- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 97,236
So have they said anything about the "release" date for this game? I've already bought it but I don't playtest games for free; I try to wait for one patch after release.
SKYFARER: A Sunless Skies RPG
SUNLESS SKIES will be released on 31st January 2019. It will be available on Steam and GOG for PC, Mac and Linux.
“We’ve used the time in Early Access to fill the world with the most glorious stories, and to refine the play experience: improving combat, tweaking the skyfaring experience, and closing in on a dark and dread-soaked atmosphere.” says CEO Paul Arendt. “The next update, due on 10th October, will include a complete overhaul of the Reach region and extended mechanics for Terror, fuel, hunger and crew.”
To accompany SUNLESS SKIES, we’re releasing a free pen and paper RPG system set in the Fallen London Universe, available exclusively via digital download at tabletopgaming.co.uk.
SKYFARER: A Sunless Skies RPG is a pen and paper RPG system by Grant Howitt and Chris Taylor of Rowan, Rook and Decard, the minds behind Spire, Honey Heist, Goblin Quest, One Last Job and many other games. SKYFARER follows in the footsteps of their previous work with a focus on quick-form, rapid-fire play that leaves players wanting more.
“‘Why don’t you make an RPG set in the Fallen London universe?’ has been a regular request from players for – oo, going on nine years, now. Working with Grant and Chris on SKYFARER to bring one of our worlds to the tabletop has been hugely exciting. I can’t wait to hear what delicious and horrifying adventures people have with their friends,” says Narrative Director Chris Gardiner. “We’ve tried to make the game friendly to new and experienced roleplayers, and to provide evocative adventure seeds to get things moving in an appropriately Failbettery direction. The game is completely true to our universe: player will find mystery, adventure, bad decisions, improbable characters, nocturnal horrors, and tentacles.”
About SKYFARER: A Sunless Skies RPG
While SUNLESS SKIES puts the player in the role of a Captain aboard a locomotive engine, cruising the skies looking for adventure and profit, SKYFARER gives players the opportunity to play the crew. Gunners, quartermasters, engineers, signallers – even mascots – are brought to the fore as the Captain is struck down by misfortune and the crew must band together to get out of, and probably into, trouble.
Using a simple dice-based system, SKYFARER allows players and gamemasters to easily tell stories set in the FALLEN LONDON universe with plenty of climactic moments, tense stand-offs, and grim decisions. As characters risk life and limb, they’ll accrue Peril – the more Peril they have, the greater the chance of them meeting a grisly and permanent end.
Luckily, things are made easier by spending Tenacity – a resource earned by acting in accordance with your character’s drives and beliefs. But how will those integrities change, now you’re out on the frontier of Victoria’s Empire?
Download your copy from tabletopgaming.co.uk, and please let us know how your games go!
Psst, as an extra bonus for being a friend of FBG, here are some additional story seeds written by our narrative director, Chris Gardiner:
Skyfarer_SkyStories_Supplement
Probably the biggest thing going against Sunless Skies is that Sunless Seas didn't leave a great lasting impression. From my own experience, plus what I've seen here and on other forums over the years, Seas gave a great first impression but then you'd play it for a few days, your admiration for the atmosphere would wear off and you'd realize there wasn't much to it beyond a few interesting quest lines, and ultimately lose interest and forget it existed.
I gave them money despite hating Sunless Sea's gameplay with a passion, just because I'm an idiot and I really wanted to like Sunless Sea and I'm hoping Skies will be similar without wasting my goddamn time. Mostly the idiot part though. Plus IIRC it was a fairly cheap Kickstarter. Cultist Simulator is basically what I would want from something like Sunless Sea, there's still plenty of downtime but it manages to integrate the "Fuck around with stupid crap and learn how it works" aspects into the gameplay in a much more palatable way. I'd even be alright with combining that with some Pirates!/Privateer sandboxing provided the sandbox moved at a decent enough clip.
The advantage of Cultist Simulator is that the game part of it is simpler and a bit quicker to tear through, so what are generally accepted as the best parts of Sunless Sea (The writing, setting, lore, etc) come at a more agreeable pace and even end up being worked into the gameplay a little more (Cultist Simulator being a pretty simple game overall where the main meat of it is learning how all the systems work yourself. Using a guide would pretty much ruin it, and "Learn yourself, losing is fun" is more acceptable when Cultist Sim games are quicker moving than Sunless Sea where you can spend 10-20 hours and shit the bed and even with your improved knowledge still have to take 10-20 hours to get back to where you were).I am a sucker for nice 2D graphics, and I love exploration so SS seemed like a decent buy, and I like supporting indie devs in the hope they will iterate and improve their ideas. Cultist Simulator looks completely uninteresting to me but maybe thats more like the kind of game these guys should focus on? Cultist Simulator screams FB game, so you know exactly what you are getting into. Whereas with SS there was a lot of potential but it failed miserably in certain areas.
That's pretty nice. I still have my doubts that it'll avoid the problems of Sunless Sea, but it's cool of them to do that regardless. Might dink around with it tonight.Hello, delicious backer,
We have a surprise for you. As thanks for being one of our first Skyfarers, you can access the launch version of SUNLESS SKIES right now.
We’re incredibly grateful to you for your support, and your belief in SUNLESS SKIES. We’re so close to launch, and can only hope that we’ve made something which doesn’t disappoint. We can’t wait to know what you think!
Yeah, I'll second this. The more annoying thing to me was that you didn't just have to grind, you had to grind some special currencies, and to grind them, you had to grind something prior to it, usually going something like:People always tried to tell me that Sunless Sea wasn't Korean-tier grindy, but I actually calculated out exactly how many stat points it would take to actually succeed at anything, and barring wild and egregious save-scumming via file backup, and exploitation, the level of grinding was absolutely insane. You absolutely could not ironman the thing as intended unless you were either going to grind at Korean-level, or were exploiting.
In my experience things usually worked the other way around. You need 5000 rat asses for a quest. But you don't have rat asses. But you've got dildojunk lying around that you can convert into like 30 different lesser currencies in vast quantities. Most of the quests seemed to give up higher tier currencies rather than the lower ones, and they generally had multiple ways to finish them so no matter what your stats were like there was some sort of way to do things.