Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style
The city glittered like a wet-backed beetle as you approached, lamplight occasionally faltering as though a dew drop had been dislodged from London's polished carapace. At least that's what the zailors would say as they shared in the short-lived comforts of home. If one was already caught up in the romantic notions of a life spent zailing the vastness of the Unterzee, they could be forgiven for missing the tremble in their voices, or the dread that lived in their hollowed eyes.
Euphemia was a creature who fed on little more than milk and ink. That's metaphor of course. She was a poet, a rather soft one at that, but not to be mistaken by a careless reader for one of the shrouded monstrosities one might find at the Bazaar, carting about carefully capped milk bottles brimming with viscous black fluid.
If you haven't guessed yet, I've been playing Sunless Sea, Failbetter Games' successfully Kickstarted follow up to free-to-play browser-based narrative adventure game, Fallen London. Sunless Sea was released in Early Access on Steam just yesterday, and boy do I ever want to tell you about it...
What the zailors failed to mention (or perhaps what Euphemia failed to hear before purchasing her ship, her crew, and her kit) was the smell. Rather, the smells -- smells so persistent they could permeate everything but the hardtack biscuits (which only spoke to their quality, or lack thereof). It was no wonder that the tomb-colonists who sought passage across the Unterzee did so swaddled up tightly in their coffins. Even so, if one read enough of those gilded and glorious tales of discovery they could convince themselves that the bitter spray of the zee was simply the perfume of adventure -- a small discomfort accepted in exchange for rich experience.
Yet no book, no romantic mindset, primes the green zailor for the first waft of blood grasping outwards from the shuddering blackness ahead. Without fail, that sharp scent calls to mind the exact number of page-bound heroes who seemed to vanish after they had barely one tale pressed in their name.
Euphemia's navigation must have been alarming to her crew. They drifted aimlessly to the south before veering sharply to the north-east and began curving back towards Fallen London. Perhaps she'd changed her mind about her adventure. Perhaps the judgemental gazes of the ferret nesting at the end of her desk had been enough for her to reassess her decisions. She could just go back. Open a coffee house. It would be far from an adventure, but well-brewed Darkdrop was always in high demand in London (at least in her circles.)
The wild swooping manoeuvres of the ship's course attracted attention, of course. Pirates; easily dispatched. Then the crabs; still far from a challenge. The bats came in vast swarms; not nearly vast enough to claim the persistent little vessel as they had once claimed London. Through these encounters Euphemia had developed a solid (if simple) strategy which she employed indiscriminately. The crew fired two rounds of flares first, in order to illuminate their target enough that they could see where to strike. Then salvoes from the guns replaced them until all that remained of their opponent were scraps to salvage. Supplies were scarce, and while bats were a terror to behold living or dead, all was equal when thrown in the cooking pot.
Sunless Sea is still in Early Access, and as such is not a complete game. Although the game is still missing many story lines and swaths of the map, as well as certain features yet to be implemented, it's already quite easy to see its appeal. I enjoyed playing Fallen London, but the free-to-play structure behind player actions eventually caused me to lose interest. As inventive and appealing as the world Failbetter Games has created is, I wanted a game I could buy upfront and play on my schedule. Sunless Sea is exactly that, with some more conventionally "active" gameplay components to keep the play strategic and engaging.
As they cut towards home, the poet recovered her resolve. If they had met each challenge handily so far, how dangerous could the zee be? She arranged to dock on an island inhabited by three unsettling sisters, as divergent in nature as they were unified in isolation, just off the coast of London. They exchanged news clipped handily from the last newspaper Euphemia had read before leaving London for a filling lunch, a good story, and a crate of supplies, then turned the groaning hulk of a ship away from London and towards the indifferent vacuum of the Unterzee.
Perhaps it was cruel to bring the crew so close to the shimmering security of home, only to turn back. If nothing else, it was an opportunity for the kind of hard-hearted irony gods can seldom refuse.
Neither Euphemia nor her crew would return to London, then or ever. Oblivion came in the form of... Well, no one was quite sure of the details. Bursts of haunting sound set nails rattling in wood and brains rattling in skulls. Great grasping tentacles picked crew members off the deck like an ape grooming away ticks. When the ship finally crumbled to nothingness, all that remained of Euphemia's story were wilted pages, melting to pulp and foam on the surface of the zee.
If you've played and enjoyed Fallen London, it's hard to imagine you won't enjoy Sunless Sea just as much if not more. And if you haven't played Fallen London, it's the best way to get a sense of the very unique experience that Failbetter Games is offering with their titles. As with any Early Access release it's hard to say if it's a good investment for players at this stage, and whether or not it is depends a lot on what you as the player are looking for. I will say that based on what I've seen so far (and my own experience with Fallen London) I'm very, very optimistic.
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