Despite being dangerously low on fuel, supplies, and crew, I am still optimistic about my journey across Albion. Right now, I’m just delivering some cargo and a traveler I’ve picked up on my many journeys. Unlike most, I’m exploring the vast eerie landscapes of this Victorian vision of space purely for the experience. I’m not trying to get rich, I’m not trying to be the big bad butcher in space London: I’m traveling for the stories.
I’ve encountered monsters that scream and launch huge balls of crackling energy; I’ve sacrificed crew members to gods that exist outside the game map; I’ve eaten a lot of men. After my first trip back to the tainted space gardens of the Ultimate, I wanted to explore everything I could get my hands on. Now there are areas I no longer dare venture into. Although I travel for the stories, some are better left untold.
Declaring my life as a keen traveler unfortunately does not exempt me from the classic attack of Victorian capitalism. My little steam locomotive accommodates a large crew, and even a mere poet needs money from time to time. Following the previous, all I need to do is get back to the precious safe zone that is the big port. Then I can dock my train, write down stories of my travels, and hopefully gather a few supplies so I don’t go hungry. After all, if I stay hungry, my crew will go to the pot.
Like everything in life, my plans don’t really go my way. I get pretty close, but my idiocy overtakes common sense. Turning a corner, I notice a high-octane gunfight. Two against one? That’s not fair! Well, now it’s three against one! Despite my vessel’s incredibly low life force count, I join in.
Slowly circling around the oncoming fire, I respond to the shots as quickly as they ring out in my direction. As a shot approaches me, I try to dodge to the right, but the heat of my train is too high. Not only do I take damage for putting too much strain on the engine, but a second shot crashes headfirst into me. My hull is destroyed, and the cold corners of space suck my corpse from its home.
Throughout this short journey, I could have taken many other paths that would have led to a much more favorable outcome. Maybe if I hadn’t decided to enter the fray, I could have swirled around the outskirts and avoided it altogether. Amazingly, the opportunity to loot supplies, fuel, and perhaps even scraps to repair my ship was too tempting to pass up. A smarter man than me would have done it.
Such is the nature of the Sunless Skies. It is a journey you make for yourself. You can spend your entire journey among its mesmerizing ethereal landscapes as a space cab driver, taking passengers where they need to go. You can mine resources, kill as much as you like, become a journalist – though why you would even want to do that is unclear to me. The possibilities aren’t endless, everything is pre-scripted, but there are so many options that you’ll never be without content.
It’s no small feat for developer Failbetter Games to create such a detailed and immersive experience. Most of the time you may not even be wandering through the beautiful but dangerous locations of Fallen London, but instead wandering through well-written fiction. It’s one of the most well-written experiences in gaming, which again makes reading fun. While I enjoy reading endless nonsense about NPCs in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, it can be tedious. Sunless knows exactly what to tell you and when exactly to tell you. Many of the game’s great moments can range from foreboding and anxious to downright hilarious. You can chase a dog around your train, which can lead to your death, or you can spend your time chatting up the literal Devil. If there’s one thing Sunless Skies has going for it, it’s variety.
As a game that you could easily spend hundreds of hours exploring, Skies is surprisingly unsparing of your time. You don’t lose much after you die – even in the more difficult, roguelike Legacy mode. You’ll start with less than before, storylines will have to be re-traveled, but you won’t immediately go back to zero. The Mercy campaign is even less strict about the consequences of death, allowing you to enjoy treacherous possessions without losing much progress.
On top of everything else, Sunless Skies is a unique experience. It may be similar to its predecessor, Sunless Seas, but it is a completely separate game. It feels surprisingly fluid in controls, and it reads like a more adult Pratchett novel, albeit brought to a level of literary strength. While I have yet to spend as much time with the game as I had hoped, the quality oozes from every corner of this strange, beautiful, and anxiety-filled world.