Sunless Sea Game Review

Sunless Sea is a roguelike RPG developed by Failbetter Games. It was officially released on February 2015 after a successful Kickstarter campaign. The game takes place in the Fallen London setting although I never played that browser game on which this one is based.

I decided to write something about this game since it's a game that I enjoyed a lot. Also, an expansion named Zubmariner is going to be released some time in the future so I figured there might be some renewed interest in it and there will be people looking for reviews and honest analysis on Sunless Sea.

Premise

Long story short, London has sunk underneath the Earth. You are a zee captain of a steam ship and you sail across a vast and terrible underzee for reasons known only to you. "Zee" and the like are the game's terms by the way. The world of Sunless Sea is one of fantasy and it's full of all sorts of bizarre stories and adventures that are sometimes humorous but are more often dark and twisted. 

How it Plays

You have a sky-view (if there even is a sky in Sunless Sea) of your cute, doomed little vessel. You sail it from port to port completing missions, and acquiring money and trinkets. The zee itself is home to some dangerous beasts which you probably don't want to mess with until, at least, you earn enough to get the more sturdier vessels.

You have four resources to manage: fuel, supplies, hull points and terror. Fuel is needed to run the ship, of course. Supplies refer to food which your crew consumes from time to time. Hull points refers to the integrity of your ship. Terror is a small bar measured from zero to a hundred and is a measure of the sanity of you and your crew. 

Management of these resources is crucial on top of whatever objective the player is working toward. The player may want to uncover the mystery of his character's dead father but that won't go anywhere if his boat is stranded in the middle of the zee and the insane crew members are drawing straws to see who goes inside the stew pot first. Fail to manage fuel and you'll be stranded with no hope of rescue. Run out of food and your crew will resort to cannibalism and subsequently spike the terror meter. If hull points goes down to zero, you sink and it's game over. If terror reaches a hundred, let's just say it won't be pleasant. You get the drift.

Obviously, it's easy to die in this game. Even if you get the hang of it, death can come quickly if you get sloppy. It is a rougelike after all. However, your character can create a "legacy" in the game and leave valuable heirlooms, books and even a mansion for your next character. This eases the burden of building up your character on subsequent playthroughs. There are many different ways to win depending on the questline you choose at character creation.

There are five stats in the game; hearts, veils, pages, mirrors and irons. Completing certain tasks require checks on these stats. For example, you are presented with a scenario where you can either fight a band of pirates or attempt to flee. Fighting requires a check on your irons while fleeing requires a check on your veils. The higher your stats, the higher the chances of doing certain actions.

Money, referred to as "echos", can be acquired by doing certain missions or by trading goods (or smuggling contraband) between the different ports in the underzee. Echos isn't the only currency in the game. You can trade in all sorts of curios and items. You can even trade more abstract items such as stories and secrets.

Combat that takes place on the top layer of the game where you're controlling your ship, is fairly straight forward. You must keep the enemy vessel or beast within range of your guns to prepare a charge for your cannons. Once charged, fire away. Some creatures are more dangerous than others, not to mention enemy ships. Needless to say, don't expect to take on a living mountain or a twenty-thousand ton dreadnought on your starter ship.

To sum it up: you explore, do the things you need to do, get the things you need to get, learn the things you need to learn,  manage your supplies, try not to die, die horribly and then start again but a bit stronger than the last attempt.

The Good

What makes Sunless Sea a great game is its narrative element. Seriously, this game has some pretty awesome writing. The narrative and the setting is what really sells the game. If you're into RPGS or games with cool and interesting worlds, then you can get a lot out of this game.

The mechanical elements of it: the exploration and combat, are respectable enough. I know that doesn't sound like high praise but the game is alright at what it does for the most part. Balancing your resources requires some thought, especially when you start sailing on the bigger ships, the SUVs of the underzee if you will, that burn fuel and eat supplies like no tomorrow.

The game encourages risk. Often the most profitable options are one's where you have to make dangerous trips to the farther locations.

The music is great and fits the setting perfectly. The art style and design of the whole world is also great though artstyle is a subjective thing.

The Bad

Sunless Sea is really amazing on the first try. On the subsequent tries, less so. When you're already familiar with all the locations, stories and secrets, everything starts to become tedious. At some point, the game becomes grindy and monotonous. You'll start to hate just how slow your ship is moving. As you become familiar of the ins and outs of the map, you'll learn where all the good spots to resupply are and the game gets a bit less tense.

The game has poor replay value is what I'm saying. You can never enjoy it as much as the first time playing so the player should savor it if he gets a chance to do so.

A lot of reading is required in this game, which is a turn off for some. While I said the mechanical aspects were good, they could have been better. Combat isn't as pulse-pounding as you'd expect. It gets the job done but it's not terribly exciting.

Being a roguelike, the whole trial and error way of doing things can be frustrating, especially when many of the the decisions to make in-game may lead to irreversible consequences. There is manual saving though, if the player so chooses.

Summary

Sunless Sea is a hard game to recommend but I'll do my best to give a good assessment of it. At its best, it has great stories, a great setting and has well designed sailing gameplay. At it's worst, it's too heavy to get into, is grindy and gets old and repetitive the more times you play it.

If you're the type of player who has a lot of patience, enjoys stories and lore and can immerse himself in the universe of a game, then Sunless Sea will be a great game for you. If you enjoy games with heavy narrative and can deal with games that can become grindy, then this game deserves your consideration.

 If you're a player who really isn't into story or doesn't have the patience for slow paced and grindy games, this isn't for you. The "roguelike" label should be warning enough. You're initial interest may carry you far but it really is a game that's easy to become bored with.

Sunless Sea isn't the type of game for broad, mass appeal despite the praise it received from mainstream review sites. It's the type of game that is liked by people who already know that they'll like it. Doesn't make sense? I know you get what I'm saying. People who have some real doubts that they won't like it, probably won't like it.

It's just that type of game.

The Flame in the Flood Game Review

The Flame in the Flood is a self described "rogue-lite" survival game developed and published by The Molasses Flood. It's a game wherein you journey through a flooded post-societal America, trying to survive by foraging for supplies along the way.

You might be turned off by it being a "survival" game and I can't blame you. God knows we've had too much of those types already. However, The Flame in the Flood has enough about it that sets it apart and above the typical stuff we see from its genre.

The expectation from survival games nowadays is that the player starts weak, slowly gathers supplies and builds a base camp. With The Flame in the Flood, it avoids the slow descent into a static kind of gameplay where survivalism becomes more of a farming or management simulator. The game is all about movement. The player navigates down a river to some unknown but important objective all the while visiting locations to forage for supplies which can be consumed immediately to satisfy the hunger and thirst meters, or used to craft gear and equipment. Supplies are finite and non-renewable. Once the location is exhausted, the player must make for the river and sail further downstream. Any kind of camping is temporary.

How It Works

The game is divided into two parts: the river portion and the locations. If you've ever played FTL:Faster Than Light, that should give you some idea on how this works. You drift down the river and visit locations on the way to the main objective. Visiting locations is necessary since hunger, thirst and fatigue are constantly draining throughout both game layers and you need all the supplies you can get but more on locations later.

Smooth sailing for now...

Navigating the river is treacherous. The raft is a bit hard to control. Worse, some parts of the river are rapids. If you're not careful, you could smash your fragile craft into pieces and drown. Going about it cautiously is a good idea but sometimes nearby supplies and locations may force you to take some risks to get to them. Another thing to note is that you cannot fight the current for long. Whether you like it or not, you are slowly but surely inching to your main objective so choose your locations carefully as visiting one often means you cant row upstream to the other.

Whitewater rafting!

The three orange icons are locations. Choose carefully.

You can make repairs to your craft as well as upgrade it. All of the upgrades are helpful and provides a nice goal to work towards while making it to your main objective. A rudder is a good idea. You can upgrade your raft for increased carrying capacity, a stove and even a motor which allows you a limited ability to go upstream and backtrack juicy locations you may have missed.

As for locations, there are different types of them. For example, campsites provide an increased chance of finding flint and always come with a ready-made fireplace. Filling stations always provide fuel as well as mechanical parts for your raft. Choosing locations based on what you need is a good strategy.

Entering a location

Like the river, there are dangers in these locations as well. Some have simple environmental hazards such as fire ants, poison ivy and snakes. Others have wolves and wild boars. If you're not careful, you can sustain injuries and even die.

You will learn to hate them.

 The injuries are also another important game mechanic. If you get bit by a wolf for example, you'll receive a laceration. If, in desperation, you eat spoiled food, you could get parasites in your stomach. Many of these injuries and status effects are debilitating, some can even kill you if untreated. The player must craft remedies from the supplies foraged from nature. Broken bones require a splint, which you can craft. Some skin conditions can be treated with aloe. Bandages are handy for lacerations, etc.

Salvage all you can. Everything is useful.

So that's the game. You sail down the river to the objective and visit locations to ransack them for anything useful. Keep your hunger, thirst and fatigue in check. Craft better clothing to keep warm. Minimize your chances at receiving injuries but treat them immediately if you do suffer a few. Avoid dying and keep moving.

Criticism
If there's anything bad I can say about the game is that it tends to get a bit repetitive. The location maps are quite small and get pretty samey the longer you play and the more of them you've visited. If you do very well, the game can get too easy and there's little reason to visit locations unless it's for upgrading your raft. Playing on the harder difficulty setting is good but this game could use an escalation of challenges as the player progresses, other than the constantly draining meters. Events maybe? I'm no designer.

Style

What can I say about the style? Well, it's a good looking game. It has a unique style, sure. I don't hate it but I can't say for sure that it's the best thing they could have done. It's just my opinion anyway. However, the music in this game is just great. The cheery country tunes fit the setting perfectly. It also doesn't play often enough that it gets overbearing. It's after periods of desperation that you feel glad when the music suddenly comes back on and you continue your journey down the river. It elicits an uplifting feeling. But it does become quite funny though when the happy music continues playing even when you stumble into a dangerous scenario. It's hilarious listening to such folksy music while being mauled to death by a wild boar.

The story in this game is vague. We don't know much other than something bad happened and there's this huge flood that wiped out society. There's a bit of mystery and it works. There's some religious  stuff here and there but it all just fits somehow. It all feels like some spiritual journey. It's hard to describe but I like it. There's a cute dog in it so there's also that.

Overall, it's a pretty good game I would recommend.