Failbetter Games, who brought their fantastic literary adventure Fallen London (Free) to iOS last May, are celebrating their 7th birthday as a company today, and they’ve taken this special occasion to announce that their haunting roguelike exploration and survival game Sunless Sea will be coming to the iPad this spring. Sunless Sea takes place in the same universe as Fallen London, and has you exploring the subterranean ocean known as the Unterzee by ship. Managing your resources like food and fuel is crucial, but you’ll also need to manage you and your crew’s own sanity, as the Unterzee is filled with so much awfulness that just sailing through it for too long can drive a person mad. Here’s the launch trailer for the desktop version of Sunless Sea to give you an idea of what it’s all about.
As Fallen London has shown, Failbetter Games are masters of using words to create a dark and haunting atmosphere, and Sunless Sea is no different with more than 250,000 words to tell the various stories and secrets of the game. Roguelike elements come in the form of semi-randomized maps and the ability for the captain of your ship to die, forcing you to start your explorations over with a new captain but still allowing you to bring certain traits over from your fallen character. For the iPad port Failbetter is tapping BlitWorks, who have experience bringing games like Broken Age ($4.99), Bastion ($4.99), Invisible, Inc. ($4.99) and Don’t Starve ($4.99) to the iOS platform. It will require at least iOS8 and will be compatible with iPad Pro, iPad Air, iPad Air 2 or higher. Sunless Sea was highly acclaimed when it released on desktop in February of 2015, and I’m very much looking forward to experiencing it on the iPad when it releases sometime this spring.
