everywhere in the game industry. Companies will invest in musicians, artists, programmers--and story, *even in a story based game, where it's front and center,* is taken care of by some random employee who specializes in a different field. It's so stupid--and it's so common that it would be understandable--if this series weren't essentially based on writing and text adventures.

I played for 50 hours--mechanics had me hooked, but none of them were fun. It's been about a year since I stopped playing, and looking back, all I have is the sour taste left in my mouth from the disappointing writing.

Skies, I knew Sunless Sea. I spent a lot of time playing Sunless Sea. Sunless Sea is one of my favorite games. Skies, you're no Sunless Sea.

Words cannot express how disappointed I am with this game after playing Sunless Sea for over 900 hours and loving it. Poor design decisions have been made at every turn here.

For example, the first thing that hit me was that the text that appears while you are flying around no longer shows up in a scrollable box in the corner. Instead it appears briefly on the screen and then disappears, like in a trailer, with no way to recall it. It is white text on an often-bright background, hard to read, and there is often real time stuff going on such that you don't dare take the time to try to read it before it's gone. And if you pause the game, a large interface appears, likely blocking whatever it was you were trying to read or see that made you pause it.

This obnoxious covering up of the screen while paused is unlike Sunless Sea, where the text is easily viewed later and a pause does not cover up the screen. This was my first clue the people making this game didn't understand UI's or gameplay concerns. They just wanted it to look fancy with their on-map text messages. Pausing a real time game should never cover up the screen, that is always irritating design, if for no other reason than people like to set up screenshots.

The backgrounds do look fancy, they are the only part of the game I liked. But backgrounds are not enough.

There are a thousand bad decisions like this. Even the music is lame. The hub and spoke arrangement of the maps is terrible for a cruising and exploration game, since you are always moving out and then back rather than going on a long roundabout cruise like Sunless Sea. The economy is dull and the ports are few and lifeless. There is too little content scattered over way too much map. "Space" is actually a maze of tunnels between islands?! Having stone walls on either side also makes the real time combat a lot harder.

The combat system is a twitch / dexterity / aiming / dodging / reaction time / real time shoot em up. There is no "firing solution" like in Sunless Sea to guarantee a hit. The people who say the combat is an improvement obviously like this kind of Asteroids arcade style combat. I personally think it's a terrible fit to a very long storytelling and exploration game, but if you like that kind of action game you may enjoy that aspect of this game.

It is difficult to learn because the "strafe" keys that are so critical to dodging are not A and D like in other games, but Q and E, and of course, since this is a top down view, which one to hit heavily depends on which way your train is facing at that moment, something you don't have to deal with in FPS type games with strafe. It's common for me to strafe left when I want to strafe right because my train is "upside down" and I am under serious time pressure from enemies using homing missiles for ammunition. You can remap the keys but the problem remains of using six keys rather than four for movement, with a top down view often reversing real from relative direction. Not an easy system to learn.

If you are here for the storytelling and exploration and normally avoid dexterity games which heavily rely on you having lightning reaction time and muscle memory, you will be gravely disappointed as you die over and over from enemies that are stronger and faster than you and which pursue. They appear right from the start too, there is no gradual increase in difficulty.

The game has you flying over bright beautiful backgrounds, but for some reason your crew always gains Terror, and gains it faster if your light is off....even though it's not dark, and you're not on the water, but in space, and can see things coming from far away. It makes no sense, it's just lifted from Sunless Sea in a very lazy fashion. The whole flying train engine thing is very silly in a non-silly setting, another mismatch. They should have gone with airships or something. That's a matter of taste not mechanics, obviously, but this tone mismatch is pretty constant. The Terror mechanic went very well with the Sunless Sea setting, here it just feels like lack of creativity to re-use it in this setting.

I have read enough about the game to know there are level caps. There are also stat requirements in order to buy equipment upgrades. This means you can find yourself locked out of equipment later in the game because your character had their points spent the "wrong way" throughout the level ups during the game. Again just the kind of design decision no one likes. The "facets" you pick to level up are supposed to fill in your background, but it ends up rather ridiculous. My academic literature professor, within a few level ups, turned into someone who had been a household servant, had served a term in prison, and other ridiculous things totally out of character. It's just a mess and makes the leveling up an irritation as you grimace and pick yet another background you don't like in order to get the stat points you want.

I have not seen, and will never see, most of the content of this game, because even on the easiest settings, and editing the save file to get extra stats and gold for upgraded weapons and armor right at the start, I still could not survive very long. Just too hard for a non-twitch gamer. But it was boring anyway, so much flying in empty mazes on maps with almost no ports and deadly monsters even near the central port.

A real opportunity lost, in my opinion. Spreading out limited content over huge maps with slow travel times is a developer's trick these days to lengthen playtime. It's annoying but common now. It's the brutal difficulty that is the real problem here for me, although as I said, the paucity of ports, and their blandness, and the hub and spoke map arrangement all made even the exploration aspect a dull grind. It had potential to be relaxing game of flying around and looking at pretty maps, but the deadly combat ruined that. Time to uninstall.

I tried playing multiple times.
You need to go from port to port to make money but traveling cost you money. Once you arrive at port you need more money to buy the "bargain" and then more money to buy supplies to go deliver the thing and restart the cycle.

YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO HAVE FUN IN THIS GAME, SO WHY BUY THIS GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE ?

If you really want to play this game at New Game Adjust how long does the fuel and supply last to Providence.

Not everything is good

I played this fairly shortly after release and dropped it around the Blue Kingdom. I kind of bounced off of the constant costs and frustrations of dealing with mid-late game enemies at the time. Recently, I found myself with a lot of time and little money so I decided to return to the game... and am in the midst of remembering why I dropped it before.

First, the good:
-Good to fantastic writing
-Interesting (mostly) setting
-Intriguing mysteries!
-Nice music, beautiful art

The bad:
-Too much waiting
-Rogue-like mechanics for no reason
-Dearth of roleplaying
-Unsatisfactory resolution to quests and stories
-Lack of permanent change
-Required min-maxing for late game
-Little sense of progression

Overall, Sunless Skies is a pretty good visual novel... but an absolutely rancid game. Gameplay is serviceable and I kind of enjoy ship-to-train combat, but it gets stale fast due to the lack of (player) weaponry and tactical choice. The writing is good, but it gets repetitive, especially if you're in the business of dying, and much of it is too tonally similar. The dry wit is nice, but it really dulls any sense of horror or sympathy. I just don't actually CARE about any of the characters, beyond the most superficial level. I mean, sure, I can engage in carnal sin with various characters in the game, but I don't actually like them much.

Not a true successor to the sunless sea. Not bad by any means, but has no punch. The stories, characters and most importantly places, do not sink teeth into your brain, at least, not as deep as sunless sea. The graphics and all around art direction are superb, but seas evoked much more with far less thanks to the setting and writing.

Pick it up if you are interested, but lower your expectations.

baller

Great title.

Watch that terror bar.

What it does nothing else does, what it doesn't do it doesn't need to do. It's a lovely story wrapped in a great game.

Only complaints - travelling can be a bit slow in known areas, a little boring. Nice to have an ellipsis but it can drag a little... don't blame anyone for cheating in this regard. You won't notice this for 20 hours or so, then it becomes an issue.

But the meet of the game is the neat encounters of singularly well written dialogue. Probably some of the best in-game writing you'll ever see.

Having beaten the game a few times, i say SSK is a great entry to fallen london's universe(even if skies is actually a future alternative universe)
Hits lots of marks, but all failbetter games suffer in one area, combat, everything is good but the combat, where seas had torpedos that stunlocked enemies to death, here you have a gun that oneshots things or kills it quickly
Regardless to say, i love this game, but i know it isn't for anyone

Game itself is decent, when you are not dealing with some of the still remaining bugs, even after all this time and reports.

However sadly the studio behind it are unscrupulous, and have driven smear campaigns against the weather factory developer. Cant in good conscience play this game as a result.

Sadly way out of refund time when i discovered it, but its uninstalled and wont be going back on my drive again.

Smear campaign the studio

Not for everyone. Like the predecessor, these games have the exact opposite of universal appeal - at their worst, it wouldn't be exaggeration to say they waste your time. If you're looking for something with a laser beam focus, that entertains at every moment, this is most definitely not it.

That said, SS has its own, niche thrills. It can be relaxing as what you do sometimes is basically mindless but also nerveracking when you're threading unfamiliar ground. It's a strange mix of genres that often feel at odds with each other yet it somehow feels authentic to the type of job it’s trying to abstract.

The writing is very colorful – it definitely has style to it. The text is the meat of the game but, unlike a point-and-click game, it’s like you have to play an RPG to get the items you need to solve the puzzles. Despite how ungainly it might be, it’s hard to imagine not spending many hours on it if you enjoy the core gameplay loop.

I ran out of money to buy supplies so I could find more money to buy more supplies
I ate my crew
never did find anymore money after that
this was after reducing the game difficulty to "babbys first scavenger hunt"
I had such high hopes, even for a spectacular death, instead we just wasted away because I couldnt see one of the docks near the start of the game, since I can't buy maps and scouting just eats more of my food I need to not starve
oh I could mine for money, if I didnt need to buy supplies to eat so I could afford the mining equipment
suddenly "got lost in the winds" 5 inches from new winchester port, random chance roll not to lose all my fuel diverting from oblivion
so close to goodness, maybe if this game came out 15 or 20 years ago and I was willing to spend that time memorizing the map from a guide or a gamefaq or something, sure

I can't really recommend this game. I played quite a bit of it, yet I remember so little. It pales in comparison to Sunless Sea. Sure, the art is pretty, the music is lovely, the combat is engaging (at least more engaging than it's predecessor's), but the lore, the story and the stories are not good. A few of them are quite enticing, specially the smaller character arcs. Most of them are very, very forgettable. It has a lot of fanservice and callbacks to Sunless Sea and Fallen London, yet not much in the way of original ideas. I truly wanted to love this game, and it sure wanted to be loved: you get to meet and talk to Queen Victoria , you can get a Master of the Bazaar as a crewmate, there's even a new Clockwork Sun , yet it all falls flat and veers straight into mediocrity. Most of the things you see or do have little consequence to the rich world this game tried to represent, and in certain ports *cough* Brabazon Workworld *cough* it became infuriating. What I lamented the most was the Ambitions, the main storylines: the more "normal" ones, Wealth and Fame, were just okay, but the Truth ambition was plain disappointing. They are cleared by Sunless Sea's ambitions by a mile, and are completely shamed by Fallen London's ambition storylines, which I enjoyed so much. I can recite entire parts of Light Fingers, or Seeking Mr. Eatens Name. I can't do the same with this game.

Sunless Skies is an underbaked game and it actually drove me away from Failbetter Games altogether. If you know what a Seeker is, then you know it's someone who is willing to do a lot in order to engage with a game if it's fascinating. Sunless Skies never did it for me, and it felt like the magic was completely gone across the board. Thorough disappointment.

A must buy!

Train game! Woo woo!!!

This game shows a lot of promise, and I was excited by the victorian gothic horror setting, however frustating points are a deal breaker:
- Exploration is discouraged by the game mechanics: While understanding the "survival" aspect the devs want to add to their game, supply costs are really high, especially for the beginning of the game, and the using your owl to discover nearby areas eats a significant share or your precious supply. It is a game about storytelling and exploration, yet the gameplay mechanics discourage you to do so. A bit of balancing would solve that: make a supply cost 25-30 instead of 40, and put the scout on cooldown system.
- UI is very annoying
- Too much verbosity creates confusing without enhancing game's atmosphere: while the dev really want to deploy their full arsenal regarding grammatical style and victorian vocabulary, it confuses the player, especially regarding names. You don't know if a mentioned name is a district, or a town, or a character sometimes.
- Lack of information: In the first town, regarding the equipment shop (to buy munitions, weapons etc), whether you want to buy or sell, the item list is extremely cryptic. It seems you don't own any of the items listed in the buy or sell, so it's confusing to understand what to do with those.
Also, it seems you can buy new equipment/crew member for your ship, but you don't know what you already have? So you can't decide if it's worth the investment.
You don't see your coin amount at all time, so it's annoying when you need to make a text based decision that will potentially affect your treasury.
When trading with small ports, you don't know exactly how much you will trade, you just have a "trade supplies for item x" text.

In conclusion I was really interested initially, as I read high praises and the settings fit my area of interest, but the gameplay, lack of information, balancing go against the intentions of the game, according to me.

The problem with Sunless Skies is that the cosmic horror and purple prose feels ungrounded, and thus not effective. Sunless Seas, while introducing an alien setting, had many grounding elements that the player understands without explanation.
The ship, harbors and darkness mechanics are all mundane concepts. It escalates from the known, to the unknown, to the unknowable. Things that players make assumptions about — that humans can walk in the sunlight— are suddenly challenged and fantastical elements of the world are revealed — the people of the underzee are so adjusted to darkness that sunlight is painful and addictive. Discovering the Dawn Machine was genuinely terrifying and shocking.
Sunless Skies feels unreal from the very beginning. A train through space is already strange and fantastical, and they try to escalate with every new spectacle. The purple prose becomes so detached from reality that it just becomes words, a pretty but meaningless poem.
And that's really sad, because there are some genuinely cool and interesting concepts. The mining of time, the demon bees, everything at the Magdalene's etc. It improves upon Sunless Sea in mechanics, with not one but three different maps and tons of new features. The battle mechanic is a lot more fun than Sunless Sea. But what holds these games together is the writing, and the writing falls short.
Still, worth a play-through.

If you like narrative-heavy games, steampunk, and Lovecraftian horror, this is the game series for you. Expect essentially slow, chill gameplay that gives you plenty of time to unwind between occasional bursts of action. There's trading, fighting, detectiving, and... well, and much, much weirder stuff.

Highly recommended.

Adventure awaits on every shore!
We set sail and explore

Buggy, mind-numbingly grindy, but still worth it for an exquisitely written, uniquely melancholic and bitter-sweet kind of eldritch horror. My personal GOAT out of all FB or Weather Factory things.

Bug riddled and unplayable. Not sure how since its 5 years old now. Text prompts crash the game repeatedly just ten minutes into the game. Cannot get out of the first docking town due to the crashing. No error code to help diagnose the issue either. Too bad, seemed like a cool concept for a game.

Yes