Sunless Sea

Sunless Sea succedes, where many other games failed: Making me actually think and care about what i would do next instead of just putting quests and challenges in my journal. Sunless Sea is a Gamebook-adventure-Rougelike Hybrid. The main thing in this game is to read description and choose one of the presented actions for the situation, meaning: If you mind much reading in your game, this isn´t for you. You are the captain of a ship driving around in the Underzee and exploring its vast expanses. Everytime you die (and you will die), most parts of the maps will be rearranged and the map will be blacked out again for you to explore. Your ship will be attacked by the creatures of the Underzee of pirates and you need to defend yourself. There are no normal quests, but "Stories", you can choose to follow. Through these, you can learn more about the world. In the beginning, you choose a certain background and the reason you explore the Underzee. These determine your skilllevels and your goal to win the game, but the game doesn´t tell you directly how to use your skills or how you can achive your goal. For that, you need to explore. And to explore, you need fuel and supplies. And to get those, you need to find stories or trade. And for that, you need to explore. You see, exploring is the main part of this game. Your Skills, which you can upgrade in the course of the game, help you open up new places and find different ways to solve problems. The meat of the game, the textdescriptions and choices, are damn near perfect. It really feels like a terrifying, vast open adventure with the right amount of fun and seriousness to always be interesting and engaging. The combat on the other hand.... Its okay and serves its purpose, but is not the best part. To summerize: If you look for an Rougelike Horroradventure with a rich story and have no problem with much reading, this is a perfect grab.

Sunless Sea looks like an exploration and trading game. No matter what you'd think from screenshots or gameplay videos, it's not. Trading is not a focus of the game at all, and while possible, isn't really the best option for profit. Combat feels like a filler mechanic, and the exploration, while aesthetically amazing, is dulled by sheer amount of real-time it takes to sale from one place to the other. Yet it's in no way a bad game. Sunless Sea is a game of stories, of long text quests with texts so detailed and beautifully written that they would easily fit into a book. There are stories, stories, and more stories, and everything else serves as not much more than a way to immerse you into those stories. Even the menaces of the Sea, your nightmares, starvation or lack of fuel serve as a way to deliver story first, and only then as actual ways to lose. Sunless Sea mostly plays like a very story-focused RPG, with character skills having much more effect on success or fail in stories than on your performance in trading or sea battles. It's rich with lore (however it seems to assume that you are at least familiar with Fallen London, which I would actually recommend if you liked this game), and the stories are so bizzare and vivid that I can't forget them, and sometimes dream of the sunless sea. Victorian London deep underground, lit now only by gaslights. Port Carnelian, surrounded by fungal jungle full of sentient tigers. Codex, small island of mute exiles. Frostfound, a huge castle made of ice. Far Khanate, lit by electric lights, founded by descendants of Mongol Empire. Chelonate, built inside of a shell of monstrous turtle the size of a city. Irem, pillared city where time has no meaning and all that was, is or will be is the same. Each of those names recall a memory brighter than any place I ever saw in any game, film or real life. The art of the locations is actually pretty amazing too. And the music is a real masterpiece. But you really won't find much of trading-survival-roguelike experience that you might've been promised by some. Yet perhaps, you'll find so much more.

I would call this title a relatively slow-paced narrative-driven exploration game with roguelike elements. It's definitely not for everyone. It's like fishing - some consider it mind-numbingly boring and frustrating, but for others it's a relaxing meditative experience. Mind you, the analogy is not 100% true, there's a certain type of tension to be had, if you allow it: a constant undertone of menace with a slight spike here and there, rather than a ceaseless rollercoaster of adrenaline you get in other games. It all depends on your mindset and playstyle, however. It is possible to ruin the game for yourself easily with the wrong approach. Death is very easy to avoid if you know what you're doing or mindlessly grind stuff but the key to have fun is in ignorance and risk-taking. Really, try to go out further with your underpowered starting ship. What this game rewards is challenging yourself and willingness to put the pieces together yourself. Go in blind, don't read guides. If you like figuring stuff out yourself and you can put up with some frustration, you'll be delighted (the only thing the game lacks, in my opinion, is some form of in-game note-taking, 'cause you're gonna have a hard time keeping track of anything if you don't take notes.) Last but not least, you've probably heard that the game is lovecraftian-themed right? In my opinion, it is only partially true. The game's world is unique. And bizarre. The places you visit sometimes feel like they came straight out of a Victorian version of David Lynch's Twin Peaks. I have to say, this game sucked me in. And it all comes down to this: I haven't played anything like that before. It has originality, uniqueness, distinct atmosphere, in how it plays and in how it reads and in how it sounds (great soundtrack) and looks. And that's exactly why I #loveindies . No AAA studio can grant you that kind of experience. There are many 'solid' games that leave me cold, because I've been there before. Not this one.

Tasty visuals, even more tasty writing, reasonable (if a bit grindy) gameplay. Very much worth it's low price.

The focus of this game are the text adventures. Essentially, there is a simple (although deeply atmospheric) sailing and trading game which serves as the framework for wonderful stories and characters. These play out in classic text adventure fashion. The general theme is Victorian steampunk with a good dash of Lovecraft. The game is derived from a text based web-browser game called Fallen London (also fantastic). The story bits are absolutely fantastic. The sea faring gameplay is nice but not the main focus. While simple, the sound design is superb and sailing around in the darkness with soft sounds and beautiful, atmospheric music is a great experience, especially late at night.