Sunless Skies

Sunless Skies is a top-down exploration RPG set in a Victorian-era universe where the British Empire has expanded into the heavens aboard steam locomotives. It is the follow-up to Sunless Sea, and it refines almost everything that made that game compelling while trimming some of the more punishing wait-and-pray mechanics. You pilot your engine through four distinct regions of the High Wilderness, each with its own visual identity, faction politics, and flavour of existential dread. This is absolutely a game for people who read every item description in their RPGs and feel cheated when a named sword has no lore attached. The writing is the reason you are here, full stop. Failbetter crafts prose that rewards patience. A single quest port can spiral into a multi-hour storyline involving ambiguous morality, unreliable narrators, and choices where both options feel genuinely bad. The game does not explain itself eagerly. You will mis-click into a permanent story branch and lose an officer you liked, and the game will simply continue, quietly. That design philosophy will either hook you completely or send you back to a more forgiving genre. The four officer companions each carry deep personal storylines that unlock slowly over many hours, and finishing one feels earned in a way that most RPG companion arcs do not. Combat is real-time and simple by design: you position your locomotive, manage a fear stat alongside hull integrity, fire weapons, dodge. It is not the draw here and the game knows it. Where Sunless Sea combat could feel like a chore that punished curiosity, Skies tightens the loop enough that it stays functional without demanding tactical depth. Build variety exists through engine loadouts and officer choices, but the mechanical ceiling is low compared to a dedicated action RPG. Treat it as punctuation between story beats rather than the main event. The permadeath-adjacent legacy system is worth understanding before you commit. Death is not the end of a run but the end of a captain. You pass on resources and a chosen legacy to your next character. It softens the hardcore roguelite edge considerably, though early playthroughs can still feel thin if you die before banking anything meaningful. The pacing in the opening hours is the biggest barrier, because the game is stingy with context and the economy feels tight until you learn which routes and story choices generate reliable income. Push through that wall. The middle and late game, when storylines start intersecting and the writing begins paying off earlier setups, is where Sunless Skies earns its reputation. If you want a game where narrative decisions carry moral weight, where worldbuilding hides in cargo descriptions and NPC gossip, and where the atmosphere is so thick you can practically smell the coal smoke and cosmic wrongness, Sunless Skies delivers. If you want mechanically complex combat, character class trees, or a story that holds your hand, look elsewhere. This is a game for readers who like their horror understated and their queens suspicious.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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