Grab your stovepipe hat and space suit, as Failbetter Games’ Sunless Skies is jetting off into the infinite blackness that is Steam Early Access. Acting as the space-faring sequel to Sunless Sea, it sees you exploring the High Wilderness in search of fame, knowledge, and the occasional cosmic horror.
For more interstellar excursions, check out this list of the PC’s best space games.
The first release of Sunless Skies will see players exploring just one region of the High Wilderness – the Reach. The Reach is the “region players start in when they begin the game,” producer Lottie Bevan says, with it being “more user-friendly than some of the later regions, which get properly strange.” There will be four regions in the final version of Sunless Skies, each with their own ports, points of interest, and stories to uncover.
“The current state of the Reach is set up to give players a small taste of what the final game will be like rather than a big taste of an emptier, less representational world,” CEO and art director Paul Arendt says. “We wanted to focus on a more contained area, a space where we can test mood, story and mechanics.” Having constant fan feedback was crucial during the development of Sunless Sea, so incrementally adding new areas should ensure that Sunless Skies is ship-shape when it leaves the Early Access drydock.
While basic combat, exploration, and story interaction are present in this first version, elements like character creation, trade, and extra difficulty settings will not be available if you purchase the game later today. For a full breakdown on what to expect from Sunless Skies during its first few months of development, check out this post from its Kickstarter. According to the developer roadmap, Sunless Skies is expected to launch in full in May 2018.
If you’re ready to take your first voyage out into the High Wilderness, you can purchase Sunless Skies right now onSteam Early Accessand with a10% discount during its first week, before reverting to its regular price of $24.99/£18.99.