If the recent sea shanty craze has inspired you to experience something terrible at sea, you should check out the latest game being given away free on the Epic Games Store. Failbetter's Sunless Sea is a roguelikelike exploration RPG upon a deeply cursed underground sea, set in the same supernatural world as their browser game Fallen London. Recruit a crew, take on quests, explore, encounter wonders, uncover mysteries, experience horrors, lose your mind, eat your crew, and die.
]]>Alexis Kennedy, co-founder of Failbetter and writer and designer on Fallen London, Sunless Sea and Cultist Simulator, has been accused of being an abuser and "well-known predator" by several prominent women in the games industry, including an allegation from a former colleague at Failbetter. The allegations came as part of a recent wave of similar stories shared on Twitter, among them allegations made against composer Jeremy Soule and developer Alec Holowka. Kennedy has denied the allegations on Twitter and via a statement given to RPS, while Failbetter say they "believe and stand with everyone who has come forward."
]]>Bizarre, beautiful and brilliant sky-train simulator Sunless Skies is a stonking game, and a notable improvement over its nautical (but nice) predecessor, but nothing is perfect. Today, Failbetter rolled out the first major update for the game, overhauling Albion, home of space-London and the second hub area of the game. The Wayfarer update also gives officers more options for work outside of your train, adds dangerous new consequences for taking damage in battle and toughens up the survival aspects of the game. The sky is slightly less vast, but more terrifying now.
]]>Sunless Skies, the cosmic horror, spacefaring roguelite, splits my brain like a log beneath an axe.
On the one hand, a certain ennui - I have seen all this before, I have made these long, fraught voyages before, many times, in its fine predecessor Sunless Sea.
On the other, late at night my thoughts drift, unbidden, back to its dark places, its lonely ports and clockwork suns and frozen voids. Places that left impressions, places that told me unsettling stories and implied many more stories still.
I don't want to do it all over again. I don't want anything except to do it all again.
]]>2018 has been strange as hell, I think we can all agree on this. And yet, some bits of news can be even more baffling than others, the definitive proof we are living in the weirdest timeline. Our world may be literally burning, everything is a mess, and The Brexit still looms upon us. But thanks to popular hits like Del Toro’s Shape Of Water and the adorable anime The Ancient Magus’ Bride, lusting over a fictional monster on main is now deemed socially acceptable.
On Twitter, at least.
]]>Here's something to make your weekend just that little bit stranger, so long as you own Failbetter's deliciously compelling Sunless Sea. Tales Of The Grave-Garden is a fan-made expansion, adding a little more of everything to the game. More ships to sail, more weapons with which to make other ships stop sailing, and a goodly chunk of new stories to follow. They're adeptly written and all fit nicely within the overarching Fallen London setting. The mod is the work of one 'Enneagon', and was released earlier this week.
]]>Failbetter Games have launched a shiny redesign of Fallen London, the browser-based alt-history Victoriana horror RPG which spawned Sunless Sea then Sunless Skies. Failbetter last updated the site's look in 2009, when I'm not sure computers even had came in colour? Now it looks fancier and it works better on different screen sizes too, so I suppose you can fill your pocket telephone with horrors and oddities.
]]>Maybe my perception of time is getting a bit wonky in my old age, but didn't we just finish Spring Sale season a week or two ago? No matter - cheap games are always in style. GOG's summer sale opens with a giveaway of Goldhawk Interactive's solid X-Com tribute Xenonauts. GOG also asked us to pick a few favourites from the sale, so check out our list on GOG.
]]>Sit down at the boiling pot, stranger. Let me tell you a tale. A sordid tale, full of fascinating lands and captivating characters. A story of wonder and flame, strangeness and warmth. Would you like to hear it? Great. Just play this rubbish cover shooter for a half hour. I’ll start the introduction when you hit the first checkpoint.
Welcome to the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. This week we’re discussing some great stories that come packaged with terrible games.
]]>Following a difficult year, Sunless Sea and Fallen London devs Failbetter have battened down the hatches and scaled back some of their plans, including laying off several members of staff and delaying Sunless Skies. Part of the problem is early access sales of the encounter-unspeakable-cosmic-horrors-then-eat-your-crew space survive-o-exploration RPG sequel have been lower than expected. The small English studio assure that they will finish Sunless Skies but they want to be sure they'll be safe to fund another game beyond that, so they've made a few cautious cuts.
]]>This week’s Premature Evaluation sees Fraser hurtling through the cosmos inside a space-faring locomotive in Failbetter Games’ eccentric early access space sandbox, Sunless Skies.
Narrative-driven games aren’t normally a comfortable fit with piecemeal early access development - it’s harder to offer a compelling vertical slice of a story that’s meant to be viewed as a whole. This isn’t Failbetter Games’ first rodeo, however; the studio has already had one successful early access game in Sunless Sea. Like its predecessor, Sunless Skies has another advantage: it’s a game about making and experiencing your own story through evocative vignettes and quests, rather than following a prescribed narrative.
]]>After exploring a cheerygrim subterranean Victorian city in Fallen London, the seas around it in Sunless Sea, then beneath those seas in the Zubmariner expansion, Failbetter Games have blasted off to the dark and dreadful cosmos above with Sunless Skies. Continuing in the same explore-o-trade-a-cannibalise RPG vein as Sunless Sea, Skies today rocketed into early access. The full release should follow in mid-2018 but if you'd like to develop space madness sooner and maybe help shape the game, you can now buy into early access.
]]>Sunless Skies [official site], the starfaring follow-up to lose-your-mind-and-eat-your-crew-adrift-on-an-underground-sea trade-o-RPG Sunless Sea, will hit early access on August 30th. That's the word today from developer Failbetter Games, who say that early access helped them shape Sunless Sea and they're hopeful it'll work out well for those dark skies too.
]]>Sunless Seas sequel Sunless Skies [official site] has a rosy glow to it as it nears the finish line of its Kickstarter. Successfully bringing in £300k in pledges - 3x what devs Failbetter originally asked for - will do that, eh?
In other words, the spaceshippy alt-Victoriana exploration, storytelling and sudden death game is, barring developmental disaster, looking like a sure thing.
]]>All Sunless Sea [official site] players get access to the formerly Kickstarter-exclusive Pirate Poet and Cladery Heir content thanks to an update to the game today. Failbetter consulted with Kickstarter backers to see if they backed the move and the consensus was apparently "the more, the merrier", or words to that effect.
I assume the timing is very much related to Sunless Skies (the Sunless Sea sequel*) starting its own Kickstarter campaign on 1 Feb so the more people are eyeballing Failbetter's games, the better its chances of success.
]]>As we continue to turn the one known human-friendly planet against us, the rich and hopeful look to space. Mate, we're purpose-built for Earth yet couldn't make this work; do you expect we'll fare better with what - and who - awaits us up there? Sunless Skies [official site, Failbetter's follow-up the the oceanic horror of Sunless Sea, will let us explore that possibility. Announcing that their Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign will launch on February 1st, Failbetter have shared a few flavourful snippets of their cosmic horror. Would you believe they've managed to make black holes even worse?
]]>Failbetter have been looking at Sunless Sea in order to inform what they do in Sunless Skies [official site], their Sunless Sea sequel set in a kind of Victorian/Fallen London version of space where the stars are being murdered. It looks like one of the lessons is about making the return journey part of exploration a bit shorter/less punishing. Obviously Sunless Skies is still in early development but the blog made for interesting reading from a design problem/solution point of view and I've been thinking about what I'd change myself for a while as a result.
]]>I've just jettisoned a wounded zailor while underwater. It was to free up a last gasp of oxygen for the rest of my crew as I frantically try to ascend from the depths of the Zee in Sunless Sea's [official site] Zubmariner update. As the screen fades to black (to resurface, not to die horribly) I wonder whether to imagine the departed comrade as being the same zailor I pulled from a wreckage on the zeebed moments ago and thus add a rather tragic tale of fleeting hope and cutthroat practicality to my expedition.
My other option is to imagine that the wreck survivor is safe aboard while some loyal minion with a few cuts and bruises has been consigned to the abyss like in that episode of Ru Paul's Drag Race where Trixie Mattel gets to rejoin the competition after being eliminated once already and Jaidynn Diore Fierce must sashay away despite having survived far longer in the process.
]]>Sunless Sea [official site] will adventure under the Unterzee when the Zubmariner expansion launches in a few hours - we'll tell you later today about our time with it - but developers Failbetter haven't forgotten about the surface. New quests for the supernatural naval roguelikelike's base game are arriving in a free update alongside Zubmariner, perhaps teasing what's under the waves but not requiring you to buy the add-on. Here, come read about the new quests.
]]>'Sunless Skies' sounds a bit too 'A Day Trip To Reading' to my ears. I guess 2unless 2ea, Sunless Sea 2: None More Sunless and 2 Sea 2 Sunless were deemed insufficiently lyrical. The name, of course, matters nought: what does matter is that charmingly bleak, ocean-bound, narrative rougelikelikelike12 Sunless Sea [official site] is going full sail to sequel-land with Sunless Skies next year. And then taking off into space.
]]>Here's a twofer: 1) A new update for awfully nice and nicely awful adventure Sunless Sea [official site] has added text and UI scaling to finally improve how the game renders its many words; 2) Developers Failbetter will announce their next game on Saturday. The UI improvement means no more squinting, and the announcement will mean... oh dang, a new Failbetter game!
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Most roguelikes or lites or whatever you prefer to call this newer generation of permadeath roleplaying games, I play to win. Or, at least, to try to win: with the intention of victory, even if the actuality of it is unlikely. In Sunless Sea, I always play as if doomed.
]]>Sunless Sea's [official site] first expansion, Zubmariner will be released on 11 October bringing with it new ports and cities to explore and tales to be told. Or as developers, Failbetter, put it: "agonising choices presented in beautiful prose." But it wasn't the beautiful prose which caught my eye in recent dev blog entries, it was the undersea (or rather, Unterzee) flora and corals. That's why I've been asking Failbetter CEO and art director, Paul Arendt to tell me a little more about how the art works in the game.
For the images in question, just use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard or click the arrows just next to the pictures!
]]>Stellaris [official site], Paradox's sci-fi fusion of 4x design and grand strategy ideals, is a game that generates stories. As your species moves through the galaxy, encountering all manner of alien life, you'll create tiny tales and epic sagas. There are also stories already written, however, in the form of quest chains, and over the weekend we learned that one of the minds behind Fallen London and Sunless Sea will be adding to those space-stories. Alexis Kennedy, co-founder and formerly creative director of Failbetter Games, is now crafting word-shapes for Stellaris.
]]>If I've one regret with regards to games I've let slip through my fingers over the years, it's Failbetter Games' Fallen London. I'm told its mysterious world, its lovingly illustrated interface, and its quirky character ensemble is rather wonderful; yet this is exactly how I feel about last year's follow up Sunless Sea [official site]. Not only did the latter bag a place on our list of best RPGs, we singled it out for bestest best words of 2014 - testament to Failbetter's storytelling prowess.
Which is why it's a surprise to learn today that their creative director Alexis Kennedy is parting ways with the studio he co-founded seven years ago.
]]>As much as PC gaming hardware has changed and improved over the years, there's always been one constant: the limitations of disk space. Granted, it's far cheaper and easier (no more absurdly tiny Master/Slave toggles) than it used to be to grab a new hard drive, but the rise of ever-faster but more expensive SSDs set things back a bit in that regard. With new mainstream games regularly asking for as much as 30 Gigabytes I remain, as I always have, in a battle for space. Which means I'm constantly uninstalling half-finished stuff in order to make space for the next big thing. Sometimes it's heartbreaking. But there's a line. There are a few games I can never uninstall, because it would hurt too much. Granted, they change a little over the years - new ones come in, old ones finally, finally lose their lustre (or I give up entirely on the belief that I will ever go back), but here's how that list of inviolable treasures looks right now.
]]>If you were at Rezzed last week, you had two opportunities to see Failbetter folks live on stage, talking about narrative games on a panel hosted by our own John Walker, and presenting a talk on the Zubmariner expansion to the wonderful Sunless Sea [official site]. You can watch the latter presentation below and it contains loads of new details about venturing into the depths of Fallen London's perilous waters. Key points: the Constant Companion is the most horrible of all the horrible things, and submarines are fragile things.
]]>While Brendan skipped around gaily like a cyberkid in a cybercandy shop, hacking that candy to receive godlike powers, John was less enamoured with Else Heart.Break(). If you were torn between those two opinions and passed over the sandbox RPG when it came out last year, hey, it's in the latest Humble Bundle. It's a mega-bargain, also offering Sunless Sea, Trine 3, Door Kickers, and more for as little as £6.
]]>Failbetter Games have found fame and fortune with Fallen London and Sunless Sea, and now they've started helping other folks in the narrative games lark. For fun and profit! They've already helped fund Harry Tuffs's A House of Many Doors, but today formally announced Fundbetter. It's a funding initiative for folks who want to make small narrative games and interactive fiction, fronting them cash in return for a cut of profits. You know, it's funding. Money stuff. Like Dragon's Den but without the gits.
]]>You doing anything nice this weekend? How about: exploring an underground ocean, discovering wonderful sights, meeting strange and terrible things, losing your mind, eating your own shipmates, and meeting a watery death? Sounds lovely, no? Quite! If you've not played Sunless Sea [official site] yet, perhaps not hearing our incessant murmuring about how splendid Failbetter's roguelikelike is, then now's your chance. The full game is free to play from now until Sunday, see (sea), and on sale (sail) too.
For those who already know the cruel seas well, Failbetter have also recently shared a short video peeking at its upcoming Zubmariner expansion.
]]>HO HO HO. Christmas is practically upon us, and games eveywhere... well, mostly online... are joining the party. Whether they call it Winter Veil or Frostfell, it's a chance to deck the hubs with bonus XP and let everyone from elves to orcs don Santa hats and hand out treats to the good little wizards and barbarians. Here's a few of the events going on around the worlds over the next week or so. Is there something cool happening in one of your games that you think folks would find fun? Wrap it up nicely in a comment and leave it under the tree. By which I mean the article. Sorry, that metaphor seemed to be going in a better direction at the start of the sentence.
]]>Splendid searfaring fantasy-horror roguelikelike Sunless Sea [official site] is already set down in the dark, sailing oceans long ago swallowed by the earth. If that's not terrifying enough, imagine what lies beneath those waves. I bring good/bad news!
Developers Failbetter Games are planning to let you get up-close and personal with what lies under the Unterzee in the game's first DLC, named Zubmariner. As you might guess, it involves submarines. Details follow.
]]>Never mind the procedurally-generated poetry, Sunless Sea-inspired combat, and exploration-based RPG-isms that A House Of Many Doors [official site] thrusts into your computer telly screen - it's a game that lets you scoot about in a train with mechanical legs! A train. With legs. If the DeLorean and KITT had an automotive offspring it still wouldn't be as cool as this. Luckily, A House Of Many Doors has reached its Kickstarter goal 300 per cent to the good, thus this walking train abberation is a thing that will actually happen. Rejoice!
]]>I've been waiting for A House of Many Doors [official site] to arrive on Kickstarter for a while now. Developeres Pixel Trickery are asking for £4,000, which will be added to savings and £12,000 of funding from Sunless Sea makers Failbetter Games, it's an exploration-based RPG set in a bizarre world in which you play a poet/journalist. Listen.
"In A House of Many Doors you are an explorer, poet and spy, traversing and mapping the House – a vast parasite dimension that steals from other worlds. You explore the House in a clanking train with mechanical legs. You will discover bizarre civilizations, assemble a dysfunctional crew and level up your poetry, while clinging to life and sanity."
The list of influences includes Planescape: Torment and Calvino's Invisible Cities. I want it.
]]>What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we'll be offering our picks - based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 3 of the sale.
]]>Hey! It's a new and final episode of COGWATCH, a weekly video series in which Quintin Smith examines one mechanic in one game. This week, the BOSS COG that is miserabilist, boat-bound roguelike Sunless Sea [official site].
]]>Hand of Fate [official site] is a CCG/roguelite in which a masked, magical figure challenges you to play an increasingly deadly card game against him, switching to high-speed, stabby third-person combat whenever you get into a fight. It's out now.
The reason I so often want to play boardgames despite having a hard drive full of more videogames than I could ever hope to complete isn’t simply because occasional contact with other human beings is unfortunately necessary in order to remember how to talk. It’s because having an opponent who voices their frustration and exhilaration as the game goes for or against them makes it seem so much more than it is. It becomes a true contest, its cards and dice these physical extensions of your will to defeat another lifeform. Videogames, usually, offer us the canned, meaningless soundbytes of a hundred thousand slain foes, but they don’t often offer us a single, overarching opponent who lets slip irritation or indulges in crowing. They’ll often offer us someone we want to defeat because they’re shown to do terrible things or have a skull for a face, but they very rarely offer us someone we want to defeat purely because they are our rival.
]]>I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I've come to the conclusion that Early Access (and the same concept under various different names) has only improved my gaming life.
]]>Sunless Sea [official site] is a sort of naval roleplaying game, set in dark fantasy world where London has been whisked away to an underground ocean peopled by assorted monstrosities and governed by strange and delicate politics. The master of your own fragile ship, you must make a living, battle horrors and seek a destiny of sorts. It's been in Early Access since last year, but graduates to a full, finished release today.
I sigh every time Low Barnet appears on the horizon. Low Barnet! A clump of rocks just barely below water, nowhere to dock, nothing to do, but seeing it is like seeing a friend standing on the dock after years at sea. The sigh is part relief, part frustration. If I am at Low Barnet, I am almost home: relief. But if I am at Low Barnet it means this trip is at an end now. I have returned with so little, and must spend what few coins I have on replenishing fuel and food in order to do all this again: frustration.
That clump of rock and that name on a map means so much, because I am a weary traveller who has come to know these waterways intimately, and the sad, sinister settlements scattered about them are both waypoints and friends.
]]>After a year drifting through the sinister oceans of Early Access, Failbetter's wonderful Sunless Sea [official site] is released this Friday. Full steam ahead, Mr. Boatswain, full steam ahead. It's a game of steampunk and Lovecraft, sailing and survival, roleplaying and pint-sized naval combat, wonderful words and terrifying faces. It was one of 2014's best games as far as Adam and I were concerned, and all being well we'll be saying the same thing by the end of this year. I looked in on it a couple of weeks ago and all seemed well on course. We shall see, though: a question mark still hangs over the long game. While we all wring hands nervously, let's enjoy the splendid typography and apocalyptic drum soundtrack of its launch trailer.
]]>Starting an irregular series in which I revisit Early Access games a few months on from when I first tried them. Have they come along much? Does a finished game seem a realistic prospect?
Bit of a silly one to start this series with, given Sunless Sea hits 1.0 - and thus release status on February 6th, with a major update due around that time, but I've been yearning to revisit Sunless Sea's mesmerisingly-written and impeccably menacing Fallen London for some time, so let's do this anyway.
]]>In this topsy-turvy world, who knows what constitutes a release date anymore? Me probably, and I think that finishing with your early access period and launching as a finished game ought to be called something else. February 6th isn't Sunless Sea's release date, then. February 6th is its Sweet 1.0, or its Rites of Ascension, or its Day That Everyone Starts Complaining That It's Not Perfect Day.
]]>I've been ignoring all the talk of how good Sunless Sea is in favour of waiting until it's finished, but it's now so close that it's becoming harder to resist. It'll leave early access in February and a new update brings it "tantalizingly close to the finished article," according to the devs.
Stop tantalising me, devs. It's mean.
]]>Failbetter have been writing the bestest best words in gaming for a while now and in Sunless Sea they have created a worthy vessel to carry those words to new audiences. There is horror, humour and haunting in the cavernous depths, and through it all, your ship cuts through the waters seeking new mysteries and fresh hells.
Adam: Worse things happen on the Sunless Sea.
]]>Normally, if anything that I enjoyed were to add realtime combat, I'd plan a protest immediately. Whether I'm playing a game or chewing a pint of Grandfather's Stout at the Dog & Whistle, the last thing I want is to find myself involved in a fight that doesn't pause while I'm planning my next move. If it's fisticuffs in the Whistle's snug, I expect Tommy Champion to take a breather while I figure out whether to leg it or lob a tankard at his noggin. If it's a naval shoot-out in a murky undersea realm...well, in the case of Sunless Sea I'm very glad that the move to realtime combat has been made. The pace and repetition of combat was just about the only thing that bothered me in Failbetter's splendid creation.
]]>Before discussing information about the upcoming combat redesign in the splendid Sunless Sea, I'll share some information that you may already know. Failbetter's collaboration with Bioware is not related to the recently announced Shadow Realms, which means there's still something to look forward to even though Gamescom has chugged its last energy drink and collapsed for another year. We should all concentrate our excitement on Sunless Sea for now because it's shifting and swelling like a lunatic tide. Details in the briny deeps below.
]]>We’re deep down now, deep down where dreams and figments tumble and churn together like silt, deep down in sleep, where pain and sorrow fall drop by drop into the Sunless Sea, and wisdom comes in whispers of text and through the rubbery fronds of some ancient lifeform. Now in Early Access, Sunless Sea is the first ‘proper’ game from Failbetter, the clever-clogs creators of Fallen London and the Story Nexus platform. I've been navigating its strange shores for the past few days.
]]>If I had my way, everybody who reads RPS would have at least a nodding acquaintance with the writing of Failbetter Games. The showcase for the tiny English studio's talents is the free to play, browser-based RPG/adventure Fallen London, built in their own StoryNexus engine. Understandably, some people don't want to invest time and (potentially) money into a fragmented narrative, which requires players to pay or to pause between play sessions.
Good news arrives in the form of Sunless Sea, a new showcase for Failbetter's magnificent worldbuilding in the form of the most RPS-friendly game I've seen for some time. Steampunk ships undertake FTL-inspired voyages of "discovery, survival and loneliness", while crews face down vast tentacled horrors, risking life, limb and sanity. Watch the first in-game footage below and keep an eye on the log at the bottom-left.
]]>Our lengthy conversation with Alexis Kennedy and Paul Arendt of Failbetter Games continues, with mysterious, enigmatic and untold tales of Fallen London, details of the nightmarish voyages undertaken by the captains of the Sunless Sea, and adventures in the mind of a dead god. If you haven't read part one, you'll find it here. If you have, jump right in.
]]>"Have you ever been to Córdoba?" It's not the sort of question an interviewee normally asks me but this isn't a normal interview. I'd like to say that I spoke to Paul Arendt and Alexis Kennedy of Failbetter games in a corroded wine cellar by gaslight, but that would be a lie. The creators of Fallen London work in Digital Enterprise Greenwich, overlooking the Thames from on high rather than sifting through its waters in search of stories to tell. I've had a long and fulfilling relationship with Fallen London, and Sunless Sea looks like a marvellous mixture of Elite, roguelike and top notch storytelling, so I was hoping for a fulfilling conversation.
A couple of hours later, we'd talked about everything from Dark Souls to Dickens, and the world felt like a more fascinating place. These are two of the most interesting minds making games and whether you've played Fallen London or not, you would do well to consume their thoughts.
]]>Sunless Sea takes the excellent writing and world-building of Fallen London, and injects it into a 2D exploration, trading and survival game. It's Elite but with steamships instead of starships, and dwindling-dark ports instead of space stations. Throw in giant fish with moustaches, living mimic islands and deranged cannibal crew members, and the resulting concoction seems more than satisfying. I spoke to Failbetter about Fallen London, Black Crown and Sunless Sea a few weeks ago, and today, as the Kickstarter launches, I plan to feed you their words over the coming days. Visit Fallen London, toll-free, for a taste of the style and the setting of Sunless Sea, and then ponder if it is possible to pass up on a game in which the images and text below appear.
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