I liked the bit about a persistent world between captains, where your heir has to fix the mistakes of his/her predecessor.
It’s now funded.
I’d be interested if I hadn’t found Sunless Sea, as a game that severely punishes caution, so unplayable.
Posted by an employee of the developer:
Aaaaand they’re funded! Not, I imagine, that there was ever any doubt, but looking forward to playing a new Failbetter game in the near future all the same.
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 Early Access / Games in Development.
I’ll be waiting for the regular launch impressions. I loved the writing in Sunless Sea, but the game bounced off me in a really bad way.
Same here.
Indeed , love the lore and art , but the gameplay was just boring/not fun. I gave up after 2 hours, even trying to go back a few times after months of breaks in between.
You guys missed out on some really great content. Sailing across the map was tedious even after I changed the configuration file to make my ship go faster, but for me it was worth it. There’s a dozen different places that are as fascinating as anything you’ll ever see in a game.
I hit a wall about 15-20 hours in. At that point I had explored most of the map and done most of the quests. I felt like I was ready for the endgame. But you’re expected to keep grinding, going out to trade on the far side of the map and back again. The tedium of watching my little ship crawl across the ocean was only bearable when I was exploring and didn’t know what might jump out at me.
It makes me mad because it would be so easy to correct. At that point in the game there’s no reason not to let me buy a really fast ship. And there’s no reason to make me keep running the same trade routes over and over in a game about exploration.
But I saw on their forum that the developers had no interest in listening to criticism. They would just say that they were making a game for a niche market so it didn’t matter if it had terrible flaws that would turn off 80% of people. They were blaming the players for not liking the game they made. I guess I’m just not enough of a hipster for them.
Ditto.
It was a wonderful idea with terrible game mechanics.
i had a very similar experience. i was totally picking up what this game was putting down. it was moody and tense in all the right ways before giving way to tedious and repetitive trade route farming. grinding to get to the next actual fun thing. i dropped it before seeing everything at that point, after it had used up all my stores of goodwill right around - yep - the 15 hour mark.
that said, im kind of interested jumping back in and trying this config file method to turbo boost the ship. im overdue for picking up the zubmarine dlc anyways.
Yep 45
+1… and I really wanted to like the game…
I loved the game! Except the combat. Could have done with less of that.
Early Access is out.
On Steam:
On GOG:
I loved the Sunless Sea a a lot, for a while, but I just can’t see myself going through it all again.
Looking at first impressions, many of the annoyances are the same, if not worse: turgid combat, miserable quest rewards and still the same wonky system where you lose and accumulate incomprehensible “items” (You lost 2x whispered commiserations, you gaind 6x lucid daydreams, yay?).
It seems like they are trotting out the same narrative beats again. “Eat your crew” is featured prominently again in this trailer. That seems a bit like recycling a joke used heavily in the marketing of Sunless Seas.
I guess that is a bit of a nit to pick though.
Nope. Sunless sea was an awful experience for me. What a waste. The game just loved to chop your foot off if you tried to dip a toe in the water. No, player, you have to play the way we want you to or else you die. Yeah, that was fun.
Sounds like what I expected. The developers have a lot of good ideas but won’t listen to constructive criticism, so their games are going to keep being plagued by these same problems.