Muzman on 7/2/2015 at 15:16
It's out!
(well, officially. Mine's still showing some placeholder art. Going to ask them about that)
(
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-02-06-sunless-sea-review)
Eurogamer put it in the same critical bracket as Bioshock and Halo 3. Make of that what you will. /scoretrolling.
(
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/02/06/sunless-sea-review/) Meer's RPS review is more 'different strokes for different folks' but no less effusive really.
I'm surprised a bit. Perhaps I shouldn't be so shocked that writers really like it. It is the most writerly of games. The game exists to serve and facilitate the writing (or the reading of it really), not the other way around.
I can't really say how much the early game as changed. My impression is quite a bit (you get free fuel for doing certain basic things now, which would make a really big difference). But I can't go back and check just yet as that means my captain would have to die and I don't want her to do that. Her and her bedraggled crew have come through so much.
henke on 7/2/2015 at 16:05
The RPS write-up in their calendar piqued my interest in this. I'd give it a go if I weren't trying to cut back on games and I've already got Dying Light and The Wolf Among Us going on, plus Apotheon and some other PS+ games that just fell into my lap. And that Grow Home game that came out the other day looks great as well. Ah, too many great games coming out right now!
WingedKagouti on 7/2/2015 at 19:19
From what I've read/watched it seems like if you enjoy FTL you'll have a good chance at enjoying this game.
I'll possibly get this at some point, but at the moment I have way too much stuff I want to play already.
faetal on 7/2/2015 at 19:51
I've played it for an hour or so. It's really interesting. Kind of real-time FTL with a Lovecrafty feel. Very desolate. Hard too.
I have a feeling it'll get better the more I play it.
Holistic Detective on 10/2/2015 at 09:21
I absolutely love this game! I have been watching it for a while now, and jumped on it as soon as it was officially released in full. It's dark, beautiful, difficult and immersive. You do have to read a lot to get the most out of it and it most defiantly fills a void in a very niche market.
Someone above mentioned a similarity to FTL and I do agree, but it's much more than that ...though difficult to discern exactly how.
faetal on 10/2/2015 at 10:43
I have the feeling a lot of people will bounce right off of it. It takes a bit of patience and planning. Great as a narrative experience though.
Muzman on 11/2/2015 at 11:03
Yeah. It's a bit bewildering at first. But I do think that's tough to avoid and still have the same game.
I've said this a lot lately but there's a funny tension between the rogue-lite and pace. A game as slow and story driven as this one immediately makes people think they're going to be led by the hand, because games like that want to show you its stuff and have you enjoy the time along the way. You don't want to feel like your character is disposable, so when luck or fate doesn't go your way it's really discouraging.
It's funny how that works. In a game like FTL or Dungeons of Dredmore, or Spelunky, a short play doesn't seem to bother people as much. It's that feeling of driving some Mad Max vehicle through the desert and its falling apart as you go. You don't know how long you're going to last and precariousness is built in.
In something slower it is as though you are beginning an arc. And we want to see arcs get completed, not start them over and over again.
This game is, accidentally or on purpose, quite old school. I'm not sure if that's completely by design or if that's just how it ends up with random elements and such breadth working together. It's curious.
At any rate, yeah, at first you'll probably get confused and you'll probably die. Several times. But you'll get the hang of it (whoever you are). It's not one of those games that's about winning so much as the experience. So you've got to roll with what happens a bit, on a meta level. This goes for individual decisions too, as they aren't really about the 'best' one but letting the adventure happen and expression.
There's some who see gameish goals that aren't there (Which I did too), like filling up the map. Which is a bit of a mistake. If you're having a crap time don't feel you have to pass on your map because you spent such effort drawing it and that's like a measure of progress. If it's a real struggle and you die, start again. The map will rearrange itself and this can make an amazing difference to your fortunes.
henke on 23/2/2015 at 19:00
Just played my first 119 minutes of Sunless Sea. Amazingly I'm not dead yet. Did have a nasty encounter with an enormous shark early on tho, which left me with 5/75 hull, less than half my crew(meaning I can't repair the hull) and not enough money to get it repaired in the drydock, even though I sold my Captain's Advice book. I've been slowly creeping (at the state my ship is in, "slowly creeping" is the only speed it'll go) around the northeastern parts, collecting stories of distant places and searching for some place I was supposed to deliver some illegal cargo to. Almost running out of fuel I had to give up on that and make my way back to London, where the Customs people confiscated the cargo and the last of my money.
So to recap: ship one good bump away from being completely caput, almost out of fuel, no money, haunted by nightmares, crew terrified. And of course there's some shady people in the London docks who won't be too happy with me once they find out I lost their cargo. This is not going great. And I'm loving it.
demagogue on 1/3/2015 at 15:49
First look at it, I like that bats carried London down to the depths. My interpretation of that is a reference to the alt history fan trope of an ASB rating, that is, how many alienspace bats do you need for your alt history scenario to work. (Zero means it could have really happened in history. 10 ASBs, history just needs a little supernatural push. 50, a bigger push.) When there are enough bats to carry the entire city of London, it's a cute way of saying this is a really fictionalized version of Victorian London's world.
