Sunless Skies is a Gothic Horror roleplay game with a focus on exploration and exquisite storytelling.
Command a flying steam locomotive
The only thing between you and the waste-winds, storms and cosmic lightning is your engine. Tend and upgrade it, buy weaponry and exotic equipment, and keep her hull in good shape to hold the hostile Heavens at bay.
Explore a unique and dangerous universe
You play the captain of a locomotive, a steam engine fitted for off-rail travel: sailing the stars, leading your crew into trouble and out of their minds. Smuggle souls, barter for crates of time, stop for cricket and a cup of tea.
Fight her majesty’s agents, pirates and abominations of the skies
Face ships of differing factions and unknowable beasts each with different attacks and agendas.
Survive starvation, madness and terror.
Manage your crew’s condition and your captain’s nightmares. Balance fuel and supplies against your desire for new horizons, knowledge or riches. Struggle with sights never meant for human eyes. How will the dark change you?
Recruit officers on your adventures
Populate your ship with unique, upgradeable officers, each with their own quest to fulfill: an incautious driver, an incognito princess, a repentant devil, and – dear god! – your Aunt?! How did she get out here?
Discover your captain’s past through narrative levelling
Reveal your captain’s past deeds as facets of their personality as you progress. Most captains will perish, but their actions will leave a mark on the world for their descendants – for better or worse. Pass on some effects, and return anew to deal with events that your previous captain put into motion.
The World
The High Wilderness is a wondrous vision of space: shifting, wind-swept ruins where the laws of the cosmos are not as we imagined.
The stars are alive. They are the Judgements: vast intelligences that govern all things. But they are dying. One by one, something is snuffing them out, leaving their thrones empty. Unfettered by trivial things like gravity, the Victorian Empire have pushed their tendrils into this new world, and their ambition is savage. They have built a new Sun. The Empress Victoria reigns from the Throne of Hours, which gives her control over time. Your Captain and crew must carve out a life between the stars. Will you support her majesty and the establishment, or the working class rebels who yearn for freedom from the Workworlds?
Game Features
- Multiple, intertwining stories with a depth and richness unlike anything else in games, inspired by CS Lewis, Jules Verne, Lovecraft and HG Wells
- Lush, hand-drawn 2d art
- Four regions to explore: celestial wilderness, impossible industrial empire, pagan midnight expanse, and the mysterious Blue Kingdom
- A choice of play styles: build a lineage of captains as each dies, or reload your most recent captain and continue
- Key remapping and full controller support
Sovereign Edition Features
- Major changes to character progression. We’ve reworked the interface, and added new facets to define your captain – did you lose your soul (and find it again)? Do you have a special connection with spies, devils, talking rats, or Rubbery Men? And legendary captains can now continue to improve their ability even after reaching the cap of level 20.
- A reworked and expanded starvation system. As desperation grows, you can now attempt to eat an unprecedented selection of unwise, unpleasant, or tragic things.
- A new exotic engine. It’s very fast, but not very good at stopping.
- A complete rework of controller support and many improvements to interfaces, to make it as smooth and pleasant as possible.