Sunless Sea

 PC
User Score
7.5

Generally favorable reviews- based on 176 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 116 out of 176
  2. Mixed: 32 out of 176
  3. Negative: 28 out of 176

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  1. LaughingProphet
    Feb 22, 2015
    0
    If you are thinking of buying this game, I have a better idea. Pack some food and get in your car. Spend the price of the game on gas. Drive somewhere you've never been. Get out, look around. Enjoy the day. Have a picnic. When the sun goes down, try to get home without running out of gas. You've just had a better time than playing Sunless Sea. (If you don't have a car, put the money in aIf you are thinking of buying this game, I have a better idea. Pack some food and get in your car. Spend the price of the game on gas. Drive somewhere you've never been. Get out, look around. Enjoy the day. Have a picnic. When the sun goes down, try to get home without running out of gas. You've just had a better time than playing Sunless Sea. (If you don't have a car, put the money in a coffee can marked "Savings for a Car." You will still have a similar experience.)

    This game is truly a waste of time and money. Sunless Sea tries to be a lot of tantalizing things, but does just about all of them poorly. Combat is atrocious, exploration is tedious and unrewarding, movement is inexcusably slow, the "story" seems to be an assemblage of set pieces with no interconnection or apparent coherence.

    My first biggest problem on a game level is a fundamental one. I don't understand why this game calls itself a roguelike, or features permadeath. Since it is supposedly story-driven, if you are expected to frequently die then you just sit through the same story elements every time after every restart. I would opine that the fact that you have the option to turn the roguelike aspect off indicates that it was an early concept that became obsolete during development. I do have more cynical ideas about why it exists, though.

    My next biggest problem is the speed of the game. Your ship is inexcusably slow, even with upgraded engines. Maybe later ships are better, but the price of these ships is so steep I never got a chance to try one (the reward-to-cost balance is an issue of its own). Regardless, to somehow make enough money to buy better ships and equipment, you will waste hours watching your little boat inch its way sluggishly across the pretty but mostly non-interactive environment. A simple fix would have been a fast-forward button, featured in many similar games. I suspect that the choice not to include such a boon, however, was in deference to maintaining the atmospheric quality of the game. I could see the difficulty in progressing as being in deference to the atmosphere of the game. The pointlessness of everything you do as being in deference to the atmosphere.

    These unenjoyable aspects foisted upon the player bring me to the core problem with this game; The creators' artistic vision is allowed to interfere with the player's good time. Every element that would make Sunless Sea a competent game seems to have suffered in favor of story and atmosphere. That could be excused, to a limited extent, if the story were well put together. By the game's nature of exploration and horribly ill-conceived roguelike elements, however, there is little hope for a linear plot. It feels like a series of set pieces strung together ad hoc because it is, out of necessity. If instead of making a game the creators had created a short animated film with a coherent story set in this universe, it might have actually been good. This game is not, and should not exist.

    I was actually excited when I first heard about Sunless Sea. I loved sea-trading games like Port Royale but wished they had better developed worlds, I loved FTL, which some crooked critic compared it to, and sure, steampunk, I'd love to see that done well in a game other than Bioshock for once. Review scores for it were really high. But Sunless Sea is not a game. Every time I tried to give it another chance I quit playing with an unpleasant taste in my mouth, wishing I had my time and money back. Everything in this game is done better elsewhere. The art is pretty, though in no way does it justify a game.    … Expand
  2. cakrit
    Apr 13, 2015
    4
    I tried hard to ignore the terrible deficiencies of this game, in hope that they were somehow there by design. I mean, who in their right mind would force you to slowly repeat every painstakingly slow move you made, after dying? It has to be part of the experience and the uniqueness of the game, right? Well, if it is, kudos to the people patient enough to do the same things over and over,I tried hard to ignore the terrible deficiencies of this game, in hope that they were somehow there by design. I mean, who in their right mind would force you to slowly repeat every painstakingly slow move you made, after dying? It has to be part of the experience and the uniqueness of the game, right? Well, if it is, kudos to the people patient enough to do the same things over and over, "discover" the exact same places again and go through the same sequence of events, until they find the one with the highest chances of keeping them alive. It would have been quite a different game if there was some kind of randomization each time you started with a different captain but nooo... Practically everything remains the same and you have the extremely tedious task of doing everything all over again. How hard would it have been to move a few islands around, randomize a few rewards and add a fast forward button? I will give it a few more tries just because the atmosphere and stories are indeed cool, but someone needs to accept that it just isn't a fun game as it stands.… Expand
  3. Joseph4th
    May 25, 2015
    2
    So much potential wasted. The game feels very slow, unbalanced and lacking strong direction.

    If you do decide to play the game, turn on the feature that allows you to save the game when ever you want, "Merciful Mode." Don't let the game fool you into playing "Unforgiving Mode" where it has one autosave and you have to start over when you die. The story, the haphazard collection of    So much potential wasted. The game feels very slow, unbalanced and lacking strong direction.

    If you do decide to play the game, turn on the feature that allows you to save the game when ever you want, "Merciful Mode." Don't let the game fool you into playing "Unforgiving Mode" where it has one autosave and you have to start over when you die. The story, the haphazard collection of pieces that it is, has a lot of atmosphere... the first time you meander through it, but it wears thin on subsequent readings.

    Combat is very simple and not very good. Trading from port to port isn't financially sound. Overall I'll just say the game is balanced heavily against the player in all aspects: combat, economy, exploration, etc. to the point where it can almost be said to be punitive where it should be encouraging.

    Some slightly more experienced design balance, a central storyline and better pacing and this would be a great game.    … Expand
  4. Werewolfguy173
    Mar 25, 2016
    2
    Combat is repetitive and there is no strategy or action involved just click when the guns are ready and hope that your enemy is destroyed before you are.
    Making money is almost impossible as simply maintaining your ship is hard enough let alone making a profit out of the mostly luck based "story" events.
    The characters have mostly good back-stories but you won't know them unless you    Combat is repetitive and there is no strategy or action involved just click when the guns are ready and hope that your enemy is destroyed before you are.
    Making money is almost impossible as simply maintaining your ship is hard enough let alone making a profit out of the mostly luck based "story" events.
    The characters have mostly good back-stories but you won't know them unless you manage to get them to open up, which means inviting them to dine with you by spending some of your supplies (which are expensive to buy just like fuel) and possible a rare item which you will need to use in some kind of quest later on and then going of to some obscure island to complete part one of their story makes learning the stories of your officers a chore.
    The speed at which the game is played is the slowest imaginable. You can buy different engines if you somehow manage to turn in a profit but even then the change in speed is barely noticeable. The increased fuel consumption on the other hand is more than noticeable.
    The music is one of the few redeeming qualities of this game but there is only so much good music and eye candy can do before the ludicrously slow speed, repetitive combat and the repetition of playing the early game again and again because of the permadeath feature make any sane player turn the game off. Although permadeath can be turned off it doesn't help much as you will mostly die because you failed a skill check (you start of pretty much useless with the exception of one skill of your choosing at which you are the least useless) after an unfortunate turn of events and this can't be medicated by way of save scumming (not to mention that save scumming should not be essential in order to progress).
    In the end this game has a great setting and nothing else.    … Expand
  5. darkhunt333
    Feb 8, 2019
    2
    When this game first came out I'd recommend it. But through nerfs and the release of the zubmariner dlc, this game is not balanced in the slightest. This game is for massochist that enjoy no progression or losing everything on chance. All the guides on making money no longer apply to this game. "But the game isn't bout makin money" ok you haven't played through the game with all theWhen this game first came out I'd recommend it. But through nerfs and the release of the zubmariner dlc, this game is not balanced in the slightest. This game is for massochist that enjoy no progression or losing everything on chance. All the guides on making money no longer apply to this game. "But the game isn't bout makin money" ok you haven't played through the game with all the patches and rebalancing.

    The story and time I spent with the game was incredible when it came out. Now it's a gutted husk due to unrelenting grinding and even with all meta data at hand; is a masochists wet dream now.    … Expand
  6. notwist
    Jun 7, 2021
    3
    There's a balance between making a game challenging, and simply making it punishing. If you're into Dark Souls, maybe this will be your cup of tea because dying over and over again and losing all progress is your thing -- but the problem is that if the game already takes tens of hours to grind up to the next tier of boat even if you're in "forgiving mode" with save-scumming because you'reThere's a balance between making a game challenging, and simply making it punishing. If you're into Dark Souls, maybe this will be your cup of tea because dying over and over again and losing all progress is your thing -- but the problem is that if the game already takes tens of hours to grind up to the next tier of boat even if you're in "forgiving mode" with save-scumming because you're still constantly bleeding money left and right, it doesn't even pass as a difficult game, just an incredibly grindy one.… Expand
  7. nickdos
    Feb 12, 2015
    2
    Waste of time, no fun. I don't see the whole exploration thing when the writing is very enigmatic and vague and you cannot make out a thing. Combat is lame, money making impossible, you cannot even sustain your ship to explore.
  8. fredhorrigan
    Feb 16, 2015
    0
    Mediocre flash-tier game that only got high marks because one of the people working on it has a bunch of connections with gaming journos.

    While this game might seem interesting for the first couple hours, the feeling that quickly sets in isn't terror, but the reality that the game is extremely shallow (geddit?) and far too restrictive when it comes to making progress, forcing the player    Mediocre flash-tier game that only got high marks because one of the people working on it has a bunch of connections with gaming journos.

    While this game might seem interesting for the first couple hours, the feeling that quickly sets in isn't terror, but the reality that the game is extremely shallow (geddit?) and far too restrictive when it comes to making progress, forcing the player to grind for a very long time if they want to stop using the starter boat.    … Expand
  9. Captain_Chaos
    Jun 22, 2016
    4
    Made it about an hour north from London. Almost starved before I could buy some food. Sunk by a living ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ iceberg. I was told upfront that my first captain would likely die, and quickly. Doesn't mean I have to like it. Music, art and writing are excellent from what I've seen, but it could be a lot more forgiving. Even for a roguelike.

Awards & Rankings

47
#47 Best PC Game of 2015
74
#74 Most Discussed PC Game of 2015

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
81

Generally favorable reviews - based on 38 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 31 out of 38
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 38
  3. Negative: 0 out of 38
  1. RPGamer
    May 13, 2015
    80
    Sunless Sea is a unique experience that few fans of careful planning and literary cannibalism should ignore. Proponents of Fallen London's dark sensibilities and chilling, lore-rich writing will more than forgive its few mechanical trespasses; however, even less patient gamers may want to peek in to experience the sights and sounds of the zee.
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  2. Pelit (Finland)
    May 13, 2015
    85
    Real history can be a bit boring, so that's probably why Sunless Sea is set in an alternate world of 19th century where the city of London was transported underground by bats. The player is a steamship captain who must explore the vast underground sea, battle monsters and solve different types of quests. The writing and the atmosphere in the game is excellent, which is why I was really drawn into the events that were happening. It's a shame that the combat mechanics are oversimplified and simply not fun. The game is also too difficult for beginners. [May 2015]
  3. Games Master UK
    May 6, 2015
    69
    Unforgiving and tough, but the exploration of an unusual world can be fascinating. [May 2015, p.63]
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