Criminally often associated exclusively with the work of Lovecraft, the universe Fallen London in fact has a much greater cultural foundation. Among the sources of inspiration here, Dickens and Poe are easily visible, and the authors’ general fascination with steampunk, space and the Victorian era inevitably refers to the works of H. G. Wells.
IN Sunless Skies the influence of the latter becomes especially noticeable, because from the dark underground depths the action of the game has moved into space, and the amount of steam, pipes and cunning mechanisms has increased by an order of magnitude.
Finding out whether the authors managed to do a decent job of fixing the bugs and making their new game better is the goal of this review
“You take advantage of a quiet moment to pull out your journal. The blank page sits before you, smug and unblemished. The horror." Sunless Skies.
Mechanical Sun
According to the background given by the developers in the browser-based RPG Fallen London, The middle of the 19th century was marked for England by the fact that its capital, London, was literally dragged underground by certain “Masters”. Neither the studio’s first game nor the one that followed it provided an explanation for why and for what purpose they needed it Sunless Sea. In the latter, instead, the player was immediately handed a small steamboat and sent off to explore the various sights of the underworld (orig. Neath).
Plot-wise, Sunless Sea set the player only one global goal: to accumulate a lot of money, become a famous sailor, or find the remains of his missing father. In addition to this, there were several more hidden endings that the player was asked to find himself. Well, there was also the opportunity to retire in a mansion by the sea, which was also considered, in a way, the end of the game. Of all the starting ambitions, the most interesting felt, perhaps, was the quest to find the bones of an ancestor, which, depending on the chosen background of the character, forcibly drove the player through various unusual ports and generally felt like a full-fledged story least tied to grinding.
Events of the studio’s third game – Sunless Skies, begin ten years after Sunless Sea. The inhabitants of the underworld successfully passed through the gates of the Greedy Horizon (orig. Avid Horizon) and rose to cosmic heights, without losing touch with the already established symbols of the series. We are again offered three global goals to choose from: to get rich, to become famous, or to find some “truth”. However, they feel completely different, and each has a set of sequential steps that form a coherent plot and story.
A pile of abandoned ships can still be found at the gates of the Greedy Horizon.
As for the setting, it has qualitatively expanded and enriched. To the sale of human souls was added the trade in time, which is mined in the form of raw watches in the mines of Her Majesty, and the confrontation between independent colonists and the government joined the marauders and pirates. By the way, the player is allowed to directly influence the outcome of this local war. Well, the intriguing devils now plot each other not in complete darkness, but in the light of an artificial Sun, which you can also visit and try to extend his life.
Steam boilers go to heaven
The simplest, and at the same time, fully conveying the spirit of the game formulation would sound like this: Sunless Skies – This Space Rangers, who were deprived of banter and satire, hooked on the needle of widespread micromanagement, and dipped into a vat of thick atmosphere of hopelessness and oppression.
The central engine in the world of the game, in the literal sense, is an old locomotive inherited at the very beginning of history. As the player travels, he will have to monitor the condition of the hull, the crew of the “ship” and the amount of supplies on board. General set of parameters compared to Sunless Sea has not undergone significant changes: for the normal functioning of the locomotive, only food and fuel are needed. But the significantly reduced size of the hold affected the balance and logistics of movements.
The starting ship holds only 12 units of cargo. You won’t go wild.
From now on, it will not be possible to load up to capacity with fuel, food and simply rush forward exploring the entire map without visiting a port. You will have to carefully plan your route, stop at intermediate stops to replenish supplies, and study the assortment at stations in advance. Some of them offer only one type of resource, and getting into a situation where the last bag of coal flew into the furnace with an alarming cry, and the nearest port is not able to sell you a new one is as easy as shelling pears.
Speaking of ports. One of the most significant and noticeable differences from the studio’s previous game was a completely redesigned world generation system. Instead of one region, as before, we have four, each of which is not only visually different, but also has its own set of unique game situations. At the same time, the main port of each region (read: hub) has now been moved exactly to the center, which significantly expands the number of starting directions for research and reduces the distance to each individual smaller port.
Unlike Sunless Sea, the world is https://klikfifacasino.co.uk/ no longer divided into conventional squares, and the map is drawn more honestly.
Alas, there was a fly in the ointment. The updated world generation system, in fact, leads to a number of problems, some of which become noticeable when fully studying the first region. With a general equidistance from the hub, the ports can be located almost at different ends of the location. And if, for example, a product necessary for purchasing is in one corner, and a profitable offer for its sale is in another, then there are not many options left. Either refuse the deal in favor of the time saved, or be patient and go on a monotonous journey for a good half hour.
However, the second option now makes sense. Unlike Sunless Sea, where trade brought me pitiful pennies, and you could only get goods cheaply by persistent grinding, Sunless Skies offers a system of Deals and Opportunities (orig. Bargains and Prospects). How does this work.
In each hub of the region, once every thirty in-game days, profitable trade deals become available. The player, if desired, can take up to four such transactions and sell goods on them for an unlimited period of time. The goods themselves, at prices below market prices, periodically appear in smaller ports. At the same time, no one forbids buying up profitable offers in advance if you suddenly stumble upon them in the port, and there is no suitable Deal on hand. In order not to lose valuable space in the hold, what you have acquired can be stored in a special safe deposit box, which can be accessed from the hub in each region.
The storage is not limited in size, and you can dump your possessions there in any quantity.
There remains the opportunity to obtain various valuables with blood and sweat, namely in battles. Fortunately, the latter have now become much more dynamic, and, most importantly, the player now participates in them directly, aiming guns with the mouse and dodging enemy fire using the Q and E buttons.
With maneuvers, however, serious oddities often arise, because you have to constantly keep in mind which of the sides of the locomotive is right and which is left and not confuse the buttons corresponding to the sides of the strafe. An unpleasant situation when the locomotive is turned with its nose to the south and the Q button, instead of the usual strafe to the right, sends the locomotive to the left, becomes a real generator of stupid deaths and abuse of the developers.
An additional way to get resources for free are random objects and encounters generated right along the route, some of which will require you to first install a certain improvement on board. So, for example, to obtain the contents of a space asteroid, the player will need to install an industrial drill, and to extract food from defeated creatures, a mechanical can opener.
High-level equipment, in addition to its basic properties, increases other characteristics of the locomotive.
However, as before, ports serve as the generator of the main events in the game. The developers not only increased the number of interesting places, but also added unique stories to each of them. Situations have sunk into oblivion when, upon entering a port, we saw a couple of meager opportunities, one of which was the unremarkable collection of a port report.
The icing on the cake was the fact that these very reports, from low-paid opportunities to recoup at least part of the fuel spent on the road, turned into a full-fledged way of earning money and are now compensated in the amount of hundreds of coins of local currency. The value of the Services received for them (orig. Favors) also grew. In exchange for the latter, the player character receives rare and hard-to-get items, some of which allow you to unlock action options in random encounters or even give access to certain events in ports.
Terror from the Depths
In addition to items, the outcome of events in Sunless Skies often influence the characteristics of our character. Their composition, relative to their predecessor, has hardly changed: only the Pages attribute has been removed (orig. Pages). Otherwise, we have the same set of Iron, Hearts, Reflections and Covers (orig. Iron, Hearts, Mirrors and Veils), which now improve as the character gains new levels. It is worth noting here that previously, Secrets were responsible for improving characteristics (orig. Secrets), each of which was not easy to obtain, they improved the characteristic by exactly one point and, in addition, could be useful in other places.
Now we have a full-fledged system of perks, each of which often increases two character characteristics at once. Some of them, in addition to their main effect, also give relationship tokens with factions or help get rid of nightmares.
Options include making yourself an imaginary ghost friend or surviving a fatal wound.
Nightmares. Those present in Sunless Sea, they overtook the player at the moment when the level of accumulated horror reached a critical level. Of all the gameplay mechanics, this one has undergone the least changes. The growth, directly, of horror, as before, is influenced by everything. During a search of the wrecked ship, its crazy captain was found – get horror points. One of your people died while extracting honey from defeated choir bees – get horror points. Just been away from ports for a long time – get horror points.
According to subjective feelings, horror in Sunless Skies began to accumulate faster, and removing its negative effects became much more difficult. For example, it is not enough to simply moor at the regional hub and relax. Central ports can only reduce the horror parameter by 25 units and do this not always, but once every 15 days. It has become especially difficult to get rid of the already mentioned nightmares – debuffs that a player can have no more than four of.
Getting rid of them will require a special fee, which increases with each subsequent use. The special objects that appeared on the world map – Miracles (orig. Wonders). As you approach them, the level of horror drops, but you won’t be able to use them all the time either. Like hubs, they provide the opportunity to reduce horror once every 15 days.
Color from other worlds
The first thing that catches your eye when starting up Sunless Skies – this is an updated color palette and interface. Darkness and shades of sea green have been replaced by bright colors and a predominance of purple tones in the palette. The redesigned interface has moved from the upper left corner to the lower and in total began to take up less space with the same amount of information. Entries from the journal began to emerge right in the vastness of space, as was the case back in the trailers for Sunless Sea, that looks damn stylish.
The amazing art of everything deserves special mention and praise. Starting from character portraits and sketches of random events, ending with drawing the world. Since the action of the game has now moved from dark waters to space, the depth and multi-level nature revealed to us are reflected in the art. Here and there you can see pipes and groves running under the locomotive, and the first entry into London evokes memories of Star Wars or the Fifth Element.
Big Ben, which appears so often in promotional materials, is a local shrine, and hearing its ringing is considered great luck.
The general convenience affected, among other things, the port interface. Images of requirements for access to a particular event have become larger and better describe what the player needs. The font itself has become larger, and the already completed stages of history neatly fade and float to the top, shifting the emphasis to updated versions of events. For a game that asks you to spend 90% of your time reading text, this is a pretty important nuance.
But what seems to have become less is the musical accompaniment. Despite the general naturalness and volume of sound effects, be it gunfire or entry into a port, the music itself seemed to have lost in quantity. Despite the fact that there are almost more good and atmospheric compositions here than in Sunless Sea, they turn on less often, and as if not always.
And here is the time to talk about the changed atmosphere of the game. Anxiety, darkness and fear of the unknown have been replaced by… melancholy and a feeling of doom from the realization of the inevitable death of this world. It’s not that chthonic horrors and the unknown have gone away completely. But now mainly only one region will have to work on this topic – Eleutheria (orig. Eleutheria). The rest will tell their stories. In some ways mysterious, in others full of joy and freedom, and in others tragic. But they absolutely do not set themselves the task of instilling horror in the player.
Even the sight of the remains of a dead star here feels sad rather than frightening. After all, it was man who led her to death.
***
To summarize, I would like to say that compared to Sunless Sea, the developers have done a tremendous amount of work on bugs. The game now has much more activities and gameplay itself, and the game itself has become much less reliant on grind. However, you need to keep in mind that this is still more of an interactive book than a full-fledged game, and draw appropriate conclusions.
Yes, Sunless Skies will often be monotonous. Yes, Sunless Skies will offer you tons of text that can sometimes take 20 minutes to read. However, if you are prepared for this and have patience in advance, then in return the game will offer a lot of interesting situations and stories, as well as an incomparable spirit of discovery.
It is worth paying attention if:
• Have you played Sunless Sea and you found it incomprehensible/too monotonous/too grindy.
• If you, at one time, flew hundreds of hours in Space Rangers and are looking for a similar experience.
• If you love well-written story-driven adventures and don’t get tired of reading a lot of literary text.
You can safely pass by if:
• You don’t speak English well (the game doesn’t have a Russian language yet) and you don’t want to spend the evening with a dictionary.
• Do you expect the game to place more emphasis on combat, dynamics and hardcore resource management?.
• The idea of flying locomotives through space seems funny to you, and the gloomy atmosphere makes you bored and despondent.
Despite the fact that the game positions itself as a roguelike, the prospect of fighting through the same events every time is more boring than providing a new experience.
For this reason, it is better to play the game in Merciful Mode, where you can roll back the save to the last port call and continue the journey without losing a fair share of progress. Sunless Skies is still more about the plot and stories, and not about overcoming.
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