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KickStarter Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition - new Fallen London game from Sunless Sea devs

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Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Sunless Skies is a very enjoyable choose-your-own-adventure if you cut out all the travel between ports and horrible combat. Basically turn on the developer debug menu to jump around ports, and if you fancy a bit of sightseeing get a speedhack. I really enjoyed "The Truth" ambition and the Aunt storyline that way.
 

Jenkem

その目、だれの目?
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Make the Codex Great Again! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I helped put crap in Monomyth
I backed this and honestly not really feeling it.. It feels like there is no threat when travelling compared to Sea.. sure you come across some things but the lateral movement makes most things easy to dodge and avoid... in Sea I felt like my butt was constantly clenched when travelling because of the more restrictive movement.. I also liked how you could burn fuel to GTFO.. I think the biggest thing that makes things not very exciting is how slow the insanity meter works now, in Sea it felt like I was constantly balancing trying to stay sane..
 

Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
11,927
Finally got off my ass and installed Cheat Engine so I could speed cheat and reduce travel time and it seems pretty beneficial. Can crank it down when I'm somewhere new that requires navigating and/or get into combat, but otherwise it just cuts down on "Staring at my train" time. In fact it's making me strongly consider firing up Sunless Sea again at some point so I can crank the speed up, especially since I never played it after they added Zubmariner despite owning it because of the early sucker bonus. It's more of a grind and more of a pain in the ass than Skies but all the same, being able to reduce the wasted time might turn me around on the game some.

Also haven't posted in a while but I got the trading train, around 5k in the bank, and then made the trip to Albion. Albion's been an interesting experience. Much more wide-open than the Reach, some harder enemies (Though maybe less of them) but terror's a more pressing concern since it feels like every goddamn port is parked right on top of a horror. Been hemorrhaging money ever since I made the trip (Down to around 3.5k now, although some of that was stocking up on stuff like tea and crockery since you can't get it in the Reach regularly) but I'm advancing quests and it's interesting to explore. Game didn't really end up what I hoped/dreamed for from Sea/Skies but I'm reasonably happy I chipped in on the Kickstarter for it since I'm still enjoying poking at it.
You don't need cheat engine, the game is highly moddable (or at least Sunless Sea was). Unfortunately it doesn't seem anyone has made a comprehensive unfuck mod for it.
Personally I only touched speed, fuel efficiency, and cargo values myself, as I didn't have the game knowledge of what to change, or what is reasonable to change it to, for other things.
 

alyvain

Learned
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Mar 18, 2017
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I can't believe how bad this game is.

It's like six times bigger than it ought to be.

They don't understand that tedious "gameplay" is mostly a useless, brainless, not fun at-all time-consuming nightmare. They don't understand that all this "game" can be is a visual representation for a neat interactive fiction/CYOA story. They simply don't.

And given the contents of the later updates, they won't.

They don't understand that you don't care for intricacies of some celestial story if what you get in terms of gameplay mechanics is a resource that you've already received in fifty other storylets. They don't understand that "bring two crates of gemstones that you can buy in a diferrent location after thirty minutes of travelling" is a bad design choice if you've already done exactly that twenty times.

They don't understand that character progression in terms of "choose aspect of your past go obtain a little bonus for your skills" doesn't fucking work, because the aspects don't fucking affect neither gameplay nor the story.

They don't understand that grindy resource simulation diminish your experience with the writing.

It's like they decided that the problem with Sunless Sea was that the game wasn't pretty enough.

I like some aspects of Sunless Skies a lot, but I do hope this studio goes bankrupt. They simply don't learn.
 

Zakhad

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Gurtex
the aspects don't fucking affect neither gameplay nor the story.

They can though? There are a bunch of points where your choices at level up affect your choices in story events, just as your actions in the game affect your possible choices on level-up. Not usually in huge ways, but reasonably often in my experience. It could certainly be greater, where level up gives you outright "perks", but that sounds like we'd want it to become more like fallout 4, and that's something I'm reluctant to say on principle for any game.
 

alyvain

Learned
Joined
Mar 18, 2017
Messages
376
the aspects don't fucking affect neither gameplay nor the story.

They can though? There are a bunch of points where your choices at level up affect your choices in story events, just as your actions in the game affect your possible choices on level-up. Not usually in huge ways, but reasonably often in my experience. It could certainly be greater, where level up gives you outright "perks", but that sounds like we'd want it to become more like fallout 4, and that's something I'm reluctant to say on principle for any game.

Can you elaborate please? I don't really remember that except for a few storylets, but maybe I didn't understand you
 

Zakhad

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Gurtex
the aspects don't fucking affect neither gameplay nor the story.

They can though? There are a bunch of points where your choices at level up affect your choices in story events, just as your actions in the game affect your possible choices on level-up. Not usually in huge ways, but reasonably often in my experience. It could certainly be greater, where level up gives you outright "perks", but that sounds like we'd want it to become more like fallout 4, and that's something I'm reluctant to say on principle for any game.

Can you elaborate please? I don't really remember that except for a few storylets, but maybe I didn't understand you

Yeah I'm mostly thinking of storylets... can't remember most of them OTTOMH, but you can bury your predicted death to exchange it for a different perk, you can use the past betrayal in the rite of wrongs, your link to your mentor affects your eventual meeting, and there are a bunch of times where you can affect someone's reaction using your past (e.g. lost love with the blue Kingdom rescue quest) that give you increased rewards. I'm sure there are some other big ones but can't remember without digging into it again and I'm holding off for a while so that it feels fresh. Some stuff doesn't pay off for a long time, e.g. the Blemmigan you carry around for ages who turns out to have a quest deep in the BK, so I'm sure there are a bunch that I've missed, too.
 

alyvain

Learned
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376
Yeah I'm mostly thinking of storylets... can't remember most of them OTTOMH, but you can bury your predicted death to exchange it for a different perk, you can use the past betrayal in the rite of wrongs, your link to your mentor affects your eventual meeting, and there are a bunch of times where you can affect someone's reaction using your past (e.g. lost love with the blue Kingdom rescue quest) that give you increased rewards. I'm sure there are some other big ones but can't remember without digging into it again and I'm holding off for a while so that it feels fresh. Some stuff doesn't pay off for a long time, e.g. the Blemmigan you carry around for ages who turns out to have a quest deep in the BK, so I'm sure there are a bunch that I've missed, too.

Yeah, right, but burying your death gameplay-wise simply slightly changes your stats. In terms of storytelling this concept is interesting, but gameplay mechanics doesn't really recognize the scale of what the story (most of the stories actually) implies.

I do remember having a different storylet while doing contraband. If you had a shady mentor, you can meet a certain NPC in Albion as an old friend, yet he still says "Well, you still had to do a fetch-quest because my partners have to be sure". Thanks, Telltale

I do think that core gameplay mechanics doesn't work particularly well with storytelling approach they've chosen to implement. And it's worse than in Sunless Sea or A House of Many Doors (arguably the best one of the bunch, no wonder that some of the better bits in SS such as what happens behind Death's Door are written by the developer of AHoMD).
 

Zakhad

Savant
Joined
Dec 10, 2012
Messages
284
Location
Gurtex
Yeah I'm mostly thinking of storylets... can't remember most of them OTTOMH, but you can bury your predicted death to exchange it for a different perk, you can use the past betrayal in the rite of wrongs, your link to your mentor affects your eventual meeting, and there are a bunch of times where you can affect someone's reaction using your past (e.g. lost love with the blue Kingdom rescue quest) that give you increased rewards. I'm sure there are some other big ones but can't remember without digging into it again and I'm holding off for a while so that it feels fresh. Some stuff doesn't pay off for a long time, e.g. the Blemmigan you carry around for ages who turns out to have a quest deep in the BK, so I'm sure there are a bunch that I've missed, too.

Yeah, right, but burying your death gameplay-wise simply slightly changes your stats. In terms of storytelling this concept is interesting, but gameplay mechanics doesn't really recognize the scale of what the story (most of the stories actually) implies.

I do remember having a different storylet while doing contraband. If you had a shady mentor, you can meet a certain NPC in Albion as an old friend, yet he still says "Well, you still had to do a fetch-quest because my partners have to be sure". Thanks, Telltale

I do think that core gameplay mechanics doesn't work particularly well with storytelling approach they've chosen to implement. And it's worse than in Sunless Sea or A House of Many Doors (arguably the best one of the bunch, no wonder that some of the better bits in SS such as what happens behind Death's Door are written by the developer of AHoMD).

I do think there are limitations with the essential design that might benefit from a serious do-over, top to bottom, so that A: there is more choice in gameplay styles and B: there is more connection between core loop and story progression.

The game seems to have done pretty well though, for an indie, and got decent reviews (although the latter doesn't always mean success). I'm not sure if they'd have any motivation for really trying to switch it up.
 

alyvain

Learned
Joined
Mar 18, 2017
Messages
376
The game seems to have done pretty well though, for an indie, and got decent reviews (although the latter doesn't always mean success). I'm not sure if they'd have any motivation for really trying to switch it up.

I'm not so sure actually. There were some concerns after the release but Failbetter said that everything's fine and commercially it's even better than they've expected. Still, recent Steam reviews are "mixed" and according to SteamSpy (it's a long shot, I know) there are ten times less owners than Sunless Sea.

The last update (I think) was well-met, but I dunno, it still isn't enough, so we'll see
 
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Dec 4, 2017
Messages
195
Insert Title Here
Just bought this after enjoying Sunless Sea immensely, and am quite happy with it so far. Besides, I already forgave Sunless Sea its weak gameplay mechanics because the setting, writing and atmosphere are so damn good.
 

Verylittlefishes

Sacro Bosco
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I can't believe how bad this game is.

It's like six times bigger than it ought to be.

They don't understand that tedious "gameplay" is mostly a useless, brainless, not fun at-all time-consuming nightmare. They don't understand that all this "game" can be is a visual representation for a neat interactive fiction/CYOA story. They simply don't.

And given the contents of the later updates, they won't.

They don't understand that you don't care for intricacies of some celestial story if what you get in terms of gameplay mechanics is a resource that you've already received in fifty other storylets. They don't understand that "bring two crates of gemstones that you can buy in a diferrent location after thirty minutes of travelling" is a bad design choice if you've already done exactly that twenty times.

They don't understand that character progression in terms of "choose aspect of your past go obtain a little bonus for your skills" doesn't fucking work, because the aspects don't fucking affect neither gameplay nor the story.

They don't understand that grindy resource simulation diminish your experience with the writing.

It's like they decided that the problem with Sunless Sea was that the game wasn't pretty enough.

I like some aspects of Sunless Skies a lot, but I do hope this studio goes bankrupt. They simply don't learn.

*sigh* So I'm not the only one thinking this.

The game is beautiful though, and some narrative ideas are great, but I almost smashed my keyboard after dying in 15th time and needing to restart, and there are no fucking saves.
 
Joined
Dec 4, 2017
Messages
195
Insert Title Here
I almost smashed my keyboard after dying in 15th time and needing to restart, and there are no fucking saves.

I might be understanding something wrong here, but you can save the game though? I'm almost done with the second area and have died about 5 times so far (all of them around London), but that isn't too much of a problem as the game auto-saves in each harbor, and so far I have been able to keep my sanity and nightmares mostly under control, unlike in Sunless Sea. There is a permadeath option of course, but I'm not masochistic enough to use it.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,158
Weren't the devs of this game pro-SJWs and danger hairs as well? It would explain a lot about poor mechanics.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2019
Messages
1,307
I'm enjoying this quite a bit so far. I'm very early on into the game but it's immediately better in almost all aspects compared to the prequel. Exploring in the locomotive is actually enjoyable since it moves faster from the get-go and the rate of supplies/fuel consumption is much lower. This time around there is a well developed economy system to cater to your inner Shekelmonger Merchant King. Thematically, the first area is much different than the rest of the game, which as a whole is very faithful to the "gothic-horror" of the first game. Lastly, this game is much more of an RPG now with attributes and stat-checks. I'm liking it. I'm getting the impression that there's tons of content here as well. I'll report again later.
 

Jasede

Arcane
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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
It still has that awful writing style I hate. I get it, some like it, and it's their brand, but man.

"<Unusual descriptor> <noun rarely or never combined with preceding adjective> <odd verb> <made up word object>."

"Baying locomotives careening through the zea-sky."
 
Joined
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Messages
1,307
It still has that awful writing style I hate. I get it, some like it, and it's their brand, but man.

"<Unusual descriptor> <noun rarely or never combined with preceding adjective> <odd verb> <made up word object>."

"Baying locomotives careening through the zea-sky."
Oh yeah, it's absolute pretentious garbage on surface, but thankfully the substance (the actual story behind the hipster drivel) is actually quite good and that coupled with the stellar presentation makes it bearable for me. I hate pretentious writing as much as you do, but it's so commonplace in games nowadays that if you ignore them altogether, you can miss out on quite a lot of otherwise good games. Sunless Skies is a good game. It even has a lot of good stories in it, it's just delivered in a high-on-one's-own-farts style - like Pillars of Eternity is. Oh well, what can you do?
 

Jasede

Arcane
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Messages
24,793
Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
Pillars is even worse in at least whoever wrote this, while pretentious, was creative and had a good vernacular, even if they flexed it to high heaven.

Pillars on the other hand seems like it was written by a sweatshop of English majors following all the style guides. If you follow all the advice to the letter, your game ends up having no voice, your writing ends up with no personality, faceless.

I may hate the writing in Sunless but it's distinct and memorable and has personality.
 

Gondolin

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Purveyor of fine art
This probably belongs in a news thread, Infinitron.

Now the anniversary festivities are over, we’re going to relax the pace for the latter half of the year. That isn’t a pace we can sustain even when Fallen London is our main focus (we started work on the anniversary updates months in advance). Also, we are now working on two new games. One of these is set in Fallen London. We’ll have more to say about them later in the year!

https://www.reddit.com/r/fallenlondon/comments/hf286x/whats_next_in_fallen_london/
 

Verylittlefishes

Sacro Bosco
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This probably belongs in a news thread, Infinitron.

Now the anniversary festivities are over, we’re going to relax the pace for the latter half of the year. That isn’t a pace we can sustain even when Fallen London is our main focus (we started work on the anniversary updates months in advance). Also, we are now working on two new games. One of these is set in Fallen London. We’ll have more to say about them later in the year!

https://www.reddit.com/r/fallenlondon/comments/hf286x/whats_next_in_fallen_london/

Two New Games !!!! New Fallen London game !!!

a675edaa12dd5829757bfe8b7f540918.jpg


Wait, didn't Failbetter games and FL in general are owned now by the "former colleagues" who "sided" with the "victims" of Alexis Kennedy's "harassment"? (see this award-winning comment).

1a5.jpg


but still, they've made Sunless Skies without Kennedy & it is a very good game.

udivlennyy-negr-za-stolom-original-768x629.jpg


I DON'T KNOW HOW TO REACT ON THIS PLZ HALP
 

Nevermore

Novice
Joined
Jun 23, 2020
Messages
30
Location
The Nest
I noticed that I enjoy FB games just for exploring. I didn't even try to beat Sunless Sea or Sunless Skies but I keep them installed for these special occasions when I need to feel some solitude.
Maybe it's because of music. The music is great in both games (though I like the Sea's score better).
 

Nutria

Arcane
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한양
Strap Yourselves In
I think Fallen London is a great setting. My problems have always been with the mechanics. Kennedy is just obsessed with wasting players' time. Maybe somebody else can actually make a good game in FL. I'm not optimistic just because it's 2020 and everything is shit now, but I'll keep an open mind.
 

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