Idle Thoughts

Sunless Sea, now in space, still fascinating, still a chore to play (★★★☆☆)

I’ve beaten one ambition after 35 hours and I give the game a score of 3 Vivisected Pugilists out of 5. It’s basically a slight improvement over Sunless Sea, but they haven’t fixed any of the bigger flaws in their design.

Random thoughts, in point form :

• It’s quaint how the inventory and menus still seem to have been designed by people from an alternate reality where RPGs don’t exist. It gets worse with the more advanced content in the game. You know your game is byzantine when you need help to even read its wiki.

• If making a good game was all about breadth of vocabulary, this would be the best game ever.

• Then again, as superbly-written as it is, the game has terrible focus. There’s no overarching narrative and a lot of the universe’s basic lore is really hard to track down. I guess it would be too gauche to just explain anything? I played Fallen London and Sunless Sea and even then I can’t follow a lot of the lore. What’s the Avid Horizon and the Calendar Council again? A lot of it is all tangled up: London used to be on the surface, then it went underground, now it’s in spaaace and trains are spaceships, except that they’re really boats, etc.

• For what it’s worth though, London is not quite the same place it used to be in Sunless Sea. It used to be your one safe haven in the world… now it feels like an eldritch dump you can’t wait to leave. It’s one of the better-realized parts of Skies.

• Is the game comedy, is it Lovecraftian? Both! And neither! When it comes to tone, the game is trying to have its cake and eat it too.

• In the same vein, it seems the real “meat” of the narrative is in finishing “storylets” for a single port or officer. That’s where the game really shines. Worlebury-juxta-Mare, in particular… well, it’s really something. A lot of them are great, but even finishing a storylet for a single port can get annoying. Did you fail a skill check? Come back in 15 minutes with more resources or in 5 hours with better stats (haha!).

• To steal a turn of phrase from Disco Elysium: Sunless Skies is pornographically British. Much more than Seas. I swear every port has a gag about tea. OMG, a joke about the royal assent! I’m not sure how I feel about this. One the one hand… write about what you know, yeah? On the other, I find this kind of Anglo-Saxon navel-gazing kind of insufferable. Who else could get away with this? I’m not sure “That’s the point, duh!” and “We’re being ironically British” can explain it away.

• Overall, my player experience is the same as with other Failbetter/Weather Factory games: 1. Instant fascination, 2. OMG one more port!, 3. “Gosh, this is a bit slow, eh?“, 4. “Gosh, this is reaaally slow” and then 5. The Wall… I can’t bear another voyage knowing all the crap I have to do for a little bit more story content, nevermind starting over at every death and actually playing the game as a roguelike. Oh and the roguelike aspect is still a complete farce. Put the game on “Merciful” and never look back.

• Honestly… the improvements over Sunless Sea are pretty small and the longer you play, the more you realize it. Trade works with “prospects” and “bargains”. Prospects are repeatable mini-quests which are “sell x of item y at port z for a higher price than usual”. Bargains are “buy x of item y here at a lower price than usual”. It makes trading simple and clear and immediately satisfying, but after a while it feels repetitive as there’s nothing unique about any of the trade opportunities. Sunless Sea had very few trade opportunities, but at least stuff like selling coffee in Vienna felt like an adventure.

• Combat is a little bit more satisfying, it’s somewhat more action-based and you have a dodge move, but I think it’s too “floaty” (literally!) and a lot of it still involves watching a timer go down. Besides, combat is often too dangerous and not lucrative enough to be worth the hassle.

• Wealth ambition is boring as hell. It’s just: “dump x amount of money, two paragraphs, then dump 1,5x amount of money, two paragraphs, then dump 2x amount of money PLUS some very rare items (surprise!), The End. Having a big ol’ house has zero gameplay implications and almost none story-wise. What a waste.

• As for the pacing, 35 hours of grind to get the “boring” easy ending feels hella long. I’m not inclined to try another one. I hear “The Truth” is the “real” ambition, but the game warns you not to take it, ’cause it’s too hard. Maybe new players should try it first anyway? I dunno. None of this makes sense.