Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition

Well, I've tried it. And I'm certainly going to try more. It's really early access, of course, and many elements are yet to be implemented (thus the one star I'm withholding for now), but I have to note that despite the game mechanics being very similar to Sunless Sea, the game feels very different. While the Sea is very much like a lovecraftian horror story, the Skies strongly resembles to me - pardon the probably ill-placed association - the Galactic Railways animated series. Part because of steam engines in space (I caught myself thinking that it would be really nice to be able to actually pull a train of cars later in the game, even despite the obvious steering difficulties) and part because the content that is already in the game gets the message of this being the frontier, and epicness, and the sky being no limit across really well. All in all, can't wait for the game to be completed!

I quite enjoyed Sunless Sea, playing it through twice, so was happy for more in the same vein. Many reviews of Sunless Skies find it an improvement over Sunless Sea; I don't. The characters are nowhere near as charismatic, their stories not very compelling. The information you are given is mostly useless (a location is aid to be "South-Southeast of New Winchester," for example. In Sunless Sea, you were sailing an ocean. You would sail SSE and eventually find the location. But in Sunless Skies, you are actually traversing branching, twisting tunnels. You may take a tunnel that looks like it goes in the current direction, and after all the branches and twists and turns, run out of fuel or supplies long before you find a port). Controlling your engine, especially during combat, is annoying. It'll be a long while before you can afford to upgrade your equipment, but when you get into a battle, it's often with three or four opponents. I like a challenge. I don't like having to start a new game every hour.

Get one thing straight: Sunless games are played for STORIES AND CLIMATE within them. They are more like books, less like adrenaline rush ultra fast paced modern games. And this is good, very good, if You understand what You are buying - especially since this is VERY VERY early version and understandably it lacks a LOT of things. This is fine. The features and improvements will come. The important parts: the witty humor and extraordinary writing are here. The music is here. The atmosphere is here. The Sunless games will have cult following for decades from now.

I played both Fallen London and Sunless Sea, so it was almost sure that I would buy Sunless Skies if the developers did not screw it up. Which they din't! Sunless Skies has i) same quality of stories, ii) better gameplay and iii) actually more stories than Sunless Sea. So, what is the game about? It is a top-down 2D game with breathtaking graphics, where you command as acaptain a spacefaring steam locomotive and explore the High Wilderness, visit mulitple ports and follow tons of interesting (text and interaction based) stories. You have to trade and fight to sustain yourself and your crew, but the core of the game are the stories - these are written in unbelievably creative English and these stories will keep you going on and on, with intention to discover another secret of the unusual and imaginative world of High Wilderness. The world, where the Renewed Empress murdered Sun, devils are trading souls, mushrooms explore the human ports, Royal custom officers search your cargo and rebellious Tacketies fight the loyalist Stovepipes.