Sunless Skies, the cosmic horror, spacefaring roguelite, splits my mind like a log beneath an axe.
On the one hand, a sure ennui – I’ve seen all this before, I’ve made these lengthy, fraught voyages earlier than, many instances, in its fantastic predecessor Sunless Sea.
On the opposite, late at evening my ideas drift, unbidden, again to its darkish locations, its lonely ports and clockwork suns and frozen voids. Places that left impressions, locations that advised me unsettling tales and implied many extra tales nonetheless.
I don’t need to do it over again. I don’t need something besides to do all of it once more.
Sunless Skies exists on the intersection between roguelite (i.e. unforgiving, survival-tinged roleplaying, with permadeath choices) and interactive fiction. You’re the captain of a spacefaring locomotive, looking for to discover a refreshing new tackle galactic civilisation that features an interplanetary Victorian empire, murderous beasts of the vacuum and what may simply be the lords of the afterlife.
Fuel and armour (in your fragile craft) and meals (in your fragile crew) should be maintained, the uncharted skies should be charted, pirates and predators should be shot to demise and the fantastically written issues of varied esoteric quest-givers should be solved. Well, not ‘must’ – Sunless Skies is to some extent what you make it, the objective solely to outlive and, finally, thrive. You gained’t handle a lot with out exploring the heavens and finishing among the tales advised about and by the denizens of this chilly and lonely star-system.
If this sounds acquainted, effectively, sure. This remark is irrelevant to anybody who has not beforehand soaked their ft within the bracing waters of Sunless Sea. Complaining about it probably makes me sound like somebody who simply ate a scrumptious burger whingeing that they’ve had a scrumptious burger as soon as earlier than. For me, the issue is extra that I used to be served a scrumptious burger whereas I used to be nonetheless consuming the primary scrumptious burger.
Sunless Sea hasn’t left my onerous drive since launch, and although I’ve not performed it for some time, it’s nonetheless fats with the promise of unfinished enterprise. Ports I had not discovered, characters I had but to displease, indescribable horrors I had nonetheless to be soul-flayed by. It will not be a game simply ‘finished’. It will not be a game that rapidly stops giving. So many bites of burgers nonetheless to take. I haven’t even performed its enlargement pack but.
Sunless Skies’ burger has a variety of considerate new toppings and the next grade of bun, however the patty’s the identical. For all of the outstanding diploma of craft on show in Skies, there’s an underlying scarcity of ambition – that is refinement greater than something. And, provided that the fabulist fiction of the Fallen London universe (to which this belongs) is particularly designed for limitless chance, performing the identical trick twice feels a little bit discordant.
I’m not screeching about novelty for the novelty’s sake, however quite as a result of some alternatives to make a meaningfully higher sequel have been missed. I’ll come again to particular shortcomings later, however first, the unequivocal excellent news is that Skies is doubtless a greater game than Sea. Skip Sea and are available straight right here in the event you’ve by no means dabbled earlier than. And, in the event you cherished Sea inside and outside and starvation at all times for extra, clearly you gained’t be upset.
It’s not solely an enchancment when it comes to its extra ornate artwork and extra elegant presentation but additionally its scale and grandeur. Sea now all of a sudden appears so flat and plain, its interface geriatric, the place little touches in Skies, like crew feedback overlaid onto the skies round you, actually carry it. It’s cautious to, by means of implication and apart, weave its many quick tales right into a extra inter-connected world, with guidelines and squabbling factions and religious authorities and slowly shifting standing quos and a way of an aeons-old mythology. Furthermore, you don’t transfer solely between lands in Sunless Skies, or solely between worlds – you may transfer between planes of existence. This is a grand odyssey of the creativeness, borne aloft by constantly curious and characterful writing.
Once shortly, a few of its Holy Bible’s price of textual content succumbs to too-purple prose, a soup of adjectives and portentous names with little behind them, however in the primary it holds the road between the deft weaving of a scene and demise by anything-goes lore extra.
Visually, it is aware of when to indicate and when to inform too. A metropolis atop an enormous space-flower, sure, that we see; the hive of life atop and round it, sure, that’s well left for the tales its thumbnailed denizens share with you. It understands effectively when to let your personal creativeness step in and fill within the gaps, quite than rush headlong into its personal technical limitations by exhibiting an excessive amount of. Characters, each endearing and chilling, do much more with just a few strains of acid textual content than all of the mo-cap on the earth may ever hope to attain.
But if there’s a spot the place creativeness can’t do the heavy-lifting, it’s that Sunless Skies not often seems like a sky-borne game. Though there isn’t any scarcity of startling sights ‘beneath’ your locomotive, nice yawning expanses and looming rocky oddities and frozen cities and relics of useless gods, the general impact of its top-down perspective is extra that of gazing upon murky backyard pond than an infinite past. Something is off in regards to the sense of depth, whereas the astro-train you pilot feels extra boat than starship. There is not any Z-axis for the motion, so this space-place is a flat aircraft, oceanic not cosmic.
To be clear, I neither anticipate or desire a game with greater than sufficient transferring elements of its personal to attempt to be Homeworld, however I do discover myself wishing this had run its cosmic ball a little bit additional.
There are just a few exceptions, most notably Albion, residence of imperial London and a nightmare place of titanic industrialism, the place colossal engines honk and wheeze beneath you. Here, Skies unquestionably achieves the visible immensity it shoots for, as do another surprises.
Outside of presentation, Skies makes some try to deal with what was, for some, Sea’s central barrier to pleasure – that finishing its quests or rising in functionality invariably requires slowly schlepping round an enormous and deadly place to acquire explicit gadgets. Without them already in hand on first arrival, many dialog or improve choices at a brand new port had been closed off. So again you went, after which again once more. We name this ‘grind.’
Sunless Skies is a lot better about this. Rarer is the time you can’t even get by means of the door of a brand new place. Invariably, there’s one thing you are able to do, somebody you may discuss to, some new quest you may tackle, some ongoing undertaking you may test in on. In consequence, there’s much less crusing backwards and forwards between the identical factors for a single merchandise – you’ll be spinning a number of plates and happening a number of diversions, which helps ameliorate the sense of looping the identical actions.
This is what I imply once I say the dimensions feels greater, which issues excess of the variety of places. But it too usually defaults to ‘get a box of weirdly-named things from there and bring it back here for a reward’, which additionally falls into Sea’s downside of getting a complicated stock heaving with miscellany, all with names so outlandish that they find yourself sounding by some means the identical.
The tales are a pleasure; the steps required to unlock their glimmering conclusions is usually a drag. For that cause, I discovered myself finally eschewing the normal iron man mode of play, by which solely a small measure of your progress is handed on to a subsequent captain do you have to perish. (And you’ll die, usually – both by operating out of sources as you try to achieve some distant new harbour, or on the talons and cannons of beast or bandit).
Merciful mode, which permits the reloading of saves, robs Sunless Skies of some deadly menace, however does depart me free to experience its world, discover its farthest reaches and darkest secrets and techniques. To soak, languorously, in all of the curious delights the builders have poured out for us – clockwork suns and ape parliaments and time vortexes and monocled mushroom-men and hospitals for the soul.
I may do it the onerous method, I’ve no concern of the onerous method, however I’ve already carried out it the onerous method repeatedly, in Sunless Sea, and so the concept of uncovering the primary few ports repeatedly, slowly conveying items backwards and forwards till I’ve sufficient for my first ship improve repeatedly, has taken on one thing of an “ugh, I need to put the bins out” high quality.
It’s not precisely with out problem in merciful mode, nonetheless. Even with probably the greatest ships and among the greatest weapons for it, the snickering horrors of The Blue Kingdom declare my life usually. The real-time, mouse-clicky fight is a unique self-discipline from the remainder of the game, a little bit too twitchy maybe, however tense and thrilling too. I really feel actual concern when one thing bursts out of the gloom in the direction of me.
And so, for all my complaints about Sunless Skies being extra Mary-Kate than Elizabeth to Sunless Sea’s Ashley Olsen, I’ve discovered it very onerous to step away from it. It is a spot of great sights and horrible folks certainly, and I stay a sucker for the environment of its lengthy, sluggish journeys by means of locations in equal elements lovely and monstrous, even when the accumulate/deposit a field targets may be wearisome. The soundtrack’s beautiful too; like so many different components of Skies, it’s a fragile amplification of what made Sea so distinctive.
I didn’t want one other Sunless Sea. Sunless Sea was doing the job simply fantastic. I’m glad I acquired one, however. And if in case you have by no means earlier than visited a Sunless place, take to the Skies instantly.
Disclosure: my fellow RPS co-founder Kieron Gillen wrote for one of many characters in Sunless Skies, however I didn’t discover any of them speaking about Shed Seven, so I’m undecided which one it was.
