Sunless Sea is among the most difficult and challenging games I've ever played. Not only is it difficult to explore the Unterzee and learn it's secrets, it's hard enough as it is to merely survive and get by with your meager funds. In addition, the story developed as you play is both captivating and intriguing, with an overall sense of despair, cruelty and terror. If you enjoy games of unforgiving and relentless challenge and or deep, mysterious storyline, Sunless Sea is perfect for you. 10/10 it's only going to get better as the updates are released.

This is a fantstic game. It is the right mix of story and challenging gameplay with a Dwarf Fortress style learn form your mistakes mantra. The legacy options when you die make you want to start again right away and forge ahead. I have played the browser game for a number of years and love the world of Fallen London that Fail Better has created. I am so happy I get to explore Fallen London in a much more immersive enviroment that retains the charm and asthetics of the original browser game. This is a must have for people interested in 2d exploration games with a strong story and focus on world building.

this game is beautifully written, this game is an epic story that changes with every replay, find your way through the unterzee and never forget how much an echo is worth when you are low on fuel or food. purchase if you like text adventures with some action at the helm of a steam ship

This game, when finished might be amazing. As it stands right now too much of the player experiences sucess is based soley on gettign lucky. Want to buy a new ship? Not getting there with anything less than 100 hours of grinding multiple characters or by getting lucky with multiple rare judgement egg drops. The commerce section of the game is just not up to par with the rest of the game. Once Failbetter fixes that then you'll be able to enjoy the great story, the cool atmosphere, and the interesting idea behind the game without having to grind a economy that you can make almost nothing from due to the fact you constantly are burning fuel and supplies that cost more than you are going to make running any kind of goods anywhere.

This is not a good game.

...Or at least, not yet.

I bought Sunless Sea because it reminded me of a very good comic called Leviathen and an RPG called Unhallowed Metropolis, which has some similar themes of unknowable horror in that sort of Victorian/Edwardian period.
The setting is very impressive, it is a fantastically rich world of Victorian London - spun through a dark mirror and dumped on the shores of a bleak and desolate ocean, where madness is your only companion. Which personally, sounds wicked!
I can definately see the sources it cites, the dark humour of Don't Starve, elements of the Cthulhu Mythos and it's atmosphere. All good stuff.
I've not played it, but I can see why the broswer game this is based off of, Fallen London, is such a big hit.

However. The game itself, which as I understand the progress updates is nearing completion, just isn't *fun* presently. You could perhaps argue that is the point of such a dark world, but let me point out a few things I take issue with...

1) Money making. Maybe it's the present patch, but it seems you can't trade anything with anyone. The only port I've found (Venderbight) that accepts goods in it's "shop" (all the others I have found just sell supplies and fuel for your ship and are not interested in trade goods) offer for the two goods you can sell either a paltry profit of two bucks, or 'Echos' or a loss of about 7 Echoes? At the moment, trade just doesn't seem worth it at all. Like, at all.
Even if you were to take a load of goods to Venderbight, you are coming back to London empty as there are no trade goods to buy. What the sense make?!

So the only other way of making money is doing survey missions (or hovering around the starting area capturing pirate ships for prize money), which is fine but often you'll find your profit margain getting wiped out by having to replace your fuel and crew used in the journey, as well as 'carousing' back at port.

In essence, it seems almost impossible to get any amount of money. Some two hours in and I'm still struggling to get more than a few hundred Echoes, with dreams of buying upgrades or a new boat a very, very long way off.
I appreciate it defeats the challenge if they just give you a pot of gold easily, but at the moment it's far too difficult and the grind for cash is painfully slow and not enjoyable - given the limited amount of ways you can make money.

2) Terror. What an excellent idea, as you sail the black ocean, darkness all around you, only the chug of the engine and the weak bloom of your headlamp lighting the way - the miasma of fear and paranoia starts to grip your crews minds... Bells in the distance.. Giant, squid eyes watching you from beneath the waves...
Again, all good stuff. The more terror you accure, the stranger things occur and eventually you go mad. However, given that you start at 0 and within the space of one trip (within the starting area where the terror affect is less) go up to about 50+ out of a 100! That's a big steep isn't it?! I thought these were hardened sea hands, not yellow bellied land-lubbers?!

The best way of avoiding a terror increase is planning your route so you sail through area light by bouys or remain very close to shore. Makes sense. But sometimes you have to find yourself sailing for about ten seconds in a dark area or drift a smidgen away from shore and your terror ROCKETS, I mean, it just flies up at a rate of knots!
Calm down lads, the shore is still on screen but.. - oh? Apparently that's not close enough. Even when a light ship or a bouy or land is clearly but a stone's throw from your ship your sailors still flip the f*ck out unless you are about a gnats testicle away before they calm down.
Having your own ships lights on doesn't seem to affect this very much, your terror goes up super fast regardless.

And the only ways to reduce terror are FANTASICALLY expensive. The 'best' way to reduce terror to a managble level is to return to London, where your terror is reset to 50 automatically (but you start to get nightmares), but to reduce it further you have to 'carouse' either in London or elsewhere. This costs between 40-20 echoes depending on where you are and reduces your terror from 1-5 points. Is that all?? That hardly seems cost effective given within a matter of SECONDS after leaving port you can accure those points back up again.

At the moment, you gain Terror far, far too quickly and it is much too difficult and expensive to reduce it.

3) Combat. Oh man, can you imagne! Sailing your steamer straight towards a giant Angler Crab or Lifeberg, screaming blood and thunder to your terrified crew as they struggle to bring their harpoons and deckguns to bear, shining your ships lamp straight into the beasts unblinking eye!!!!
Exciting stuff, except none of that happens here.

Combat for me so far, consists of trying to run away from an enemy I have no chance of beating (anything outside of the starting area, I am not kidding) as I have nowhere near enough money to buy better ships or equipment, fleeing into the nearest port, then having to leave port and being killed instantly by the monster who is still waiting for me. Game over.

The combat system consists of you or your opponent sailing into the other, where upon you are offerend the choice of fight or flight (or human sacrifice, neat!) and then combat consists of a picture of you, a picture of the enemy and an 'illumination' bar for each. You want to raise their bar as much as possible, whilst keeping your own bar low. Once it's high enough, you press the 'shoot' action and then hopefully they die.
But normally they don't and kill you instantly. The amount of enemies that can kill you in one hit is daft.
There's no dodging, no position, no tactics, no *skill*. Just press the 'flare' button twice, press the 'evade' button a few times, then press the 'salvo' button. And then repeat as necessary. Again, it's not... Fun.
There is an option to 'study' your foe in the midst of combat, but this has to be done several times and leaves you open to being annihilated.
Against the easier enemies, combat is a chore. Crabs, bats (who seem to swarm near Venderbight), starting pirates can all be mostly be killed in three actions which equates to 30-40 seconds of your life you'll never see again. It's not engaging, as someone who has played many a sailing combat game over the years, it's uninspired and not enjoyable. FTL did a similar system much better.

4) Death. It's a hard game, it's a slow game, it's a game with what appears to be a great deal in it. But as such, death comes fast and furious.
After 2-3 hours of not managing to get much of anywhere, I was still mighty pissed when my ship glitched aground and then.. Game over. Which is fine, I mean it's a roguelike and it's not meant to be easy... But when it takes you HOURS to get much of anywhere from the start and you can die so easily by hook or by crook, it's maddening to see all that hard work thrown away.
It's almost like having to do a lap of the Binding of Isaac, without any items - and at the end of the lap you get *one* item for the next lap. But as soon as you die, that's it. Whilst some masochists would love such a challenege, Joe Muggins here thinks that doesn't sound like fun.

The 'merciful' mode helps with regards to this, as you can save on the fly. But you can either play it safe and live a long but dull life, or try the dangerous game and die fairly rapidly and see all your hard, slow, progress of upping your skills and saving your money go to waste.
At least when you die you can save a skill for your next character.

5) Conclusion.
Sunless Sea is a fantastic idea for a fantastic game. However, IN THIS CURRENT VERSION it is not especially enjoyable to play IMHO.
If it does tickle your nautical fancy, my advise would be to wait until full release, as this may leave you with a sour, salty taste in your mouth.

I've been playing Sunless Sea since the closed beta. In that time, I have:

* witnessed the conquest of an island republic by an army of conquistador guinea pigs
* had my crew killed off and replaced, one by one, down to the last man, by a face-stealing stowaway
* extracted calcified regrets from a dead vicar
* been lured to my death by the hypnotic songs of the waterlogged, eyeless bodies of the drowned
* acted as a double agent on behalf of the infinite bureaucracy of Hell
* been pursued through icy waters by a malevolent floating mountain
* made blood sacrifices to the dreams of a long-dead thunder god

...and that's to say nothing of the psychic chess-pieces or the pneumatic rodents.

Captain's Log 7/18/14

I have no idea what the ♥♥♥♥ I'm doing.

I find this game quite delightful. The music, somber and unsettling artwork, nautical exploration, trade and combat quite challenging but success is linked to choose your own adventure type quests found on each island, that can span multiple islands. A spiders web to pull apart over time. The crew of the vessel also give character to the voyage, they are a queer and curious lot that I would liken to "Firefly", set in an age of Steam to explore a subterannean sea occupied by Lovecraftian horrors.

I like the writing and hope for more.

A very fun shipmaster-esqe simulator set in an exceedingly creepy and otherworldly universe. Talking rodents, the undead, a lot of bats and giant sea monsters make it a constant adventure. At current review (9/27) the new real-time on-map combat system has not been implemented yet, but that should take the gameplay to a different level.

Currently the combat system takes place in a new window where you enter in 'strategies', four at a time, with specific cool downs on each. The 'visibility' system is really slick though, where you do damage based on how illuminated your enemy is compared to your own (firing flares, carefully observing, etc.), and I hope it is implemented in a similar way with the real time system.

Exploration is genuinely fun and rewarding, as navigating around the various entities that occupy the Zee and finding new islands seems to play a significant part in the overall experience. Managing Terror (morale), supplies, fuel, cargo, your crew, Officers (and their skills), ship equipment, and new hulls all add different gameplay strategies. Trade is a major way to improve your Echo (currency) wallet, and it really pays off to ship different cargo to very distant locations.

You will die. You will die a lot. But that's just part of the game. You can preserve different things on death, but it helps to think that the end is nigh every time you leave Fallen London. You'll have a much more enjoyable time.

This game has two fundamental flaws: It's an exploration game where you are punished for exploring, and it's a rogue-lite where you have to grind.

The reason why games like Pirates! or Patrician work is because you aren't punished for exploring and you don't have to grind. You immediately set sail and start making trades or fighting pirates. Trading is a joke; the ship you're given is too small to carry any substantial amount of supplies to make a profit off of, and any other ship will require hours of grinding out the same crab or pirate off the starting area.

Games like this should always have something to do, but because Sunless Sea requires special conditions to do basic things like move, you run out of fuel in Sunless Sea that's pretty much it for you.

Though they recently updated the combat system, it's still broken. You just sail and use the back cannon, anything from crabs to endgame monsters. There are only a handful of enemies in this game which causes the combat to get boring real fast. I mentioned grinding earlier, and that's exactly what you'll be doing.

Rogues like FTL or Rogue Lagecy are immediately accessible and give you a sense of progression when you die; new ships or classes are unlocked. You die here you get to keep one of your officers; the grinding, the hoarding resources remain. And you will die. For hours before you even get the basic gist of any routes that are profitable.

The atmosphere and music are great, but it's not enough.The concepts of a good game are there, but the execution is just horrible. The game suffers from too many unfun and repetative elements. Losing all your progress after a grindfest isn't fun. Not being to do basic things like sail isn't fun. Grinding the same few things over and over because the ship has too few cargo to trade isn't fun.

God. Where to start.

Since on the whole I adore this game, I'll start with my problems with it, to be absolutely fair.

My biggest, most serious issue is that the game is INCREDIBLY GRINDY. Incredibly grindy, and you can die very easily and lose all that progress. I understand that a small ship wouldn't reasonably do very good business trying to transport goods, but for god's sake, I should be able to make more than a $1 profit on anything I buy to sell (if that!). Either that, or you should have the option to pass on your ship to your progeny, and they can keep the money they would otherwise spend on that ship. As for how easy it is to die; once an enemy has you up to nearly full visibility, it's nearly impossible to get back down to a level where you can safely attack. From there it's just a matter of time before it tears your crew apart.

The other issue I take is that you can run out of fuel close to a port but not docked in it and have to lose the game that way. Surely, you could hire someone to come tow your ship (and if you're out of money, THEN you're dead). Perhaps only certain ports can tow ships. Something. Perhaps you could abandon ship into a small rowing vessal, attempt to get to port, and then from there perhaps have to owe somebody something. The most frustrating defeats I've suffered have been floating uselessly while touching shore. Very. Frustrating.

I would also add that this game is rather poorly tutorialized. It tells you what you need, but it won't give you any real tips or guidance about the safest way to navigate the zee, given that you only have so much fuel and so much food. An early run isn't going to last very long because it's nearly impossible to know just where you need to go and when, and then any grinding done is lost.

However, I only say these things because I love the game, and I wouldn't want to give someone any false hopes. God knows the zee would only crush them.

If you're not scared off yet, though, there is a sort of ruthlessness to the game that makes me want to beat it into submission. Coupled with a haunting atmosphere and horrors that are very effective at knowing the line between "unnerving" and "over-the-top-cheesy", Sunless Sea is genuinely a game that intimidates me. I get chills when I have to leave port, since there is a very deep uncertainty that I'll ever be returning. The art is incredible, the music is catchy (and at times gives me the same fright I get at the Sonic drowning music), and the writing is well worth crossing the seven seas for.

Long story short, if you bore easily but are very into Lovecraftian horror, wait for a sale. If you're willing to put in long, hard, heartbreaking hours for a game that will sometimes honor you with a very delicious crumb from time to time, welcome aboard.

While the atmosphere is great and the stories are impressed (when they're willing to disclose themselves), the most of things you need to do is to collect enough money to pay bills of fuels and foods. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to enjoy the progress to keep your ship and crew alive in the sunless economy. Because everything you need are so expensive, and you can only pay them via some few profitable lines terminated at London, your journey would become an endless London-to-somewhere routine and only at few times you can forget them and sail up to other exciting unexplored islands, as a real captions would do. This intolerable fact was discovered when I suddenly found that I spent hours in game to hunt bat swarms repeatedly, because it provides the cheapest supplies and the way to comfort crews' terrors. Trust me, it's suck to see your great journey become a journey of a bat killer, who acts like the poorest bagger to appreciate every coins given by the game system, which performs no economy mechanism but to sell expensive goods to players.

Another problem is you can only keep relations with NPCs during the story lines are opened. After that, they disappeared. You would find that after completing your jobs to convoy them from islands to islands, and enjoy the interactions with them, they would be vaporized at the final stop. Nothing continues the stories while they're actually too short for a game whom should beat other brainless 3D engine demos with great stories, and soon you're wasting your time on the supply and fuel problems again.

And the officers: while they should be your best friends who would accompany you till the end of game, they're actually only portraits. Yes, you can 'speak to them with secrets' to gain some skill upgrading, and try to waste your most precious supply to talk with them. However, they would only give you the standard NPC answers, almost like the famous arrow-in-the-knee. The boring bill-paying routines make things worse, since that means you can almost find no chances to discovery their stories when you need to travel from London to London to sell whatever profitable and report ports to the administration to earn the money. As a result, they're aboard with silence, keep silent, and also die silently with your crew and the whole ship, when you earn no enough money to reduce terrors or pay bills for fuels and supplies. They are nothing like your truly friends in Baldur's Gate or Planescape: Torment, which let you enjoy the game with NPCs' most tiny requests, lies, emotions, choices, stories and their deaths and lives.

Finally, the terrors: I think it's a really terrible thing in the game. Because you would find it's the most expensive goods to buy and the supply is even fewer than others. You can basically reduce your 1 terror with 10+ Echos, but it's so easy to be stockpiled when you're sailing on the zee. It increases rapidly while you leave shore far enough, and would stop increasing while you sail along with coasts. However, it never reduces even when you anchoring in the brightest port, unless you spend *lots of* money to buy drinks at the local taverns, if they exists. Only London provide you to reduce terrors to 50 every times you stop at the port. However, it would add your Nightmare's Strength with no cure. This basically tell you your next travel may explode because the terror would burst with the event to confront the nightmare.

So, what would you get with your $18.99? A game should become the next Fallout with the rich stories and characters, screws up with the terrible economy system and the pale NPCs and events. As an early access game I think it exposed some fatal defects that should be fixed as soon as possible, or it would be a sunk ship under the sunless zee.

There are mistakes in a zee captain's life. This was not one of them. It had to die, if indeed it could be said to be living. It was a sacrifice not of its own choosing, but of something vast and compelling that had chosen for it. Had chosen for me. There were things I needed. Things I needed to know. Colours of memory and secrets that burn.

Far from my birth on the street I rested in my manse, contemplating a life of luxury, filled with light. No longer fearing each time we turned from the shore that we would be swallowed whole by the dark. No more red feasts. No more nights haunted by The Eye. No more hard choices. No more regrets.

From the frozen temple of Whither to the weeping stones of the Salt Lions I traveled. Laden down with the great treasures of the Tomb Colony of Venderbight and multi-hued scintillack from the Principles, the ship sped through the calm waters of the Unterzee. Above the deck, the enormous heart of something old and vicious and clever, dripping irrigo blood through the netting that held it. A king's ransom, gathered at great risk and expense from all corners of the Neath. The price agreed upon for the life of a nightmare. A thing. A friend.

There are mistakes that cannot be undone. I have made many. This was not one of them.

The gameplay is difficult, even on "merciful mode" (which allows multiple saves compared to the single-save default survival mode). I've yet to earn enough funds to purchase a new steamboat, and I'm very good at running out of fuel and ending up stranded at zee. It's almost maddeningly difficult, which is kind of refreshing actually. I get frustrated and have to take frequent breaks from it, but I always come back to it.

The world it is set in is mysterious and compelling. Familiarity with the browser game"Fallen London" isn't necessary, but must admit it enhanced my expereince, and filled out the storylines nicely.

At this time, it's still in Early Access so a lot may still change, but as it stands it's definitely worth checking out.

Some of the mechanics remind me of Sid Meier's Pirates, but it's a really dark, story-driven game. One of my favorites.

And even though it's still early access, the devs have been putting great work into it. After lackluster reactions to combat, they completely scrapped and reworked the system. Can't wait to see the final product.

I feel bad reviewing it from Nov ember Early Access (final due in Dec) but as much as I like roguelikes and RPGs, I couldn't make myself like this.

Typical to a roguelike, the gameplay is punishing. Normally, that means if you delve too deep into a dungeon, you get mobbed and end your run. In this, it means you spent 10 minutes going in one direction, cruising by (beautiful) empty landmarks, running out a fuel and simply sitting there until you quit.

If you try to play more cautious - not go out too far, prepare before taking on challenges - you'll find yourself in a trading simulator. Go to A, buy 10 of Item, go to B, sell them and return to A, or save scumming to reload the pirate you have an 80% chance to actually get loot from. It literally takes hours of the same tedious gameplay before you can get even the first set of marginal upgrades (crew officers).

It takes forever to get anywhere - both in-game travel, and player progression. While other games may not have the same degree of world building, they more than make up for it in actual gameplay.

EATEN BY GIANT TENTACLE CRAB IN PITCH DARKNESS

10/10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t66Pb_cn1mA

I've played Sunless Sea for close to 5 hours now and I still feel like there's so much more to learn and experience. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. I love games like that! By this time in most games, you have a pretty good idea of how to play the game and what you need to do to win. That's not the case in Sunless Sea. The game is more like a choose your own adventure novel with a few video game mechanics, a relaxing soundtrack and some fantastic graphics slapped on top of it.

You tend to lose yourself as well as your track on time when you're reading a good book. Sunless Sea has pulled me and I don't care to be let go.

This game is pretty much in a genre of its own. You play as the captain of a small ship trying to scrape a living from a massive underground sea. This is done by trading, fighting monsters/pirates and playing a number of text based adventures when in port.

The game is a rougelike with an optional non-ironman mode where you can enable in game saves. If you do decide to play it as the makers intended expect to die a lot and have to restart more or less from scratch.

Based on the Fallen London universe (where a Victorian London has been dragged down to the depths by a bunch of bats, no I'm serious) the game has a hard to describe off kilter weirdness to both the gameplay and the writing. If you're bored of the same old fare and are looking for something different then this definitely qualifies.

Ive been playing this game for about a week now. Yea, it's most certainly in beta, but by the gods this game is fun! The random events give the game a lot of depth. The did a great job at balancing the gameplay. It's fun and complex yet a game that you want to take your time at. There is no speed running this game.

I have died a few times. Mainly because most of the videos I saw before hand had the old combat system. Dying is not a terrible thing in this game, though, it has certain advantages. I have yet to explore the full map, so I have had some trouble making large amounts of money. Though, i suspect there is something out there, somewhere out in the dark zee that will finally bring me my riches.