I mentioned a short while ago that I liked things that were evocative,
particularly when they inspire me to create other places, other worlds, and
even more so when they seem to have been crafted by people who share at least
some of my inspirations.
Last year I backed a kickstarter for a game called Sunless Sea, billed
as a roguelike game where you’re sailing the seas around the port of Fallen
London, trading, exploring, and when all else fails, fighting your way through
the waters to make sure you get back to port in one piece. I backed this when it was a kickstarter and
it introduced me to the game of Fallen London itself which I have been playing
on an irregular basis since that point.
The mechanics of the game are fairly simple, you have a ship that’s not
tremendously well equipped to begin with and you have to keep it fuelled and
supplied while you go delivering things and seeking your fortune. Added to this you have the mechanic of
Terror, and this for me is where it gets interesting.
Given that the game is about sailing around on a dark ocean underneath
the world above, there are terrors out there to be faced, and the longer your
crew are running around in the dark, the more scared they get, the more they
long for the bright lights and safety of home, so your terror rating goes up
the more you’re out in the dark and goes down (slowly) when you’re in the
bright lights of the light ships and ports.
I’ve been playing it since it was first put out there, and when the
first version of the game turned up, it was unplayably difficult, the supplies
got eaten so fast you couldn’t get to the ports beyond medium distance and the
terror went up so fast with no way to bring it down so that even if you made it
through a few runs, you ended up with a crew mutiny and then failure shortly
afterwards.
Frustrating was not the word that described it.
However, if there’s one thing that Failbetter do, it’s listen, so from
all the feedback from people who’d been playing it, they started changing
things, with the first things being the terror mechanics so that just leaving
the harbour didn’t cause you to have a heart attack and then fall off the side
of your ship, then the hunger, so that your crew weren’t the biggest bunch of
fat b’stards to ever sail the sea. Then
they started adding other locations and the thing that has always made Fallen
London the most interesting...
Character...
The ship has you, your crew, and a number of officers, each of which
has a backstory and skills that they improve the statistics of your ship and by
extension, the chances you have of making it back from voyages in one
piece. More importantly, the officers
aren’t treated as expendable, and as you journey further, so you find that
those stories inspire you to go further, to seek out new ports to get the goods
you need that you can’t find in the places close to home waters.
It’s two dimensional exploration on an ocean of dark nastiness, the
things you’ll find close to home are not well equipped pirates and giant crabs
that present no real threat, even to the underequipped small ship you start out
with. As you complete commissions and
find new ports, you start to build up a chart of the places you’ve been, so
when the admiralty asks you to retrieve strategic information, you know where to
get it from and don’t waste tons of fuel and supplies trying to find it.
The other thing about it is that the places you find out there are
stunning, each of them with their own particular feel and character, each of
them unique and not just unique, crafted to look and be interesting.
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As an example, take the Mangrove College, where various plants and
herbs can be found, but it’s also possible to search the wildlands upon the
island for rarer things.
Take the Iron Republic, where all manner of engineering can be found
for those willing to pay the prices.
Take the Salt Lions, where you can earn a very handsome living ferrying
sphinxstone back to Fallen London as long as you have the cargo space to carry
all that stone.
And then, on the far side of the world, Khan’s Heart, the rival to
Fallen London, where possibly an invasion force waits to be unleashed upon the
ocean, where you find that your every move is watched and waited for, and you
have to constantly find a way to be diplomatic and lower the Khaganates
suspicions of you.
As time goes on, you’ll amass enough money to get more equipment and
weapons to make your ship more lethal. Eventually
(although I haven’t got there yet), you’ll have enough to get new ships that
are larger, stronger, and faster than the steamer you start with. I have to say I’ve got my eyes on a
particularly nice Dreadnought, but I’m some distance from being able to buy it.
As you manage more, so your list of accomplishments will increase and
you’ll find that more people seek you out to manage commissions, you’ll have to
decide which jobs you want to take, whether the risk of trafficking in contraband
and souls is to your tastes, or whether the ethics of the job need to remain
level.
The combat system was originally static, with two cards, one to
represent you, one your enemy, and you picked moves to try and defeat
them. In the latest version of the game,
that’s changed, it’s now a dynamic combat system where you try and outmanoeuvre
your opponent long enough to bring your guns to bear.
In the example above, taking on a lifeberg (that’s a mobile iceberg
loaded with zombies), all you have to do is keep out of the way of it, it doesn’t
have guns, but it does have a hell of a rush attack. You encounter other things, like Lorn Flukes
(huge floating spider bstards), enemy frigates, and somewhere to the north, Mount
Nomad, the Black mountain that eats ships...
And while these things are dangerous, watch out for the eastern ocean,
deep in the dark, because when you look out there, sometimes something looks
back...
Not that that’s going to stop me going back out there, but when you
encounter something that can make the world tremble, you have to ask if you
should be going out there to have another go.
The game is still being updated even now and it’ll be some time before
the map is completed (and for the record, the chart I’ve posted might not be as
useful as it looks, because every time you get sunk (and it’ll happen the first
few times you’re out there), the map changes unless you keep the chart, and if
you keep the chart, you don’t learn anything new from discovering things that
you already know about.
There’s no rules presently for multiplayer, and to be honest, the area
which the game takes place on is too small for hundreds of people to be running
around on, but it’s an interesting game, loads of character, and has enough
already in there to keep you playing for more than most commercially available
games.
