Sunless Skies

An incredible game that doesn't respect your time. I last played this game a few years ago, so take my review with a grain of salt.
Sunless Skies' biggest standout is its worldbuilding - the art direction, the narrative, the gameplay design all "fit". There is this genuinely convincing Lovecraftian world where words sear themselves onto your internal organs, the sun is a dying malevolent clockwork beast, and the UK killed God - at least as much as "convince" means in that context. Exploring and partaking in this world is the biggest reason to play this game, and I dare say that this is **the best execution of video game worldbuilding for a Lovecraftian universe and one of the best-built worlds in indie gaming in general**.
Now the downsides: the biggest ding against this game is that death sets you back *far*. I remember running into a ship, wondering if it was a friendly, and subsequently getting nuked and losing maybe 8-10 hours of progress. There is some carry-over of progression, but dying is still hugely demotivating for playing the game further. Additionally, the late game gets a bit stale without fast travel mechanics - sure there's an engine upgrade at some point, but taking 5-10 minutes to go from one side of the map to the other side of a *completely separate map* while looking out for hostiles along the way gets old. For these reasons, replayability went off a cliff for me once I completed one playthrough, since i had experienced most of what the game had to offer and got nothing but tedium out of repeating what I had done to get back to the remaining 10-20%. This makes dying even worse because you die and have to repeat many of the things you did to get back to where you were. All of this is why I say this game doesn't respect your time.
I am neutral on the game mechanics. Combat and trade are fine by themselves but would not be worth it without having the story to follow along with.
It's worth adding some context on the devs: Failbetter Games has been running an online RPG called Fallen London since 2009. Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies are both built upon the world of Fallen London, which I imagine is why the world building is so fleshed out. The cons of Sunless Skies are more forgiveable if you look at it in the same lens as Fallen London, which places less focus on "finishing" the game and more on immersing yourself in the world it creates. Some reviews call Sunless Skies a glorified book / visual novel, and while I think that's harsh for the game, Fallen London is pretty much a book and so I can see where that sentiment is coming from.
In summary, I love the world and recommend the game, but I'd say skip if you want something with a shorter gameplay loop / something that lets you progress more steadily.

it's sunless sea but with trains and a dodge mechanic. autism paradise.

Tread not thee lightly in these horrifying skies!
Having hugely enjoyed while being slightly over-whelmed by it's predecessor Sunless Seas, I've committed mine own soul and that of all my crew to this, it's really excellent.
It's a kinda uniquely presented roguelike explorer, extremely heavy in story and Lovecraft-adjacent lore, with many many choices and consequences along the way, and one of the best implemented die-and-improve mechanics I've come across. Every little element of this game, including your demise, evolves around the deep and spectacularly well written background story and ever-evolving events.
I wasn't kidding on my first line though. There is NO short way to play this game, you are looking at dozens of (thankfully absorbing and addictive) hours to get anywhere, although your reward is just how much content there is and how big this game becomes compared to your starting point.
The amount of different things that need you attention and management just to stay safe and alive remains somewhat overwhelming at times, and caution in planning is always recommended, but mechanically it's a big improvement on Seas.
Thoroughly recommended for those who dont mind depth and spending time and effort, not great for ADHD moments or if you're allergic to Victorian literary styles or high fantasy

Sunless sea has better writing but this has much better gameplay. I really liked it and wish it was a bit longer.

Breathtaking art, amazing writing, and great horror, I think this is one of if not the best cosmic horror game on the platform.

Sunless Skies is, in many ways, a work of art. The writing is phenomenal: strange, elegant, and full of delightful otherness. The atmosphere is dense and immersive, with a surreal reality-bending quality that’s reinforced by its stunning art style, haunting sound design, and endlessly quirky cast of characters. In terms of tone and world building, it’s one of the most unique and well-crafted settings I’ve experienced in a game.

That said, I’m only technically recommending it because it just didn’t quite work for me.

The gameplay loop is deliberately slow and repetitive, presumably to enhance the sense of isolation and eerie exploration. However, for me, it felt more tedious than atmospheric. The pacing made it hard to stay engaged, especially when it came to progressing quests. You’ll pick up a story thread in one port, and then not encounter the next piece until hours later. That is if you even remember what you were doing by then. This led to the narrative feeling disjointed, despite how well-written each individual piece was.

The resource management and trading systems also didn’t add much for me. They felt more like busywork than compelling strategy. I ended up playing most of the game with a podcast running in the background just to keep myself invested.

If you have the time, patience, and love for slow-burn, text-rich storytelling: Sunless Skies is absolutely worth the journey. It just wasn't the right voyage for me.

It's worth playing for the writing alone: its hilariously satirical with an absurdist bent. Imagine if Douglas Adams wrote a book about Victorian Era space trains.

That said, I have two critiques. The first is the gameplay. The majority of your playtime will be spent watching your engine travel (SLOWLY, even with the best engines) from point A to point B, mostly retracing routes you've traveled many times before. Occasionally this will be interrupted by an enemy you need to fight, but the combat mechanics just aren't that entertaining. Partly, this is because the game encourages you to grind/farm make-work quests (deliver X good to Y port!). Even for the quests that aren't procedurally generated, you'll be revisiting the same cities over and over because you keep getting new quests that link back to them. There are a handful of quests that can be completed entirely within a single port, but even those force you to retread the same circuits because they have time gates ("you must come back in two weeks to continue this quest..." sometimes a dozen times or more). That leads to a high percentage of low-entertainment play time, even if there are some real gems in there.

The other problem is that the game really gives you very little agency, for a role-playing game. You make tons of choices, certainly, many of which even have at least the appearance of significant moral valence. But at the end of the day, very little of what your captain does makes a meaningful difference. You might favor this faction or that faction, but neither of them have a defined, relatable philosophy to make your choice anything but arbitrary and regardless of which you choose they'll either end up in a permanent stalemate (e.g. tacketies vs stove pipes) or else victory by one side or the other changes nothing on the ground (e.g. Psalmists vs Widows at the Wellmouth). Time and again, your character is faced with systemic injustice, and has the same three options: 1) Get on the bandwagon and grind others beneath their feet; 2) push again and again for incremental changes that make no difference whatever in the actual problem; or 3) start violent revolutions that only make matters worse. You can't fix anything. You can't save anyone. All you can do is wallow in suffering as the world decays toward its inevitable death. For a novel, that would be a reasonable artistic choice. You could use that philosophy/setting to explore all sorts of fascinating things about the human condition. But for an RPG, categorically denying the possibility of real agency produces a deeply unsatisfying experience.