Sunless Skies - Launch Trailer

The launch trailer for Sunless Skies which releases January 31st.

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FEATURES

• Multiple, intertwining stories with a depth and richness unlike anything else in games, inspired by CS Lewis, Jules Verne, Lovecraft and HG Wells
• Lush, hand-drawn 2d art to match
• Four giant regions to explore: celestial wilderness, impossible industrial empire, pagan midnight expanse, and the mysterious Blue Kingdom.
• A choice of play styles: build a lineage of captains as each dies, or reload your most recent captain and continue
• Key remapping and full controller support

More information.

Looks really nice, but somehow Sunless Sea already was a game where I like the idea of the game more than the game itself, so I never got far. Probably I'll try it again some time, perhaps I'll be hooked then…

Originally Posted by Irian
Looks really nice, but somehow Sunless Sea already was a game where I like the idea of the game more than the game itself, so I never got far.

… and that's exactly the reason why I like A House Of Many Doors better.
Lower on game, higher on story.

I got hooked on Sunless Seas about a week ago, but I reckon once I'm done with it I'll be fatigued with this kind of gameplay. I'm definitely buying this somewhere down the line though.

Pointless.

Sunless Skies is somewhat a 1.x version of SS.

They somewhat listened to customers and tried to address the grievances at the expense of SS spirit.

With such ground for comparison, liking better sides is unavoidable.

Music, artwork, writing, ambiance are all in frontal competition.

Better to play one and not play the other.

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
Pointless.

Sunless Skies is somewhat a 1.x version of SS.

They somewhat listened to customers and tried to address the grievances at the expense of SS spirit.

With such ground for comparison, liking better sides is unavoidable.

Music, artwork, writing, ambiance are all in frontal competition.

Better to play one and not play the other.

What are the changes, do you know?

Sunless Sea embeds the delivery of story bits into an uncompromizing gameplay:
players experience situations through actual immersion.

For example, fallen London appears as a rightful safe haven after managing to bring to the port a ship on flames with a mad crew, struggling for 15 minutes on speed one on the zea, when every new hurdle could have meant a sunk ship and a lost captain.

SS tells a story of loneliness by getting players to actually feel lonely before their screen.

This felt burdensome for players and SK changes the flow in delivery the story bits by somewhat speeding it up and disconnecting it from the gameplay.

They moved from ship (slow) to train (faster) for a reason.

Playing SS to exhaust the litteracy content is a dead end. It can be done in SK.

I really liked the idea of Sunless Sea. It's oozing with atmosphere and darkness, the music was also quite great (but too little of it perhaps). The game was kind of great, but most of all, the setting was really spot-on. I wish they would have kept the setting and just called it sunless sea II.

The sky is a more unique setting, i'll give them that, but it also has very few ties to horror. I feel too alienated by it, i want something that resembles the classical horror stories i've read, Lovecraftian stuff. It was so cool to visit the islands with different themes. The sea is overall such a fantastic setting for horror.

Sunless Skies must also be the only game in history with skies in the title and still you will never see a single sky, since it's top down.. kind of a fail for that setting alone i think..

Thanks @ChienAboyeur, if they have indeed lost what makes Sunless Sea special, that is indeed a shame. Although running out of fuel on a broken ship 10 seconds from London might not actually be "fun", it is indeed memorable.

They tried to answer players' grievances.

Losing a captain in SS is expected. Surrendering a captain who has run her course is also a way to progress faster.

SK makes it easier to progress with one driver or two because players prefered to cling to one captain in SS for as long as they could.