'Sunless Sea' is a wild 350,000-word literary RPG, out for iPad
Great news, iPad owners: Failbetter Games' wonderfully words-heavy roguelike Sunless Sea is now something you can buy in the App Store.
The game sends players off to explore an underground ocean where pirate-operated steamships, deadly "Zee" monsters, and worse horrors await. Death comes swiftly and frequently, but them's the breaks when you settle in with a roguelike.
Sunless Sea is an easy game to look at thanks to Failbetter's wonderful art, but the words matter more. The writing is both quirky and engrossing, effectively painting a more vivid picture of the Victorian-era underworld than any screenshot ever could.
Where most RPGs focus on juggling stats, Sunless Sea places greater import on your choices. Many of the elements that you would expect to see in a more traditional RPG are either invisible mechanisms here, or they're completely absent.
The game is meant to be challenging. While death is permanent and each new game randomly reshapes the world, certain things remain static from playthrough to playthrough. As you learn more about the "Unterzee" with each game, you better equip yourself to survive the more challenging scenarios when you play again.
Sunless Sea takes place in the same universe as another Failbetter release: Fallen London. The browser-based choose-your-own-adventure introduced the notion of a Victorian-era London that's disappeared underground.
If you'd like to get a sense of Failbetter's written voice, Fallen London is available as a free iOS download. It's a quality work on its own that also serves as a helpful introduction to the new game. Sunless Sea is out now in the iOS App Store (iPad only) for $10.
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
