Re: FREE GAME: Sunless Skies

On 27/06/2024 16:02, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

 <BANG!> Yes, that's how I'll open this week's free-game-on-Epic
announcement. I'll open it with a BANG! There's no reason for this
onomatopoetic explosion; it's just there as a starter. But now that is
out of the way, we can get to the actual game.
   * Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition
https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/sunless-skies-bb4947
    This game, for me, is the epitome of Indie gaming: a
    solid title with workable (but slightly flawed) mechanics,
    an interesting (usually offbeat) concept, and visuals that
    are /just good/ enough. Take your steampunk spaceship out
    into the darkest pockets of ether-space, discovering strange
    aliens and horrors beyond imagining. The gameplay is a
    weird mixture of rogue-like shooter, RPG, space-trader
    sim... and visual novel? It's... fine. Honestly, I find
    the appeal of the game drains away pretty quickly, but
    I can appreciate the innovation.  The "Sovereign
    Edition" is essentially the base game with several
    years of bug-fixes and feature improvements.
 

I got it in early access, played it for a bit and then put it down until the official release. The visuals are one of the best parts for me as combined with the music they conjure up this strange world across which you navigate and explore.
The gameplay I also like as it's a mix between trading, resource management and a choose your own adventure. A lot of the stories are really top notch and it's really good at a theatre of mind immersion. It can be quite terrifying exploring new areas without knowing whether you crew will go insane or starve.
The downsides, the first one is that it is (or was) very difficult and it was easy easy to die not because you did anything wrong, as such, but instead you just choose the wrong direction to explore. That was compounded by one save only and that was just for exiting/re-entering the game so if you die, you die. They did acknowledge that this could be frustrating so introduced some save options.
The biggy is the combat, mechanical it's poor and it really doesn't feel that it fits with the rest of the game.
Overall though I'd say it's worth a try but it's also worth finding a brief introduction to the game to read that explains the basic of resource management and also a few starter trade locations to set you on your way.