Skyfarers, ready your locomotives!

Sunless Skies will be coming to Steam Early Access and GOG Games in Development the 30th of August! The feedback we received in Early Access for Sunless Sea was pivotal to its development, and we look forward to hearing your thoughts on Sunless Skies over the coming months.

Kickstarter backers, keep your eyes on whichever email you used for Kickstarter for your key. Anyone else who’d like to join at this early stage will be able to purchase the game for 10% off its full price of £18.99 / $24.99 during the first week of Games in Development.

Initially, players will be able to explore the Reach, one of the four regions of the High Wilderness, with other regions being added in throughout development:

The Reach is a verdant, sunless frontier. London pioneers—spearheaded by the avaricious Windward Company—establish far-flung colonies and plunder the riches of the region's ruins and wild gardens. But many colonists crave independence from the Empire, and the Reach is rife with conflict. Will you be one of the lucky few who strikes it rich? Or one of the masses broken amidst the green wastes?

Mechanically, players can expect a broad skeleton of gameplay features to be available. You’ll be able to explore the skies, dock at ports, interact with stories, trade, fight and die. Opening the game to players in Games in Development will provide us with crucial feedback and data to help us create a game that's delicious, delightful, and dangerous.

We are incredibly excited to send you amongst the stars and look forward to experiencing this next chapter of development with you.

Note: Please do keep in mind that like any Early Access / Games in Development game, Sunless Skies will not be in a complete state, and will go through changes ahead of its full release, based on player feedback and our development of the game. If you would like to wait until the bugs are ironed out, the gameplay is final and the stories are finished, we suggest that you wait until the official game release.

Hmm, what is it I smell in the air? Would it be excitement?

From what I’ve seen so far from Kickstarter updates, combat mechanics should be more fun than what they are in Sunless Sea.
Actually I have no problem with the combat mechanics in Sunless Sea, but I agree that this is not the "meat" of the game ;)

What bothered me about them was that they grew stale very quickly and didn't enhance the atmosphere. Hunger and fuel in particular only served to slow me down and didn't do anything interesting, while terror did but rarely got to a point where its effects became active. Polishing that part of the game would make it a lot better.

The combat itself wasn’t bad in my opinion, but became too easy once you know of its limitations. Being able to destroy even the most powerful ships with only the starting ship and gun by staying out of their fire arc does not make for very challenging fights ;) Actually I really like all of these mechanics, and I’ve had captains die to each of them.

I’ve not tried the current version of Sunless Skies yet, but from what I’ve seen so far the combat seems to be much more entertaining. Well, I don’t think it will be the main selling point of the game anyway, but it seems to me that Failbetter heard the feedback and built something more engaging this time.