KickStarter Sunless Sea - an undersea trading and exploration game

[Angthoron]

What Gondolin said. http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...a-trading-and-exploration-game-released.92676

superb writing

Yeah, no. Writing is all over the place. Some is good, some is downright unbearable.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2015/02/18/theres-no-cure-drizzly-november-soul-like-sunless-sea/

But I ultimately approve of what Failbetter has done with the turgid pacing, negative space, and deliberate repetition. A sea should be prohibitively vast and discouragingly indifferent. If it takes questionable gameplay decisions to do this, have at it. I have enough games that put a premium on pacing. In fact, I’d say pacing is the main focus of modern game design. The primary mission of most game designers is to keep your interest, no matter what, lest you decide to go play something else. Few and far between are games like Far Cry 2, Alien: Isolation, and Sunless Sea. If you want a thrill ride, there’s always Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag. But if you want an incredibly well written adventure across something approximating a sea, there is no game like Sunless Sea.

Boring repetitive slow game that wastes your time to the detriment of the gameplay, good use of negative space A+ videogame.

Fucking reviewers.

 

[tuluse]

He should be forcibly made to play Sid Meier's Pirates! (the original one).

 

[Riso]

The new update added now a possibility to found your own kingdom! Plus, monster spawns now actually work properly.

 

[Norfleet]

On the Scion thing: it's the later, and yeah, you can start with all the money And you may as well, because unless you had a super valuable weapon, what else would be worthwhile? Keeping the chart just fucks you out of all the secrets you get from exploring the map.

The money options are pretty much the best ones, since they save you a lot of tedious early-game grinding. There's no super-valuable weapon to be had, not even the one quest weapon, which is comparable to a $900 store weapon (they do the same damage, except the quest weapon hurts monsters more...but the store weapon stunlocks EVERYTHING, which is clearly way better!).

I've also been screwing with all the factions and have had the oppurtunity for at least one of the special endings that gives all your following characters a stat boost. Held off though, since I'm more interested in finishing some of the officer quests, which are way way more difficult to do.

There's a "correct" sequence of things to do that will let you collect all the stat boost bonii in one run...but you can fuck it up pretty much from the character generation screen, as you MUST start without filling anything out. Also, as it turns out, you also need to intentionally kill your very first captain and lose everything to unlock a certain part of the game, which requires you die. So basically, you have three runs: Round one, sell ship, buy gun, suicide, round 2, don't fill out chargen, do all the things, and then round 3, get to play for real.

 

[Heresiarch]

I've beaten the game, burying my father's bones. Some thoughts:

- The game's low speed became quite irritating after revealing 70% of the map because there's no more big excitements anymore, all it remains are grinding, fedexing, etc. etc. At the beginning the slow speed didn't bother me too much because I was busy managing fuel and supplies and dodging monsters and so on, but when survival was no more a problem, the slow speed combined with a devoid of interesting neutral or friendly NPCs became a chore.

- The early game was really hard on economy, made me happy even if I could get just 200 echoes of profit. But then mid game on, as soon as I could get sunlight smuggling going, the game difficulty immediately collapsed. Not necessary a bad thing because by that time I got tired of making trade/report runs anyway. Which brings to the next problem...

- The stories of the game world are dynamic which is wonderful, but the trading/shopping are static which sucks. No "big market opportunities" like in Space Rangers 2, nor "favourite trading town got conquered by NPC" in Pirates. You found a favorite trade route? Good. Keep running the same route over and over and over again.

- Inconsistency across the game. Sometimes game objectives show up in the "objectives" table. Sometimes they show up in individual location's table. Sometimes they show up in your cargo hold as curiosities, which is a huge wtf for me.

- Exploring is fun, until you run out of things to explore. You can completely ignore locations - Visage for example, I've visited there a dozen times, played with as much as the different routes/jobs as possible, but nothing truly interesting happens. Some of the quests can be extremely lengthy and the rewards can be either rage-inducingly useless or surprisingly welcome depending on how you play the game. You can imagine the former will be the majority when you play into late game.

I give the game 7.5/10, because the initial 10 or 20 hours can be really fun, especially if you don't read the wikis and try to figure everything out by yourself. The 20 to 30 hours can start to lose steam because you may have all the important places discovered and major quests in your pocket waiting to be solved. The 30+ hours becomes boring back and forth shipping for stuff, and by that time my willpower gave up and just read all the wiki pages to find solutions because I cound't bear wasting 10 minutes travelling to a different place just to find myself forgot bringing a barrel of wine to finish some stupid quest.

 

[Norfleet]

- Exploring is fun, until you run out of things to explore. You can completely ignore locations - Visage for example, I've visited there a dozen times, played with as much as the different routes/jobs as possible, but nothing truly interesting happens. Some of the quests can be extremely lengthy and the rewards can be either rage-inducingly useless or surprisingly welcome depending on how you play the game. You can imagine the former will be the majority when you play into late game.

Visage is pretty good, -10 terror and +2 outlandish artifact and a snippet per visit when your light thingy is on. Not stellar, but definitely worth a stop when you pass by.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Interesting premise, but I hate that kind of interface where function follows form. Completely unplayable. The last game I shelved because of that was East India Company.

 

[LESS T_T]

Sales: http://gamasutra.com/blogs/AdamMyer...e_Part_III_Early_Access_and_Final_Release.php

And now, our cumulative sales graph.



We reached 100,000 copies on 25th February. Within three weeks of finishing Sunless Sea, we more than doubled our most optimistic lifetime estimates. We're delighted, and deeply grateful to everyone who made this possible. Everyone who gave us feedback on the game. Everyone who trusted us enough to back the game on Kickstarter, or buy it during early access. Everyone who shared their expertise. Our wonderful Fallen London players. Thank you all! We can continue releasing free updates. And we can keep on making the games we want to make, with stories that get into your dreams.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

There is no justice. *Single tear of a Batman*

 

[yes plz]

Has anyone tried this again recently? I'm wondering if they added any new worthwhile features, content, or mechanic updates/tweaks.

 

[Space Satan]

Economy is crippled. Trading with general goods is a waste of time and money. Buying cool engines will get you broke, as they hog fuel like crazy and will get you bankrupt in no time because fuel is damn expensive all the while giving you negligable speed bonus. So better stick with low level engines. There are only a few profitable trade runs in the game, but 90% of trage goods are junk. Piracy is not profitable.
Great potential but SO damn underperforming in many aspects.

 

[Jasede]

I liked this game for a while for its mood but now the somewhat pretentious (not terrible - pretentious) started to annoy me. It's also quite boring, even if you do sunlight trading to speed things up.

 

[Ulminati]

Did they ever add enough new content to make this game worth (re)playing? Every game having the same islands and quests in (roughly) the same locations killed it for me after release.

 

[Alfons]

I saw the game a while back and didn't really care about it. Recently I saw a couple more screenshots and the locales seem interesting, I haven't pulled the trigger on it because I quit games with interesting stories and settings because the game was tedious, slow and repetitive, it just wasn't worth it. Is it worth the 20 bucks to give this a shot?

 

[Angthoron]

Nope.

 

[omega21]

I regret buying it, don't get it full price.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

http://www.failbettergames.com/a-first-look-at-zubmariner/

Spoiler

By Hannah Flynn, October 15, 2015 · Sunless Sea Zubmariner
Hello, delicious friends!

We’re working on our first piece of DLC for Sunless Sea, Zubmariner. We’re now ready to share some glimpses of the world beneath the Unterzee. We’re a bit giddy. Hold our clammy hand, would you?

Below the waves
Beneath the water, as above, you’ll find a number of story-laden ports to visit and zee-beasts to encounter.

Wrack, the City of Delights
One such port is the underwater city of Wrack: an arbour of shipwrecks, where the flesh of kelp brings intoxication.


Concept art for Wrack (click any image for a bigger version)

The Thalatte

Concept art for the Thalatte

The Thalatte is an exposed-looking collection of wattled and shining organs, like a half-completed vivisection, with a fanged orifice at the front. This orifice applies a force which draws your Zubmarine towards it. The Thalatte can move rapidly, ram, and expectorate gobbets of vile fluid.



Lights in the darkness
Your Zubmarine’s prow light can’t match the oppressive darkness. Things lurk outside of its beam. Some of them are glowing. Some of them aren’t.

These screenshots are early ideas of how the seabed will look, and the kinds of things you might encounter:


A bio-luminescent zee-beast


Shipwreck


Glowing coral


Vents

We hope this taste has whetted your appetite! Please tell us what you think in the comments. What are you looking forward to? What would you like to know more about? Wait – what was that, overhead?

Your friends,

Failbetter Games

P.S. The Gamers Edition print of Demeaux’s Navigational Chart of the Known Unterzee has sold out! If there’s enough demand we’re hoping to get another run done by Christmas. There will be regular news about any reprints on twitter @failbettergames.

 

[Space Satan]

I'd rather see them fix fucking broken economy and repetitive boring combat.

 

[Starwars]

Shouldn't that DLC have been out quite a while ago or am I thinking of something else?

Still butthurt about this game. So much potential lost.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Yep. This is why I always go into a fit when people start ranting about how much better games would be with 50000 new mechanics to fix everything. If this game had just trimmed even a bit of the extra shit it has, like say the engines changing your speed (which barely affects anything) or politics system, or the essentially non-viable mechanic of capturing ships by slaying the crew, it could have polished the rest of the game into what it should have been, with decent trade routes and combat.

 

[Riso]

I'd rather see them fix fucking broken economy and repetitive boring combat.

That is working as designed.

 

[upwardlymobile]

the game is too slow in advancement which it just uses to cover up how little content there really is

after i got sick of it i tried playing the web game it's based on and holy lol it has to be the most insultingly jewish p2w garbage ever

i feel bad for having given these shysters $20

 

[DarkUnderlord]

dafuq you make money in this game?

Fucking potting around exploring shit and reporting back like some kind of fucking tosser but ain't even covering my fucking fuel and supply costs. Realised turning off the light burned less fuel but holee fuck out exploring shit because that's what you're supposed to do but fucking get stuck somewhere not able to even buy fucking supplies because I don't have any dosh, or the fucking port doesn't even sell supplies like WTF and "DON'T CLICK THIS TEXT OPTION UNLESS YOU HAVE A REASON" well fuck, I think not having any fucking food or fuel is a good fucking reason but no we get all terrified for something I dunno it's like a cheap horror flick and what does 100 terror do anyway?

OH I DIED. Like if you're going to give me a fucking tutorial book fucking put in there "Don't get 100 terror, 'cause you die bro" ffs.

9/10 will play again but wondering if either:
a) Struggling to buy fuel and supplies is an ongoing constant which is just gonna piss me off.
b) Once I figure out how to get the dosh, game will become easy mode and bore me to tears.

Text is nice. But world just feels empty. And too small. Islands fucking everywhere like it's Morrowind or something with a cave every 3 feet.

 

[hello friend]

Game does get boring when you're loaded. Way to do that is to find those Lion Pillars whatchamacallit where they'll give you mission to transport sphinxstone. You need an initial 200 spare echoes and 20 cargo space to do it, just do this run a few times. Don't bother with buying anything significant until you can get the merchant vessel. At some point you can start smuggling sunlight. Mirrorcatch boxes are bought in Khan's... Shadow?, you need to go to that port on the west coast (possibly port Carnelian) and head to the surface to fill them, then back to one of the Khans (iirc) to sell for muchos echoes. It's contraband tho, so they'll try to confiscate it in London unless you game the system (spend you're "Something has happened" - the lantern - before heading into port) or skip going to the surface and just fill the boxes with dreamsnakes instead (you require the machinist/mechanic whatever to do this, I think you usually find him on the ice island - also a place that will give you 2 fuel 2 food if you've got the lantern. Boxes with dreamsnakes in them are not considered contraband. Then there's also smuggling of red honey, which you pick up on Isle of Cats.

You should get a house + heir as soon as you can, upgrade towards max size when convenient, start stocking up on heirlooms. Then, if you pick the right options you can send your cash to your heir when you die, and you'll have a house stocked with things giving you a nice head start. Get an heir + restock house asap, just in case.

At some point dying is preferable to continuing, as you'll start exhausting your moneymaking opportunities, and it's easier to pass on your savings and start fresh. Do whatever quests you feel like along the way. The quest for the guy who wants to build an engine is particularly worth doing.

And that's it. That's the whole game.

It gets old really fast.