For the old ones, I like the one where you're a wizard apprentice and you manually use the spell words as verbs in the parser. Forgot the name though.
For newer ones, there's Roadwarden (the first game is much better than the second), Device 6. I liked Choice of Dragons and Choice of Broadsides but they might be a little shallow now. Sunless Seas is great and Sunless Skies is good but you shouldn't buy them because the current rights holders do not deserve the money, at least for Seas. I'd look into alternatives like physical copies for the switch. There's Disco Elysium but opinions on that game are very mixed on this forum. Lastly, A Case of Distrust is a nice-looking but ultimately flat CYOA about a detective in prohibition. It's cheap, at least.
Who owns Sunless Sea/Sunless Skies now? Is it not still Failbetter Games? Who are the "current rights holders" you speak of and why don't they deserve the money? I did a minute of lazy Googling and didn't discover anything distressing, except maybe a Eurogamer article exposing mismanagement and toxic culture at Failbetter.
My only complaint about Sunless Skies and Failbetter is the SJW/DEI theme that feels kind of in-your-face. It's a great setting with witty writing. And I can accept that a class struggle throughout the hierarchy of fictional England is part of that great setting. But when the whole game uses the singular they/them for unspecified gender, and soooo many NPC they/thems of indeterminate gender, and at least two of your own officers (that I've hired so far) are trans/nonbinary, I just think: OK, I get it. You want your
inclusion or whatever. But now it's getting in the way of the story. You should focus less on chest-binding and more on the beautiful setting you've built.
Besides that, they're great games. They're essentially the same, but Sunless Skies is newer, prettier, and more forgiving to newcomers. Both games are set in a sort of horror steampunk Victorian England. You're always on the move to make money to buy fuel and supplies for your ship and crew, but being on the move through these environs will increase your terror. The setting is fun, the stories are interesting, and the writing is witty. The travel back and forth between ports can get repetitive after a while. But overall, they're good games.
I got Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies free on the Epic Games Store sometime in the past. Failbetter has a free browser game in the same setting called Fallen London.
whatsapp gaming if you want to take a look at the kind of writing you'll encounter in Sunless Sea/Skies you should take a look at Fallen London.
