Truly Lovecraftian - Sunless Sea -

Vast areas of the Underzee are left unexplored. Do you have what it takes to brave its waters?

Sunless Sea is best described as a top down rougelike adventure game where play as a captain and take control of your own ship. The crux of the game revolves around you exploring the various locations of the Underzee, aptly named as it is located underneath the Earth basking in its darkness and incredibly infested with unearthly horrors and insane bloodcrazed humans. 

     I found the premise of the game to be very interesting for it's quite rare to see a game inspired by the writings of H.P Lovecraft, much less a rougelike. Though I must say that this is less scary and eerie than the other Lovecraft games like the Penumbra series, Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth and the upcoming Call of Cthulu that is developed by Bethesda (Really excited for that!) , it even has many humorous and quirky events that can uplift your spirit and even make you chuckle. I supposed that scaring you is not the goal of the game, rather its meant to fill you with dread and fascinate you to the point that you playing it even after many failed runs.

    The artstyle of the game is very beautiful in my opinion, the cities and hubs are usually pre-drawn or pre-rendered backgrounds that can really catch your eye while you're reading the text that is displayed. I'm not really fond of the art design while you're out there sailing, most of the time it's a lot of blue and dark green, it's honestly quite boring to look at sometimes especially when you're going across islands that are quite a distant from each other with no stopovers in between. Fortunately those times are rare.

1. Hearts - affects the healing and hull of the ship, also helps in fighting terror situations.

2. Veils - my favorite, allows you to stealth past enemies and be a sneaky sneakster. Also increases the speed of your ship.

3. Pages - the knowledge stat. Helps in identifying mystical stuff that you may come across and increase the XP (Fragments) that you earn.

4. Mirrors - the perception stat. I'm not sure what this is, I think it increases the radius that you detect enemies and the accuracy of yout                   shots? I generally don't care about this stat at all unless it's required for some task.

5. Iron - increases the damage of your guns. Take this if you're planning for a combat build.

Keep in mind that these stats are required for some of the choices that the game will throw at you.

     There are tons of items in the game, some of them are for customizing your ship - making it faster, bigger or sneakier - , some of them are consumables that will help you survive and some of them are goods that you can trade across the islands to earn a profit. Secrets are also a major part of this game, you will find yourself uncovering conspiracies and eldritch rituals on your playthroughs, frankly the most interesting part of the game, really makes for dynamic storytelling.

1. Supplies - the food of the crew, running out of this resource will result in some nasty stuff like cannibalism.

2. Fuel - keeps your ship running. Very, very important. Be sure to restock these or suffer the consequences. My first run was                               amazing but I had to abandon my ship and replace it with a speedboat because I ran out of fuel

3. Terror - automatically refreshes every time you return to London. Letting this reach maximum can trigger many devastating events                      for your crew, most of that involves eldritch abominations and sometimes even the Deities of the Underzee. 

     But, I think that the most important aspect of this game - the rope that ties it neatly and holds it together - is its amazing writing and dialogue. Never before have I seen writing of this caliber on a modern indie game. Every area is described in an interesting and beautiful manner, regardless if its the dark and grimy streets of Fallen London or its the rocky islands of the Northeast. It truly resembles the writing of Lovecraft himself. You will find yourselves reading every text that is available, even the little journal at the bottom left of the screen is interesting.

    Ultimately the game boils down to this, it's a slow pace exploration game that is mainly about resource management. The combat is simple, you fire at an enemy using your weapons and manuever your ship to suitable positions.

        Story wise, you make your own goal as opportunities open up to you. Is it worth it? Maybe, if you're interested in eldritch and post-apocalyptic stories that have many dark themes. Is it perfect? Not in the least, there are many problems I found in this game. One of those is that the gameplay loop becomes really repetitive as you establish a route around the Underzee. Pick this up when it's on sale. The Underzee awaits.