Sunless Sea

Sunless Sea to gra strasznie wymagająca, dla osób cierpliwych i gotowych poświęcić godziny na poznawanie mechaniki gry, jej zawiłości i wewnętrznej logiki, ale gdy już się w to nieco wgryziemy to oczaruje bez granic. Porywa minimalistyczną, ale klimatyczną muzyką, a przede wszystkim przepiękną grafiką. Z ekranu wylewa się nastrój lovecraftowskich opowieści, podsycony niepokojem, a jednocześnie pragnieniem, aby sprawdzić co jest ten kawałeczek dalej. Nie przeczę, że sama nie byłam dotąd w stanie ukończyć gry, bo tak bardzo zanurzam się we wszelkich nadarzających się interakcjach, że po pewnym czasie i tak potrzebuję odstawienia od gry, ale za każdym razem z równym zapałem powracam do odkrywania kolejnych niespodzianek i tajemnic zatopionego świata. Tak, niejednokrotnie poirytowana wychodziłam z gry, bo wielogodzinne starania potrafią posypać się przez jakieś niefortunne losowe zdarzenie, a poziom trudności potrafi skutecznie hamować chęć do ryzyka, co znacznie spowalnia postępy. Kiedy już jednak oswoiłam się ze specyfiką gry, jej kaprysami, byłam w stanie wyciągnąć z niej niesamowicie wiele. Do Sunless Sea można powracać non stop i stale poznawać krainę na nowo, ale próg wejścia z pewnością zniechęci sporą liczbę graczy.

I bought this years ago as a way of supporting the dev that made Fallen London. I did not find the game play compelling and frankly found it incredibly boring. Then I bought the expansion and the sequel. They're slightly better than Sunless skies but also very boring. The developers think they made narrative games... 95-99% of what you do in this game is "sail" the unterzee. It's boring, and it's incredibly slow. Entire games were build on the skeleton this game uses. This game is an insult to trading games, an insult to exploration games, an insult to frankly every type of game genre it has even a bit of in it's DNA, including narative games. If you liked Fallen London you might think you'd like this game. You'd be wrong. Because 99% of what this game is about is just patiently waiting for your boat to go from point A to point B. This game and it's sequel are everything wrong with open world type games today, pointless "content" that adds nothing to the game experience. This game's core gameplay loop isn't a narrative chose your own adventure book, it's not trade, it's not exploration, it's waiting as your ship slowly crawls from point A to point B. The fact this has a 3 on here is an insult to good game design. The fact that only sycophants and idiots like me bought the sequel resulted in that having an even higher rating is absurt. They say no game really deserves a 1 star review. They are wrong. This game is the literal embodiment of the phrase "time waster". The RNG map generator, the shitty combat and the freaking slow movement need to have all been removed from the game. The chose your own adventure book style narrative is the only good part of this game and it's locked behind incredibly shitty game play. If anyone from Failbetter games is reading this: you did not make a narrative game, you made a waiting game with attached narratives. The core game play loop is waiting, not reading. Congrats on failing to fail better.

Breath of fresh air.

Sunless Sea is simply the best game in existence. If you haven't played it before, download it as soon as you are done reading this and stay away from any spoilers online. Write down as much as you can about each port you visit. You will die. You will be reborn. You will become something new.

The only interesting thing in this game is the little stories but the game forces you to waste so much time going from A to B that most of the time I'd already forgot why I was going there in the first place. At some point I just stopped caring, retired my skipper and uninstalled the game. Note to the devs: I'd probably buy it if you publish all the stories as a book, but I'm not wasting a cent or a second more on the games.