Sunless Skies visits some strange place named London
A cruel place
In their early access mission to fill Sunless Skies with strange new worlds, new life, and new civilisations, Failbetter Games today added their creepiest creation yet: a city named London. Located in the new region of Albion, this London place is ruled by an emperor from a sacred bloodline and loomed over by a vast clock tower reminding its downtrodden denizens that their time is running out. Outrageous stuff, how do Failbetter come up with it? The new region brings with it nine new ports including the hub city of London, new Spectacles, enemies, Discoveries with such exciting names as Squirmings and Well of the Wolf, equipment, and so on. Have a look:
Albion is the second region in Sunless Skies, which launched with only the Reach. Failbetter plan to add another two regions before launching the game out of early access. When Fraser Brown Prematurely Evaluated it in October 2017, he noted he'd rather wait until the game were more finished. Failbetter have expanded the game in other ways since then, including reworking its procedural generation so the world feels more coherent and less empty and adding new things to discover and investigate.
See the patch notes for more details on today's additions.
Sunless Skies is £19/€23/$25 in early access on Steam and GOG. It's tentatively slated to be finished and leave early access in full this September.
Failbetter recently laid off some staff and accordingly delayed the game, saying sales had been lower than expected but assuring they will finish this. They wanted to shore up their financial position so they could be sure they'd have enough cash to safely fund their next game after this, see.
Disclosure: Cassandra Khaw and Richard "Cobbo" Cobbett, who've both written for RPS, have done words on Albion.