Sunless Skies just took to the clouds in Steam Early Access. This follows in the footsteps (or wake, rather) of Sunless Sea, Failbetter's other game about exploring, going crazy, and eating your crew. I mean, I was in the Navy for four years. It happens.
Here's a weirdly meta note I'm getting about this game from Steam. There's a box on every game's Steam Store Page that says, "Is this game relevant to you?" Underneath of which, it lists one or two games already in your library that sorta kinda line up with the sensibilities of this new game you're looking at. Well, when I go to the Sunless Skies Steam page, it says, "This game doesn't look like other things you've played in the past." Which is true. And I love it. Which makes me 100-percent certain that I need to get Sunless Skies into my library. I'm painfully short on literary Victorian celestial horror RPGs, apparently. Also, it's kind of rad that your sky vehicle is a train that is running without rails.
Never playing Sunless Sea is one of my greatest failings of the last two years. My love-hate relationship with H.P. Lovecraft may have something to do with it. I firmly believe that if one of my video game characters is going to be driven mad, then you need to convince me, the player, that something maddening is happening. Going mad due to a dice roll—or simply being told, "You're going mad now"—fails too completely at the Show, Don't Tell rule.
Regardless, the art and atmospherics of Sunless Sea kept pricking at my spine. The story rich survival-exploration-ness of it all kept it at the top of my Steam Wishlist, even though I let it slip through my fingers, sale after sale. Maybe I am experiencing a meta level of madness when it comes to my delicate, tentative relationship with Sunless Sea.
It still feels like I buried the lede on this one. Sunless Skies is out now, August 30, on Steam Early Access.
