LOSE YOUR MIND. EAT YOUR CREW. Take the helm of your steamship and set sail for the unknown! Trade with strange new lands. Battle sea monsters. Smuggle souls. Go mad and hallucinate lizards. Sunless Sea is a game of discovery, loneliness and frequent death, set in the award-winning Victorian Gothic universe of Fallen London.
“Soon,” she says, and the piano music falters and stops. “We’ll go hungry, and then the end will come, for me but not for you.”
“We broke into the galley today and found appalling things: corpse-candles, graven images, and the mortal remains of Able Seaman Ayrton, rendered partially to stock. The wretched cook would only cackle: You liked him better salted…”
Auroral Megalops roam the waters – large enough to consume a pony with messy and clattering glee, or to pose a menace to ill-prepared ships.
“Oh yes” the University’s Maritime Liaison whispers breathily. “Oh yes. This is quite a tasty one. Let me explain it to you.” She (he?) explains, teeth glinting.
“We sighted Mt Nomad again today, still afloat but listing, her dark glass flanks scored and pitted from the cannon-fire in our previous encounter. This will be the last battle. This monster has harrowed the seas too long.”
Sunless Sea is leaving Early Access on 6 February 2015! Early Access purchasers will receive all expansions and story DLC we create for FREE.
Welcome to the dark and hilarious Victorian-Gothic underworld of Fallen London, where every choice has a consequence, from the style of your hat to the price of your soul. Except this time around, the Unterzee is your oyster.
Choose your ship, name your captain, and leave the bustle of the docks for the wild and lightless depths of the Unterzee. Explore the uncharted reaches of the Neath, where the map changes every time you play, and every officer in your crew has their own story.
Explore and survive. Encounter a corsairs’ village in a forest of stalagmites, come face to face with the vicious war trimarans of the New Khanate or the golden agents of the Dawn Machine. Grow strong and wise and rich and feared. With luck and skill you may achieve your ambitions: find your father’s bones, found a pirate princedom or sail beyond the Unterzee into the strangeness at time’s heart.
Find and recruit officers on your travels to add to your ship’s Iron, Veils, Hearts or Mirrors – but more importantly these perhaps unsavoury folks are treasure troves of stories. And Sunless Sea is nothing if not a game of stories.
Get to know your First Officer and she might share the co-ordinates of a secret smugglers’ cove stuffed with drowning-pearls. Feed your ship’s cat a moonish sprat and it may begin to glow in the dark. Invite your surgeon to dinner in your cabin and… well, who knows?
Keep your crew’s Hunger and Terror at bay, or face quarrels, despair, nightmares, madness, cannibalism and mutiny. Too much and you’ll lose everything.
The Unterzee is a realm of sombre beauty. It is always night – where that light off your starboard bow might be a friendly port or the glowing teeth of a Lovecraftian monstrosity. Turn up your lights to see farthest, or let them sink low to escape detection… or to become the hunter.
Like everything else in Sunless Sea, light has its cost. If you can see them, they can see you, and you’ll risk leaving yourself adrift at the mercy of the tideless black.
Improve and customise your ship as you prowess on the black waters improves. Begin with a Splinter-Salvo and Evasive Manoeuvres: aspire to the Rarefaction Cannon and the terrifying Unclear Bomb…
Explore a vast underground ocean in your steamship! A PC & Mac game in glorious 2D, Sunless Sea is a game of exploration, survival and loneliness set in the award-winning Victorian Gothic universe of Fallen London. Take to the helm and set sail for the unknown. Light is your greatest ally, but a stout set of cannon and a gunnery officer with a grudge will come in useful too.
Everything in Sunless Sea counts towards your personal story – a non-linear, choice-heavy, personalised experience. It’ll take dozens of games to explore all the sub-plots, grand arcs, alternatives, mysteries, relationships and romances in the game. Your character will die (or disappear, or lose her mind, or be hollowed out and filled with candle-wax and haunt a cliff-top chapel), but their legacy may survive. You’ll build up your own story across generations of zailors who braved the Unterzee and lost – or won…
Our influences! FTL; Don’t Starve; Strange Adventures in Infinite Space; Sid Meier’s Pirates; Taipan; Elite; roguelikes; the Crimson Permanent Assurance; the Irish immrama myths.
Sunless Sea is leaving Early Access on 6 February 2015! Early Access purchasers will receive all expansions and story DLC we create for FREE.
Note from Failbetter: This is a blog from Emily Short, guest writer on Sunless Sea. She’s discussing the narrative design behind Nuncio, an island on the Unterzee which was commissioned by one of our delicious Kickstarter backers. You should probably zail to Nuncio and enjoy the story before reading any further. Nuncio is the third […]
An occurrence! Something has changed in the Neath! Finally, adventure awaits you in the beautiful but treacherous homeland of the Pentecost apes. To find it, keep zailing East until you hear the distant echo of Salt’s song in your bones. Beware of stowaways. Keep a tight grip on your Echoes, your soul, and if at […]
It’s just over two weeks until launch! Today’s update covers some functions which you’ve been asking us for: TUTORIAL Even seasoned zailors will find helpful tips in the new tutorial system! It’s really important that this is as useful as possible; please consider sending feedback to sunlesssea@failbettergames.com if you spot something confusing. KEYBINDING Not everyone […]