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“Lose your mind. Eat your crew. Die.”
This is the motto of Sunless Sea, and well it encapsulates the nature of this sea-faring adventure game with roguelike elements. The premise is straightforward yet perfectly hints at what is to come: 100 years ago, London fell beneath the earth into the Sunless Sea. You are out to seek your fortune in this dangerous world, and can choose one of several goals. The DLC (Zubmariner) adds the goal of immortality, so of course I chose that one.
Along the way toward your goal, you meet strange and fascinating people, visit alien islands, and occasionally sail off the edge of the world to meet an elder god and have his minion join your crew. The draw of all this are the countless, beautifully written stories you run into at every turn. This game is narrative storytelling done right – a well-written text adventure punctuated by vast, empty sea.
On that note, it might be tempting to criticize Sunless Sea for the sheer time it takes to get from one point on the map to the other. Your ship moves painfully slowly across seemingly endless sea. But I think it would be impossible to have this game without those long moments of nothingness. Indeed, at the heart of Sunless Sea is a feeling of exploration. Your supplies running low, the terror mounting as you sail into utter blackness simply hoping for a port to appear on the horizon. That’s what makes exploration exhilarating – and it would be impossible to have the moments of adventure and discovery without the blackness between. That’s something Elite: Dangerous tried to have, but spread itself too thin in the process.
From a mechanics standpoint, Sunless Sea is very straightforward. You purchase fuel and food, keep within sight of land to stall rising terror from your crew, and occasionally battle a sea monster or pirate ship with under-powered weapons and a paper-thin hull. This is my only point of contention with Sunless Sea: the AI for the pirates is bad enough that you can just follow right behind them and win every time, while the sea monsters are maneuverable enough that very little can be gained from fighting them for most of the game – it’s easier to just run away. There’s little middle ground to the challenge, which is a pity.
Even so, I can forgive the terrible combat since Sunless Sea is much more about exploration and narrative adventure – and that it does well. There are few reliable trade routes that are worth the supplies required, so your best bet is almost always to continue exploring – story events will often reward you handsomely. The stories you find are typically as isolated as the islands they take place on, but there is enough connective tissue in quests from London that it never feels entirely disconnected.
I’ll admit, I’m struggling to write this – partially because I’ve been idle for so long and partially because anything I could write is put to shame by the quality of writing within Sunless Sea. I’ll leave it at this: Sunless Sea is a solid Tier One – something you can get lost in; not as perfect as FTL, but forgiven for its depth of story and perfect evocation of being a Zailor on the Sunless Sea.