It is the dawn of the 20th century, and London has taken to the stars! As the captain of a spacefaring locomotive you'll behold wonders and battle cosmic abominations in the furthest heavens. Stake your claim. Fight to survive.
Speak to storms. Murder a sun. Face judgement.
Ten years have passed since Sunless Sea, and Queen Victoria has led an exodus from London to the heavens. There, a revitalised British Empire - ambitious and authoritarian - begins to expand across the skies. The stars are alive.
They are the Judgements: vast intelligences that govern all things. But they are dying. One by one, something is snuffing them out, leaving their thrones empty.
An opportunistic Victorian Empire is colonising the domains they leave behind, painting its industrial vision upon the fabric of the heavens.
Failbetter finally balances smart gameplay and ingenious prose in this poignant saga of mortality, writ large.
Failbetter continues to revolutionise the RPG - not by burning it all down, but by slipping pages of prose into every crevice it can.
With impeccable world-building and compelling exploration, Sunless Skies is a haunting journey that is worth traversing time and time again.
Sunless Skies is a strange amalgamation of genres with even stranger stories to tell, but the weird world and nightmarish encounters come together to create something special. Combat and repetition may weigh down the Homeric adventure, but the overall journey is well worth the ticket.
Sunless Skies is a refined and more organic successor to Sunless Sea. The skies above London are full of intriguing events and charming characters depicted through a fancy, sharp and magnetic writing. The hybrid gameplay which mixes “choose your own adventure” elements with a classic RPG/roguelite scheme works well and offer a deep and satisfying experience. If you don’t mind read walls of text and embrace the rhythm of the slow gaming, Sunless Skies is one of the best games around.
Sunless Skies is another well-written story from Failbetter Games. The story and setting carry the game, but the combat mechanics can take some getting used to and may feel limiting. If you like your stories thick in the dark and strange ways of things like H.P. Lovecraft than this could very well be your cup of maddening tea. And you do like tea, don’t you? Of course you do, the Queen wouldn’t allow it to be otherwise and She is watching, always watching.
Sunless Skies is a real "interactive book". In the new game of Failbetter Games there are texts of a really rare quality for a video game, like a good sci-fi novel. Too bad that the strength of Sunless Skies is also its greatest limit: there are often long sequences of readings a bit too verbose and ends in themselves.
