Sunless Skies is Failbetter Games' latest addition to their cult-hit Fallen London universe and the sequel to the previous entry, Sunless Seas. Taking place in a Lovecraftian and steampunk space colony of London 10 years after the events of Sunless Sea, you play as the Captain of a space locomotive. What you do from then on is up to you, as you have the option to explore the mysteries of the High Wilderness and the further intricacies of the Fallen London universe, or you can choose to make your mark on space itself.
An open-ended game, Sunless Skies has both rogue-like and adventure elements to it, as you manually move your train around the open world-map but all further interactions are conducted via "story-lets." Story-lets are pop-up boxes that further the plot, most include an explanation of your current situation, some general information and a choice as well as an accompanying picture. Most decisions are optional but some are unavoidable. Ultimately, the game lets you play as you like, and you can choose any path of exploration, trade, piracy, diplomacy or warfare that you wish.
Brimming with Lovecraftian horror and comedy darker than a black hole, Sunless Skies has more disgusting alien monsters, blemmigans, weird and wonderful plants and even weirder characters to interact with, much like previous installments in the Fallen London universe. It continues the overall mythos arc of the previous games and also brings up questions like "What happens when the stars go out?" and "If a frozen corpse you scraped off your train windshield asks to come in for tea, do you let it?"
Sunless Skies was originally funded by a Kickstarter run in Q1 2017 and its period of Early Access is from August 2017 to the game's release in May 2018 on PC, Mac OSX and Linux by developer/publisher Failbetter Games.
