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27 March

Announcing Wayfarer

Last month, we announced we were working on the first of several major updates to Sunless Skies, with a focus on providing more to see and do during voyages.

We're now ready to talk more about that release: it will be called the Wayfarer Update, and it will be available on 9th April. It will contain a major rework of Albion, as well as many narrative additions – see below for more details!

Albion

For this update, we've completely reworked the map of Albion, with three main aims:

1) Improving the general look and atmosphere of the region. A few screenshots...

Near the Mausoleum:

London:

The Avid Horizon:

2) Adding more terrain to make navigation and combat more interesting. Albion will still be much more open than the Reach, except in a small number of locations like the Ormswald. For comparison, here's a diagram of Traitor's Wood from when we were designing it:

And here's one of the new areas in Albion (the coloured patches and letters in these images are related to agent and discovery spawning):

3) Creating more variety in the creatures, locomotives and discoveries players can encounter on any given journey. Right now, many areas of the game can be quite predictable in terms of what you'll find there. We're hoping that introducing more variation will improve the experience when visiting areas you've already explored; if it does, we'll do more of this in the other regions, as well. Please let us know what you think once you've played the update!

High Wilderness stories

We'll also be adding many more narrative encounters that can take place during voyages, including most (and hopefully all, but we can't promise that just yet) of the following:

Many new ways to encounter the gods of the skies, draw their attention or their ire, and benefit or suffer from it.
Suffering the attacks of certain foes may now have a variety of delayed consequences. In particular, caution when engaging Guests is now advised.
It will now be possible to more closely investigate several of the greatest wonders and horrors of the skies when your travels bring you near them.
Sometimes, you will be able to deploy your officers to pursue shore-side opportunities – these will be focused around Albion for now, but we'll add more if you enjoy them!

Finally, to stay up to date on what we're doing:

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8 March

Patch Notes (8th March 2019)

Hello, delicious skyfarers!

Today we have another patch with a range of narrative and tech improvements and fixes. Meanwhile, we're still hard at work on our first major post-launch update, which will be focused on adding more variety and depth to the experience while travelling between ports.

We'll be ready to talk about the update's specific features and story additions a bit later this month. To be notified as soon as that happens, follow us here on Steam or @failbettergames on Twitter.

Narrative fixes

The Heart-Catchers will now assist a captain whose death has been prophecied only once. After all, one foretelling of doom is happenstance; two seems like attention-seeking.
The Repentant Devil's quest will now be correctly marked as completed in the event that he remains aboard your engine.
Captains who drop off the Repentant Devil somewhere in Sky Barnet will now be able to reunite with him at the same location.
The Truth ambition no longer directs captains to _Low_ Barnet.
The Price of Charity now removes rather Visions of the Heavens instead of giving them.
Captains may no longer infinitely renew their acquaintance with the Blind Bruiser.
The Dismal Chamberlain will no longer attend funerals when his personal circumstances preclude it.
Your journal will no longer incite you to export Sapling-Knots or Verdant Encouragement from the Nature Reserve if they can no longer be procured there.
Hybras may now always be put to new purpose even if your captain died after finding it abandoned. (If this affected your game, selecting any branch on the Hybras Deserted storylet will put things right.)
Dying at a certain point in the Fatalistic Signalman's story will no longer prevent future captains from pursuing it.
It is no longer possible to get something for nothing when experimenting with alchemy in the Shapeling Vats.
Captains who stand for Parliament in Worlebury-juxta-Mare will no longer be thrown out of the port afterwards.
The Deathless will no longer set impossible deadlines when asking you to smuggle Starshine.
After completing the Amenable Host's quest, future captains will now still be able to interact with him at Magdalene's (unless he has in fact gone somewhere else).
Captains will now have permanent backstage access to Magdalene's so long as one captain in their lineage has discovered the Amenable Host's identity.
Getting caught with contraband at Albion will no longer result in instant transportation to a relay.
Captains who pay the Chrysanthemum Price will no longer receive a sudden windfall of Visions of the Heavens.
The Illusive Forged Companion's magic show will now leave an appropriate impression upon your crew.
A chorus of devils for the Well of the Wolf may now be gathered only once per legacy activity.
Only spider-sweepers may sweep the well.
There should be fewer printing errors in the Song of the Sky.
As usual, many typos have been corrected.

Other fixes

Segments should now always spawn correctly when entered.
Linux users will now see their own captain's avatar instead of the default one.
Randomly generating an avatar will now correctly select a random brow.
Must events will no longer delay other must events from firing.
Branch previews will no longer include rogue quotation marks.
Branch previews now display a single sentence rather than the entirety of the branch text.
Selecting branches with difficulty challenges will no longer cause the result text to draw downwards before snapping to the top of the storylet interface.
Speaking to officers or closing the storylet panel when outside of ports will no longer result in a The Sky area interface.
Players will no longer see a blank Leadbeater and Stainrod storylet before branches load.
The bank button is now greyed out at ports where it is unavailable.
The bazaar is no longer available at most platforms.
Bazaar item tooltips are now formatted correctly.
Equipped items for which you no longer meet the requirements are now clearly marked on the hold panel.
Blast damage is now displayed on mine and rocket tooltips.
The armour tooltip now displays your base hull instead of your current hull.
Tooltips will no longer run over the edge of the screen.
Tooltips on the character progression screen now show correct quality values.
It is no longer possible for equipment icons to become stuck on the screen.
Locomotive names will no longer overlap on the hold interface when inheriting a Spatchcock.
Hull and Crew will no longer overflow on the hold interface when the font size is set to large.
Quest icons are now aligned correctly in the quality result text.
The Something Dark chart icon in Eleutheria is now replaced with something more specific once the player draws close to them.
Investigating Curator's Eggs, Bully's Acres and Wrecks may now sometimes reveal enemies.
Discoveries that have been fully exploited will no longer be marked on the chart again if you voyage close to them.
Homesteads now display the appropriate animation after interaction.
Discoveries will now never spawn on top of each other.
Agents will now never spawn underneath discoveries.
Damage visuals are now removed from agents if their health recovers.
Scouts no longer discover platforms in the Blue Kingdom when traversing the Reach. (Unfortunately, a consequence of this fix is that players who have actually visited platforms in the Blue Kingdom will now need to rediscover them; until then, they won't show up on the chart.)
Discovery icons on the chart will now always be the correct size when zooming out.
Scouts now have additional messages.
Mining sky-rocks in Eleutheria will no longer result in messages implying that the player is in the Reach.
The Blue Kingdom chart is now correctly aligned in relation to the player.
Players will now see the loading screen when using transit relays, rather the region's skybox.
When loading a save, the title screen artwork no longer fades back in before transitioning to the loading screen.

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Recent Reviews:

Mixed (38) - 57% of the 38 user reviews in the last 30 days are positive.

All Reviews:

Mostly Positive (464) - 76% of the 464 user reviews for this game are positive.

Release Date:

31 Jan, 2019

Developer:

Failbetter Games

Publisher:

Reviews

“The great joy of Failbetter's latest is once again the ghoulish inventiveness of the writing and setting, though it's helped along in Skies by more accessible world design, relatively generous earning mechanics and some truly decadent background art. ESSENTIAL.”
Eurogamer

“This is a game about stories that has a knack of producing really good ones - when you're doing well, and especially when you're doing badly.”
9 – EDGE

“The sharpest writing around, wrapped inside a surprising adventure that’s tough but rarely unfair. Failbetter’s finest hour.”
90% – PC Gamer