You are a captain navigating a steam locomotive through the High Wilderness, a strange and dangerous expanse shaped by a Victorian empire reaching into the stars. Visit ports across distinct regions, encounter rival factions and otherworldly threats, and pursue your captain’s ambitions. Travel between ports to discover locations, trade cargo, take on jobs, and encounter branching stories. Choices and skill tests shape events and reveal more about the world, your crew, and your captain. Real-time combat lets you face hostile locomotives and celestial creatures. Balance fuel and supplies against the risks of exploration, while managing crew morale and your captain’s terror. Upgrade or replace your locomotive, equip weapons and other gear, and recruit officers with personal quests. Captains can die, leaving an inheritance for those who follow, or you can reload a recent save.
Captain a steam locomotive across a hostile Victorian star wilderness, trading, exploring, fighting, and keeping your crew alive.
SAIL THE STARS. BETRAY YOUR QUEEN. MURDER A SUN. Sunless Skies is a Gothic Horror roleplay game with a focus on exploration and exquisite storytelling.
Developed by Failbetter Games · Published by Failbetter Games
You are a captain navigating a steam locomotive through the High Wilderness, a strange and dangerous expanse shaped by a Victorian empire reaching into the stars. Visit ports across distinct regions, encounter rival factions and otherworldly threats, and pursue your captain’s ambitions.
Travel between ports to discover locations, trade cargo, take on jobs, and encounter branching stories. Choices and skill tests shape events and reveal more about the world, your crew, and your captain. Real-time combat lets you face hostile locomotives and celestial creatures.
Balance fuel and supplies against the risks of exploration, while managing crew morale and your captain’s terror. Upgrade or replace your locomotive, equip weapons and other gear, and recruit officers with personal quests. Captains can die, leaving an inheritance for those who follow, or you can reload a recent save.
Players who enjoy the game often single out its evocative writing, unusual worldbuilding, and distinctive atmosphere, supported by hand-drawn visuals and music. Exploration, story choices, and the challenge of managing a vulnerable crew and locomotive also appeal to some. Others find the long journeys, repeated trading and errands, and resource upkeep tedious, and some criticize the combat or slow pace.
Full Game Details
From the Devs
Captain a spacefaring steam locomotive as a new Victorian empire takes to the stars! Lead your hapless crew into trouble – and out of their minds. Smuggle souls. Barter for barrels of time. Stop for cricket (and a nice cup of tea).
Sunless Skies: Sovereign Edition is the complete and definitive version of Sunless Skies. It incorporates the many additions made since launch – including new officers, enemies, engines, stories, and mascots, as well as a completely reworked region, a full steam mode for long journeys and desperate escapes, and the much-requested horn – as well as dozens of quality of life improvements.
Create your past
Choose who you were before you became a skyfarer. An urchin? A priest? A revolutionary? What brought you here, and what are you hiding?
Each time your character advances, choose another facet of their history. Were they the Black Sheep of the family? Do they have a Lost Love?
The skies are cruel. Most of your captains will die. But each will leave their mark on the world, and an inheritance for those who follow – for better or worse.
Explore a beautiful, hostile universe
Discover more of the deep, dark, marvellous Fallen London Universe, as seen in our previous game, Sunless Sea. (But you don’t have to play that first! This is a totally new story, not a sequel.)
Improve your locomotive
Your locomotive is all that stands between you and the many dangers of the Heavens. Maintain and upgrade it with exotic weaponry and equipment, like a Pneumatic Mining Array, or the rapid-fire Brassraven. Learn how to craft exotic weapons like the Wrath of Heaven from your defeated enemies. And when you have enough funds, buy an entirely new one! Perhaps you would enjoy the capacity of the Pellinore-class Trader? Or the sleek malevolence of a Medea-class Destroyer?
Fight marauders, Her Majesty’s agents, and abominations of the skies
Face rival locomotives – anything from scrappy pirates to experimental warships of the imperial navy. Battle monsters like the nightmarish Undeparted, or swarms of irate Chorister-bees. Play different factions against each other, and learn the unique behaviours of each foe. Use Full Steam mode to evade trouble or chase down your quarry.
Survive starvation, madness and terror
Manage your crew’s morale and your captain’s own nightmares. Balance your fuel and supplies against your desire to explore new horizons, or pursue knowledge, or seize riches.
Beware: we are all changed by the dark.
Recruit variously helpful officers
Populate your ship with upgradeable officers, each with their own quest to fulfill: a repentant devil, an incognito princess, an entire brigade of rats, and – dear god! – your own Aunt?! How did she get out here?
The World
Unfettered by gravity, the Victorian Empire begins to reach across the skies. It has built a new sun. The Empress reigns from the Throne of Hours, which gives her control over time. Its ambition is vast; its mercy slim.
The High Wilderness is a wondrous, horrifying vision of space where the rules are not as we imagined. Winds howl through shattered celestial ruins. Fogs coil amidst stellar jungles. Industrial sprawl chokes the heavens with smog.
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.
Your captain must make their way in this impossible world as they trade, explore, fight and survive. Pick your side carefully, for you might be the thing that tips the balance of power – will you support Her Majesty's new empire, or the rebels who mean to throw off London's rule? Or perhaps you spurn such concerns, and intend to chart the narrow course between the two? Will you retire triumphant, or be lost to the dark?
Features
800,000+ words of intertwining stories with a depth and richness unlike anything else in games, inspired by CS Lewis, Jules Verne, HP Lovecraft and HG Wells
Lush, hand-drawn 2d art
Four regions to explore: celestial wilderness, impossible industrial empire, pagan midnight expanse, and the domain of the dead
Real time combat against horrifying celestial foes and merciless pirates
Upgrade your engine with bizarre equipment and powerful weaponry
Battle starvation, mutiny, terror and nightmares – or give in to them
A choice of play styles: build a lineage of captains as each dies, or reload your most recent captain and continue
Narrative levelling: discover your captain’s past as you traverse the skies
Earn your fortune in a unique, story-rich trading system, or risk it all to become a smuggler
Collect pets: the Inadvisably Big Dog, Useless Cat, Perfect Pangolin and more
Key remapping for keyboard and mouse, and full controller support
Who are Failbetter Games?
We’re a small British games studio based in London. We’ve been making indie games since 2009. Come with us into the dark.
Awards & Kudos
Back of the Box
Platforms
Windows, macOS, Linux
Achievements
31
Age ratings
ClassInd (Brazil) 10 — Atos criminosos Medo
IGRS (Indonesia) 18 — Horor Rokok dan/atau rokok elektronik, minuman beralkohol, narkotika, psikotropika, dan/atau zat adiktif lainnya Kekerasan
