Sunless Sea Review

In a world where the city of London has fallen, it’s up to brave steamship captains to explore the depths of your new world. You navigate the Sunless Sea, known as the Unterzee, to try and map the new world you find yourself in. It’s full of friendship and horrors. How much of each you discover depends entirely on you.

Sunless Sea is terrifying in all the best ways. If you’re already familiar with Fallen London you have a sneak peek at how this world operates. It’s a horror game involving the fall of Victorian era London beneath the crust of the earth. It exists now beside the Unterzee, a dark and unforgiving ocean beneath the world as we know it.

Gameplay

You captain your own steamship, and who you are is up to you. A brief sequence of dialogue choices allows you to choose from a variety of backgrounds and motivations that make you who you are. Some of those are locked, and we’ll talk about how you can unlock those in just a bit.

The game plays like an open sandbox-style RPG in that there is a definitive story, but it changes depending on the choices you make and areas you explore. You can play as a stalwart captain who fights brave battles and commits only the most heroic of deeds. One day while battling a deadly Lifeberg, your ship and crew sink sadly to the bottom of the sea.

But that’s not the end of your game. Your character doesn’t resurrect; there is no “Game Over” sequence. You simply create another captain and explore again. Depending on how your captain did, some of your equipment and knowledge rolls over into your new one. But all that exploring you did? Look forward to starting over again because all the maps are randomized. The horror begins fresh again.