Updated: April 2017

It's a year since I last reviewed Sunless Sea, and given the release of Zubmariner, I thought it was time for an update.

Clearly with 180 hours play time (at the time of writing), I love this game and I definitely recommend it to others. It has been a great experience and I still have so many endings to explore and secrets to uncover. I find immersing myself (pun intended) in this world comes so easily and I can lose hours without realising it.

Part of my love for the game comes from NOT playing it as a rogue-like. Manual save is the way to go with this game. It takes so long to achieve the victory conditions for each captain that starting from scratch because of one bad decision is soul-destroying. So do yourself a favour - just use the manual save. The game is much better for it as it allows you the freedom to take chances, to push yourself further and to do the outright stupid at times. I felt that I missed so much of the game while playing perma-death because I was afraid of losing it all. With manual save I can experience everything.

My feelings on the game are pretty much the same as below, but I wanted to add that the Zubmariner expansion is so well done. It fits into the game as though it belonged there the entire time. It is so well integrated that I can't remember a time before the DLC's introduction, and it's a worthwhile addition to the game. If you find the atmosphere and story in any way gripping, then Zubmariner is a great way to expand the range of the game without it feeling tacked on or forced.

I get that this game isn't everyone's cup of tea and some people find it too text-based, but it's right up my street and is now by far my most-played game on Steam.

Updated: February 2016

I love this game. I found it had a very steep learning curve but once I learned the ropes I discovered a wonderfully layered world with brilliant stories. I have sunk (heh) 80+ hours of gameplay into the world of Sunless Sea and I'm still learning and still discovering. I'm pursuing a different ambition and able to take the opposite options to what I chose last time around and there are lots of little details that I didn't pick up before. The more time I spend playing, the more I fall in love with it.

The story and atmosphere are the strongest aspects of the game, in my opinion. Each island has its own unique story, peeled away layer by layer with each visit. Islands which appear innocuous at first have hidden secrets. I felt genuine anxiety watching my fuel and supply gauges continue to drop miles from the nearest friendly port, knowing that having to detour to avoid a single zeebeast could cost me everything. All of your officers have their own motivations for joining you and while it's costly to help them, you gain huge benefits in the long run, as well as more richly flavoured story.

I would consider the combat the weakest point of the game. Unless you need a specific item drop it's almost always safer and more economical to avoid combat altogether. Perhaps this is intentional as it's more realistic, but anyone hoping for a game filled with epic zee-battles with either be disappointed or frequently dead.

No previous knowledge from Fallen London is required, although I did find myself consulting forums and the wiki to get the background of some stories as information is fed rather piecemeal to give a slow reveal. This does give you motivation to continue returning to islands which don't, at first, appear to have much interesting happening on them.

It took about 60 hours of gameplay for me to finally succeed in permadeath mode, although others have done it in considerably less. I felt that towards the end I was shying away from dangerous encounters a lot for fear of losing my captain and I think I missed a lot because of that. I'm using manual save now and I feel a lot freer to make mistakes and to take chances, although I don't feel quite the same tension as before.

Special shout-out to the soundtrack, which is amazing. It's melancholic and joyful and frightening in all the right ways. You can listen to it for free a limited number of times on Bandcamp if you want to check it out.