Today, Failbetter Games unveiled the successor to its richly textured Victorian gothic fiction games Fallen London and Sunless Sea, this time with a delightful science-fantasy spin.
Called Sunless Skies, the game is set in outer space, but not our contemporary understanding of it: think something more in line with C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet or the works of Jules Verne, which imagined space as far more habitable to a few enterprising naturalists with some brass machinery. Here, I’ll let Failbetter explain it:
This is the Victorian Empire in space — the High Wilderness — a “blistering, wonderful night” among the thrones and domains of the stars. The Empress has abandoned London and led an exodus to the High Wilderness, to carve out a new British Empire. With the Empire being increasingly authoritarian, bohemians, revolutionaries and outcasts — like you — are trying to make a life for themselves on its fringes.
[…]
Why the name? The stars are dying. The stars are the Judgements: the inventors, arbiters and enforcers of the universe’s laws — but a revolution has begun, and the stars are being murdered.
The team openly cites H.G. Wells, C.S. Lewis and Empire Strikes Back screenwriter Leigh Brackett among its influences. To those I’d note a few allusions — intentional or not — to His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman and similar science-fantasy works, as well as a smidge of Leiji Matsumoto’s Galaxy Express 999 and Captain Harlock. I’m not geeking out, you’re geeking out. Shut up.
Intended for simultaneous release on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, we can expect Sunless Skies to pop up on Kickstarter in early 2017, and likely some more tasty details between now and then. In the meantime, Failbetter is also gearing up to release Sunless Sea expansion “Zubmariner” this coming October 11th.
