Sunless Sea, a steampunk ship captain RPG set in victorian/lovecraftian universe, how cool does that sound? Anyone played this yet?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/304650/ (http://store.steampowered.com/app/304650/)
I did.
It's kinda nice, though a bit hard to learn.
Especially how to properly start and get going.
If you do I suggest you do start by doing this daily:
Read the news at the lodgings to get a "News" item.
Pick up 3 Tomb Colonists.
Go to Hunter's Keep, Reconnoiter the area, and then use the News item to talk with one of the 3 women (try a different one each time).
Then go north to the Tomb Colony, gather gossip there and unload the colonists.
Head back to London, file your reports to the Admiralty.
Rinse and repeat until you've grasped the game enough.
In the meanwhile try to combat bats, they're really easy and very rarely bother to damage you.
You should first use Signal to get at least 25 illumination on them and then spend time observing until you have at least 10 observation points.
Then, go back to using Signal until you've got 50+ illumination. After that, just use the basic shot on them until they're dead.
Once dead, study them (this will give you 5XP for your observation), and then you can either eat them (turn them into supplies, the more useful option),
or if you are high on terror just throw away the corpses to reduce the terror by 1.
Avoid letting other sea-monsters get close to you, they don't need illumination as much as to close the distance with you.
And once they do, they can do terrible damage.
Pirates on the other hand fight like you (though are often weaker). And killing them will give you some random loot (mostly supplies or fuel,
and sometimes some market item to sell).
We covered this in GARPA last year
http://grogheads.com/?p=2535
I played around with their browser-based RPG "Fallen London" (same universe as Sunless Sea). It story-based (virtually no combat), but I found it hard to hold my interest as there weren't a lot of 'signposts' to help new players get into the story.
I'm interested, but as far as I know they it only has one fixed map. When a random map generator is developed I'll probably bite.
Well if it's Cthulhu game, ain't it supposed to be difficult, nerve-wracking and about losing your characters rather than surviving? :p
I watched a gameplay video the other night. It looked pretty dull, despite the interesting setting & mood.
Quote from: Nefaro on July 09, 2014, 10:58:49 AM
I watched a gameplay video the other night. It looked pretty dull, despite the interesting setting & mood.
I watched about three hours of gameplay the other day. By the end of the videos, I believe that I had seen approximately 100% of the gameplay. If that's all there is, I'll pass.
Not that the game isn't fun..there just isn't much to do. Sail to point A, talk to someone, sail back to London, gain exp and money. Rinse repeat.
The entire time, you are getting closer to going mad, or eating your crew. Not the kind of gameplay suspense I am looking for. Combat is simplistic, no help there.
Quote from: Tinkershuffle on July 09, 2014, 10:57:37 AM
Well if it's Cthulhu game, ain't it supposed to be difficult, nerve-wracking and about losing your characters rather than surviving? :p
Are they Cthulhu-based? I never got that sense from Fallen London or the KS campaign for Sunless Sea
Hmm, I'm not sure if it's officially "Cthulhu" but Victorian London with sea monsters and people going mad sounds like Cthulhu to me. :)
Quote from: Tinkershuffle on July 09, 2014, 01:33:43 PM
Hmm, I'm not sure if it's officially "Cthulhu" but Victorian London with sea monsters and people going mad sounds like Cthulhu to me. :)
OK, that's probably a fair assessment :)
Just not quite as good?
I mean... Big Crabs. And Bigger Crabs?
My assessment was similar to Dennis'. Lots of dull Rinse-Repeat. Whilst being chased by crab monsters on the sea.
At first I was interested with the dark (Semi-horror?) Victorian setting, and the text adventures mixed in. Had the hopes that it might be something similar to King of Dragon Pass in a new setting, but not so.
I played with it a few hours this past weekend. It was fun, but I died a lot.
There are supposed to be more stories coming, and a much extended map. It feels more like an interactive story than a game. I actually found it kind of relaxing to play.
I went ahead and gave it a shot - it was a bit discounted on Steam (twelve bucks and change). I liked the first two Let's Play vids by Splattercat, and this was on my wishlist. Won't have a chance to play until later tonight though.
Please forgive me the slight thread derailment, but I'm trying to remember the name of the upcoming steampunk/Cthulhu/colonization game that is greenlighted on Steam. I wanted to keep track of it, but that's difficult when one forgets the name.....
Clockwork Empires
http://store.steampowered.com/app/224740/
Quote from: Tpek on October 14, 2014, 03:34:03 PM
Clockwork Empires
http://store.steampowered.com/app/224740/
Thanks, T!
I've got Clockwork Empires on my wishlist, as well...
I usually don't buy Early Access games, for reasons that have been more than covered in other forums. Sunless Sea is not all that bad; it's actually rather relaxing to play as panzerde stated. The game is not easy, though, and your fate pretty much hinges on the first several minutes of the game. If you get lucky and come across loot that you can sell, or capture a ship and it doesn't disappear into the nether regions with your prize crew (which has happened to me 2 of 3 times, despite a stated 80% success chance). Fortunately you'll know fairly early if you've screwed the pooch of luck or not, so you can easily restart the game early on if you've been f**ked by fate.
But make no mistake, it IS a roguelike game. Though there is a 'Merciful Mode' you can select to enable save games.
I've started about four games and the environment is rather interesting. It has strong storytelling elements (the writing is especially poignant and powerful); I hope those elements remain in flux with each game, though I don't know that it will do that at all given the linear feel to some of the encounters.
I'm not happy with the new combat system. Too arcade-like. The old systems wasn't a whole lot better, but I'm sure they could come up with other solutions.
^ Thanks for mentioning that, tgb. That's another of my peeves - I watched some Let's Play videos and kind of liked the combat, so when I made my first encounter in my game, with a smaller giant crab, I ended up ramming it and it cost me hull points. I was all, WTF? I had to look it up and see that they made the change just a few days ago, and a lot of people seemed to be happy with it. Takes some getting used to but I thought the 'illumination' of your target was a fun aspect and would be enjoyable. Too bad I won't know now from personal experience with it.
Help...are the past 5-6 posts talking about Sunless Sea or Clockwork Empires?
I've been talking about Sunless Sea.
I'm not keen on the combat change, either. The only thing I didn't like about the old system was the frequency of combat - having to stop to fight zeebats every 2-3 minutes got to be a drag. The mechanic though, was fine, and fit in with the overall feel of the game.
It isn't enough to stop me from playing it as a break from more traditional gaming, but I do find it a step backwards.
They have done some nice things with expanding the map and other small improvements.