Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition
Failbetter Games · 2019 · Steampunk, Lovecraftian, Exploration, RPG, Story Rich
PC
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About Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition
✦ AI summary
Captain a Victorian steam locomotive through a dying, hostile cosmos filled with cosmic horrors, warring factions, and existential dread. With 800,000+ words of branching narrative, permadeath legacy systems, and deep tactical combat, you'll trade souls, recruit bizarre officers, and decide whether to serve the Empire or resist it across four haunting regions.
Captain a spacefaring steam locomotive as a new Victorian empire takes to the stars! Lead your hapless crew into trouble – and out of their minds. Smuggle souls. Barter for barrels of time. Stop for cricket (and a nice cup of tea).
Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition is the complete and definitive version of Sunless Skies. It incorporates the many additions made since launch – including new officers, enemies, engines, stories, and mascots, as well as a completely reworked region, a full steam mode for long journeys and desperate escapes, and the much-requested horn – as well as dozens of quality of life improvements.
Create your past
Choose who you were before you became a skyfarer. An urchin? A priest? A revolutionary? What brought you here, and what are you hiding?
Each time your character advances, choose another facet of their history. Were they the Black Sheep of the family? Do they have a Lost Love?
The skies are cruel. Most of your captains will die. But each will leave their mark on the world, and an inheritance for those who follow – for better or worse.
Explore a beautiful, hostile universe
Discover more of the deep, dark, marvellous Fallen London Universe, as seen in our previous game, Sunless Sea. (But you don’t have to play that first! This is a totally new story, not a sequel.)
Improve your locomotive
Your locomotive is all that stands between you and the many dangers of the Heavens. Maintain and upgrade it with exotic weaponry and equipment, like a Pneumatic Mining Array, or the rapid-fire Brassraven. Learn how to craft exotic weapons like the Wrath of Heaven from your defeated enemies. And when you have enough funds, buy an entirely new one! Perhaps you would enjoy the capacity of the Pellinore-class Trader? Or the sleek malevolence of a Medea-class Destroyer?
Fight marauders, Her Majesty’s agents, and abominations of the skies
Face rival locomotives – anything from scrappy pirates to experimental warships of the imperial navy. Battle monsters like the nightmarish Undeparted, or swarms of irate Chorister-bees. Play different factions against each other, and learn the unique behaviours of each foe. Use Full Steam mode to evade trouble or chase down your quarry.
Survive starvation, madness and terror
Manage your crew’s morale and your captain’s own nightmares. Balance your fuel and supplies against your desire to explore new horizons, or pursue knowledge, or seize riches.
Beware: we are all changed by the dark.
Recruit variously helpful officers
Populate your ship with upgradeable officers, each with their own quest to fulfill: a repentant devil, an incognito princess, an entire brigade of rats, and – dear god! – your own Aunt?! How did she get out here?
The World
Unfettered by gravity, the Victorian Empire begins to reach across the skies. It has built a new sun. The Empress reigns from the Throne of Hours, which gives her control over time. Its ambition is vast; its mercy slim.
The High Wilderness is a wondrous, horrifying vision of space where the rules are not as we imagined. Winds howl through shattered celestial ruins. Fogs coil amidst stellar jungles. Industrial sprawl chokes the heavens with smog.
The stars are alive. They are the Judgements: vast intelligences that govern all things. But they are dying. One by one, something is snuffing them out, leaving their thrones empty.
Your captain must make their way in this impossible world as they trade, explore, fight and survive. Pick your side carefully, for you might be the thing that tips the balance of power – will you support Her Majesty's new empire, or the rebels who mean to throw off London's rule? Or perhaps you spurn such concerns, and intend to chart the narrow course between the two? Will you retire triumphant, or be lost to the dark?
Features
- 800,000+ words of intertwining stories with a depth and richness unlike anything else in games, inspired by CS Lewis, Jules Verne, HP Lovecraft and HG Wells
- Lush, hand-drawn 2d art
- Four regions to explore: celestial wilderness, impossible industrial empire, pagan midnight expanse, and the domain of the dead
- Real time combat against horrifying celestial foes and merciless pirates
- Upgrade your engine with bizarre equipment and powerful weaponry
- Battle starvation, mutiny, terror and nightmares – or give in to them
- A choice of play styles: build a lineage of captains as each dies, or reload your most recent captain and continue
- Narrative levelling: discover your captain’s past as you traverse the skies
- Earn your fortune in a unique, story-rich trading system, or risk it all to become a smuggler
- Collect pets: the Inadvisably Big Dog, Useless Cat, Perfect Pangolin and more
- Key remapping for keyboard and mouse, and full controller support
Who are Failbetter Games?
We’re a small British games studio based in London. We’ve been making indie games since 2009. Come with us into the dark.
What Steam players say
Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.
I'm a bit torn about this game. Fundamentally, I like it, but beneath the fun is a bunch of tedium. Managing fuel, supplies, crew, hull, AND terror when the world constantly wants to strip all of them away from you is just tiresome. But the atmosphere and world are maddeningly fun to explore. The combat is clunky but there's a bit of charm in that I think. Sometimes the horror elements hit hard and beautifully, then other times it just feels like word salad with no soul behind it. This is a game that doesn't really care if you understand it, but madness is most unnerving when it starts to make sense. Also, just do Mercy, don't do Legacy difficulty. You will die for numerous and stupid reasons, and you can always choose to pass on to the next captain whenever you feel like it. Having the option to return to the last station is very important in the early game. The game costs you enough time as it is trying to get to the good bits, so don't bother trying to be authentic about the experience.6 found this helpful
Great open ended RPG with fantastic prose, Lovecraftian vibes with London-in-the-Sky, mining time itself to fuel the wheels of industry. What will your captain's ambition be? To write the Song of the Sky? To uncover the mystery of why the stars are disappearing one by one? Or just to get filthy rich and retire in obscene luxury? It's all there in the skies...1 found this helpful
Incredible experience. The writing in this game is just something else. I recommend even if you haven't played Sunless Seas.
Buy Sunless Sea instead. Slow, slow slow.
Love this one.
Played Sunless Seas loads and loving this one! Only caution is that it can be buggy using a controller. Steamdeck is also hit or miss, gameplay is fine but lots of little things like the steamdeck going to sleep and then waking up require me to restart the game.
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