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 What is this game Sunless Skies is the sequel to Failbetter Games' slowboating underworld sailing game Sunless Sea. Set in a possible future of their Sunless Sea/Fallen London universe, London has escaped its imprisonment in a giant underground cavern by building a clockwork sun and then passing through a portal into space. You are a locomotive captain, flying a train through In essence the core gameplay loop of Sunless Skies is that you fly your train out into the great unknown, find some resources, maybe fight pirates or monsters, and hopefully find a story. Stories are the main rewards of this game, not as actual mechanical benefits, but in finding new places, sometimes you find interesting new text to read, whether that's from exploring the fungus-infested remains of an early exploratory locomotive, or assisting a failing circus in getting back on its feet. Meanwhile you can engage in a spot of trading to keep your operation solvent. What's different from Sunless Sea? The world is now made up of distinct zones. Seasoned players of Seas will of course be aware that the first game was sectioned into areas where the contents were jumbled up, but in this game the four areas are truly separated by the boundless reaches of space, and can only be accessed via transit relays. Think of the Cumaean Canal from the first game, only if using it moved you to a new map. The areas themselves are quite a bit larger than the areas from Seas. Making money is much easier. Unlike Sea where trading was a matter of running the Salt Lions and Viennese Coffee for seed money and then pulling up a wiki of the routes which were just barely profitable to run, trading is now a core part of the game, with the addition of Prospects and Bargains. A prospect informs you of a place which will buy a particular good at a premium, if you can source it, while bargains are found in outlying ports, people selling for less than the sale price of a good in the hub port, guaranteeing a profit if you sail the goods home. The world is less empty. The skies of the High Wilderness contain things like asteroids to mine, giant trees to hew for lumber, abandoned ruins to loot, which are separate from the normal ports, so even if you have a set destination in mind, there will be things to do along the way. It's possible this could be a downside if you liked the extremely sedate pace of Sunless Sea, but I think most will appreciate the change. The writing is different. Alexis Kennedy, the previous writer, has a new company now, working on Cultist Simulator and other things, and that shows in the writing. Not that the writing is bad, but it doesn't quite have the same magic. Sometimes it feels like the writers are trying to evoke the vague allusions that characterise Kennedy's writings, but leave the impression that even the writer doesn't know what's being alluded to. A slightly more optimistic tone also suffuses Sunless Skies, somewhat appropriate for the premise, but still a notable change from the other games. Also there's a lot fewer uses of the letter z now. I'm not sure how much people will actually mind these changes, but the last one might be a dealbreaker for some. Your captain levels differently. Now instead of gaining secrets to trade to your officers for skill points, you have a much slower growing XP bar, which then allows you to buy "reflections" on your past before you were a captain, which increase your stats. Also Pages has been merged into Mirrors. What's the same as Sunless Sea? Almost literally everything else, it is at its core an iteration on Sea, the combat's a bit better, the travel is a bit better, the trading is a lot better (as long as you wanted trading to be a bigger part of the game, anyway), but there's nothing truly revolutionary over what's come before. Gameplay The game is a top down sailing sim, mixed with short written vignettes. You have four resources to manage, your fuel, hunger, terror and hull. If you run out of fuel or hunger, you generally die. You buy supplies and fuel to keep these topped up as you travel. Your terror builds as you travel, especially if you are in proximity of the various cosmic horrors of space, and can be reduced by visiting ports among other methods. Let your terror get too high, and you or your crew might be driven mad by the opressive emptiness of the High Wilderness. There are also various monsters and pirates about who may be hostile, you have guns to fight them, and if your hull hits zero, that's it.  Interspersed with the sailing, are story vignettes. You get might get these on the move, in conversation with your crew, or on finding a new location, or visiting a port. Some of these include challenges for your captain to pass, based on their ability in the four skills, Iron, Mirrors, Hearts and Veils.  Along the way you'll meet new people, trade for a fortune, and maybe help some new friends or eat your own crew. The future's unpredictable out in the sky.
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Feb 3, 2019 18:00
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Caidin posted:Can someone explain to me exactly how I get the attention of the Storm that Speaks? Or where to reliably find the Clay Conductor? I found the Clay Conductor at the Bit Between in Albion (where you get the workworld tour), but I'm not sure if he's always there. Highlights of the game for me so far have been just barely making it home after a dead end exploring what I expected to be a shortcut through the Traitor's Wood left me doubling back and out of both food and fuel and killing what I think was the Curator from Sunless Sea and looting the treasure for the blue gem my Zee captains gave him long ago. On the flip side, I feel like the blue passports joke at the Albion relay cuts maybe a little too raw this close to the end. I saw the humour but it came with a bitter tinge.
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Feb 4, 2019 03:27
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I hope this fixes the UI bugs on 4k monitors, it's probably my biggest gripe with the game right now, I have to change the resolution down every time my captain levels up, and can't read tooltips for things close to the screen edge. vegetables posted:London’s young weep as the Colonists come out a-voting. “Ruled by the dead!” the Portly Paradoxist cries. He alone seems to think it’s a good idea. Wish I had sided with the tacketies now, in retrospect
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Feb 4, 2019 18:08
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NewMars posted:The problem is that it just doesn't seem to take. Does anyone know if it's possible to End the Winchester war permanently and have the uprising in the workworlds go in a way that isn't full circle? I do kind of miss the amorality of Sunless Sea, in all honesty. In the Neath it really did feel like there was no such thing as right and wrong, I thought it did a very good job of conveying the idea that down in the neath, normal human notions of good and evil just literally don't apply, like trying to apply morality to spiders. By contrast, Albion just exudes evil, but like, regular human evil, just souped up by eldritch power, and I liked that Sea mostly set that notion to one side. Of course I understand that in the context of the universe's lore this makes a lot of sense given that Albion is lit by a sun which pumps out upper class Victorian morality as constant truths, etc. etc. I never thought I'd complain that the characters in a work of fiction are too believable and realistic, but here we are. On a related note about eldritch, unspeakable evil, does anyone know how I can ban the people who put the jam on before the cream from parliament because I mean seriously what the gently caress, what the gently caress.
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Feb 7, 2019 02:42
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One thing I'm starting to find a little wearing about this game is how many of the ports seemingly have a single story which is time gated in exactly the same way. In Perdurance you're limited by the passage of the day. In Worlebury-Juxta-Mare, you are limited by the condition of your clothes. In Brabazon, you are limited by the ticking of your clock. In Caduceus, you are limited by the condition of the roses. You can't possibly see the whole story in one go round, and when you go round again, you're picking the same options until something new shows up, which means you're reading stuff you've already read before, which lessens any impact it had. That wouldn't be an issue if there was more than one thing happening at these ports, but often "continue the megastory" is the only thing you can actually do at these ports of any consequence. I think it took me 4 times through Worlebury before the "seen some weird poo poo in Worlebury" counter ticked up high enough to allow me to have a look at the weird poo poo, by which point I'd spent three visits clicking through repeat text and was kind of losing interest in Worlebury as a location.
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Feb 7, 2019 18:04
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Hobojim posted:Certainly nothing like SMEN though. Haha, yeah, good old SMEN, my favourite. Seeking Mr Eaten's Name, a story from Fallen London which is apparently in a similar vein as Sailing East.
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Feb 7, 2019 19:27
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cheetah7071 posted:How many major ports are there in Eleutheria? Just want to know if I'm missing any Seven IIRC, but if it's your first time in Eleutheria, just check if you have the achievement for visiting all the ports in the region.
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Feb 8, 2019 12:11
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cheetah7071 posted:Speaking of officers, is the officer pool that shows up at ports based on your factions or stats or something? I'm in what feels like the last leg of the game and have only ever seen the Aunt for Quartermaster I think I saw someone mention earlier in the thread that Your Aunt is the only quartermaster, currently at least.
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Feb 11, 2019 02:26
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That's good to hear! I noticed on the Failbetter website there's an event in Fallen London at the moment which includes characters called the Impenitent Devil and the Captivating Princess. Any relation to the Repentant Devil or Incognito Princess from this game?
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Feb 11, 2019 02:48
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BBJoey posted:They are one and the same, prior to entering the high wilderness. The impenitent devil is new, but the captivating princess has long been a beloved horror of the neath. I've never played Fallen London, did she show up in Sea, at all? I haven't recruited either in Skies as I am resolved not to just do every single officer on my first Captain, so the Princess' past is still unknown to me.
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Feb 11, 2019 02:54
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