Sunless Skies, the successor to Sunless Sea should see day-1 Linux support for Early Access

I'm very glad they have fully adopted Linux support, I really am, but based on my experience with early access of Sunless Sea and their overall sadistic game design philosophy I wouldn't pick up their game during early access even if my life depended on it. Not to mention that story-driven games and early access isn't really a good combination to begin with. But don't get me wrong though, after I finish Sunless Sea, if I still want more, I absolutely might buy it once it's released.

It looks charming.
Though have not even played that much of Sunless sea I might support them starting in EA.


Last edited by razing32 on 4 August 2017 at 1:36 pm UTC

Quoting: qptain NemoI'm very glad they have fully adopted Linux support, I really am, but based on my experience with early access of Sunless Sea and their overall sadistic game design philosophy I wouldn't pick up their game during early access even if my life depended on it. Not to mention that story-driven games and early access isn't really a good combination to begin with. But don't get me wrong though, after I finish Sunless Sea, if I still want more, I absolutely might buy it once it's released.

How do you feel about Darkest Dungeon? Tried that one? [ I like how the game plays, but it is just too mean a game. I don't play games to start the next run worse than the previous one. Gee, my whole party is diseased and insane. On top of that, some RNG event has just taken 8 items out of my inventory. Pow! ]

that is just great news!! i loved sunless sea, and yeah i totally dig darkest dungeon....

Quoting: g000hHow do you feel about Darkest Dungeon? Tried that one? [ I like how the game plays, but it is just too mean a game. I don't play games to start the next run worse than the previous one. Gee, my whole party is diseased and insane. On top of that, some RNG event has just taken 8 items out of my inventory. Pow! ]

64 hours into Darkest Dungeon so far. Here's the thing.
I don't love the design philosophy of DD. I kinda hate it. It's a game about grinding and minmaxing, that rewards you with more grinding and punishes you with even more grinding. It's a tough game and there is no shortage of salt for this game in me. I strongly prefer how games like King of Dragon Pass, Black Closet and Gods Will Be Watching are designed. They're tough as nails but they're dramatic rollercoasters. You win some, you lose some. Darkest Dungeon is just one mostly unrewarding grueling journey through adversity where you will never ever feel like you have anything resembling upper hand (except when you go back to lower level dungeons after you have leveled up fully upgraded characters and a shitton of trinkets, but even then you can only feel so triumphant while having to essentially replay stuff you have already overcome numerous times). But. Darkest Dungeon is very well balanced and very well designed. You might find this statement surprising but here you have to take into consideration what it aims to be, a constantly harsh punishing experience. It nails that perfectly. It's kinda too well balanced for my taste. That's kinda my main issue. I'm a gambling man, I like to have some leeway, to take risks, win big and take punishment if it didn't pay out but not have to grind all over again every time I fail. But I'll never be able to say DD is badly designed or that the designers don't know what they're doing. They know exactly what they're doing. And it's enjoyable for many different reasons, it's a well made game, and I will probably stubbornly endure it to the end, as I'm getting close having beaten almost all regular bosses.

Sunless Sea and Failbetter's work are another story entirely. Having played Fallen London and Sunless Sea both during and after early access I can't shake the feeling that Failbetter never play their games the way they intend the players to play them. And nobody will convince me otherwise, even if they send me 24/7 uninterrupted security footage of their office showing the opposite. With Fallen London it's obvious, they don't have to pay themselves to see content nor wait for it, so they don't know what it's like. With Sunless Sea during early access I'd argue it was also obvious, because the way it was balanced... the game just wouldn't ever get done if they tried to playtest it the way it worked for regular players. So what I'm trying to say here is their games are sometimes so actively offputtingly unfun, mostly in the way you interact with them rather than the content itself, that it's impossible not to wonder about whether the developers are even truly aware of it. Because of it I can't help but suggest that unfortunately difficulty in Failbetter's games comes from a very different place and is very different in nature. I kinda like what they're trying to do, but what they actually end up making in my mind can be only explained in two ways. 1. Their game design skills have some distance to go before they match their vision. 2. They are sadists who actively hate their players and find joy in their suffering. I'd love to be wrong, I especially hope they will actually improve over time and for what it's worth Sunless Sea became much much more palatable at release. I haven't played it that much since that point, but it remained a very questionably slow game and so I remain skeptical and vigilant when it comes to their work.


Last edited by qptain Nemo on 4 August 2017 at 5:15 pm UTC

I really liked the old game. The only criticism was the mix of how slow it was with difficulty. Had no problem with it being a hard game or with the permadeath, but combined with its pace, it just meant it took ages to get back to where you were and it became a bit of a grind. I sunk a lot of hours into it, and never reached the end of the game. I hope they add some more balance to it, but I'll pick it up either way when it's out of EA.

Quoting: qptain Nemo

Quoting: g000hHow do you feel about Darkest Dungeon? Tried that one? [ I like how the game plays, but it is just too mean a game. I don't play games to start the next run worse than the previous one. Gee, my whole party is diseased and insane. On top of that, some RNG event has just taken 8 items out of my inventory. Pow! ]

64 hours into Darkest Dungeon so far. Here's the thing.
I don't love the design philosophy of DD. I kinda hate it. It's a game about grinding and minmaxing, that rewards you with more grinding and punishes you with even more grinding. It's a tough game and there is no shortage of salt for this game in me. I strongly prefer how games like King of Dragon Pass, Black Closet and Gods Will Be Watching are designed. They're tough as nails but they're dramatic rollercoasters. You win some, you lose some. Darkest Dungeon is just one mostly unrewarding grueling journey through adversity where you will never ever feel like you have anything resembling upper hand (except when you go back to lower level dungeons after you have leveled up fully upgraded characters and a shitton of trinkets, but even then you can only feel so triumphant while having to essentially replay stuff you have already overcome numerous times). But. Darkest Dungeon is very well balanced and very well designed. You might find this statement surprising but here you have to take into consideration what it aims to be, a constantly harsh punishing experience. It nails that perfectly. It's kinda too well balanced for my taste. That's kinda my main issue. I'm a gambling man, I like to have some leeway, to take risks, win big and take punishment if it didn't pay out but not have to grind all over again every time I fail. But I'll never be able to say DD is badly designed or that the designers don't know what they're doing. They know exactly what they're doing. And it's enjoyable for many different reasons, it's a well made game, and I will probably stubbornly endure it to the end, as I'm getting close having beaten almost all regular bosses.

Hmm . Not sure about DD. I was always on the fence about buying it.
First of all , disclosure , I did not play just watched people playing it on stream/youtube.
To me it just seems sadistic for no good reason. I see hard games like Dark Souls or even Dwarf Fortress but both seem to provide enjoyment to their audience.
This like you said initially just seems to reward and punish grind with yet even more grind.
And the RNG seems totally broken. No matter how good you are you loose everything at once.
To me it just seems a game for the most hardcore sadomasochists.
Good luck in your endeavor though.

Darkest Dungeon was a game I loved originally, and I don't normally go for hard games. I loved everything about the game right up until my best team got 100% killed in like the second room of the titular dungeon. Then I realized that I had zero interest in sinking another 10 or so hours in to get my B-Team up to snuff only to wipe out before the boss again.

Sunless Sea, on the other hand, even when bad shit happened, I still felt like I was making progress. Even if that progress was just "Well, I should never say that again!" I learned something every time so even though the game was just as brutal, at no point did I feel like I had wasted my time.

I love Sunless Sea, despite its flaws. I have to agree that the very slow pace together with the harsh deaths are the major issue. You can save or basically scum your way out of death, but that's clearly not how the game was designed to be played. Let's compare it to Rgoue Legacy for the sake of argument. I'm not saying that Rogue Legacy is perfect, but it has some similarities. If you die, you start over with a new character, a heir.
A run in Rogue Legacy is typically a few minutes at most, while in Sunless Sea it is many hours.
Rogue Legacy has a ton of meta-progression, Sunless Sea has almost none, the only thing I would count is the sub mission that you don't need to re-do.
Everything else is per-character and only helps the direct heir, so afaik you could have one great captain and his heir could lose it all. So after playing Sunless Sea with a single captain for 20+ hours you can get items that allow you to transfer some stuff to the next captain. They cost a ton, so you're inclined not to get them. You'll more likely get something with immediate benefit rather than something you hopefully won't need. You are very likely to die very often before you get any of those items.
You'll repeat the same stuff over and over many times because only a small portion of the game is randomized. Then your captain dies and you basically start from scratch with the measly few bits the previous captain left you.
Rogue Legacy is far more random and there are tons of meta progression, giving your characters new abilities and stuff.
Unless you're very lucky or know how to make money quickly you'll have the same ship forever, because you won't make it long enough to get the tons of money for a new ship.
I could probably go on. I still love this game. It's not necessarily the lack of meta-progression that's the problem, I also love games with zero meta progression, like Dungeoncrawl Stone Soup, but there a run takes me a few minutes, not days.

The only meta-progression you have in Sunless Sea is in your head.

Thanks for letting me know of this. I'm glad they'll do early access on Linux and GOG.
I'll be one of their paying beta-testers.

Of course the meta-progression is all in your head. The meta-progression is knowledge-based and knowledge lives in your head. Lol

It's true that you carry little, if anything, over when you start a new heir, but you now know what options not to choose next time, or what items you need to gather before making a certain trip. It's the gamification of "what DOES kill me, makes me stronger." And it's the relative lack of randomness that creates this meta-progression.

I finished the game in about 60 hours without saving at all so I could get that achievement. It felt great once I realized that Captain Moogie actually had a shot at not dying the same horrible watery death that claimed the last dozen or so of his ancestors.


Last edited by Expalphalog on 5 August 2017 at 11:40 pm UTC