Our live radio broadcasts are currently on hiatus while we work on improvements to Sanitarium.FM's core services. For further information, visit our Discord.
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 for PC, Mac and Linux.
Sunless Skies has released, and it has had some major updates since the early access preview here.
One of the very first things noticeably different is the new tutorial and story added at the very start of the game, which also highlights the new story UI.
Speaking of the UI, the whole thing in general has had an overhaul. It is now easier to read and lends itself better to the dark aesthetic of Sunless Skies.
New weapon types have been added, with two versions of each to choose from. First off there are the Portsmouth House ‘Albertine Candle’ and the Portsmouth House ‘Her Renewed Majesty’s Jubilee’ rockets, and then the Wit & Vinegar ‘Sneeze-Lurker’, Wit & Vinegar ‘Zounderkite’ mines respectively. Added to this is the powerful new exotic weapons added throughout the game just waiting to be discovered by the player.
New content has been added to the Blue Kingdom and High Wilderness, including some new officers the Clay Conductor and two Blue Kingdom officers; the Forged Companion and the Felined Eccentric.
The wealth ambition received some adjustments and your captain can now retire in Eleutheria, while Narrative Director Chris Gardiner worked on the final ambition The Stars are Dying for launch.
Part of the new content added was smuggling! It was one of the stretch goals on the Sunless Skies kickstarter and offers more opportunities for nefarious deeds in the high wilderness. Smuggling will unlock midgame for those captains looking to make some extra cash and don’t mind a dangerous pirate lifestyle. Just look for the Gloomy Middleman in London to start the storylet quest to unlock smuggling. Alternatively If your captain has Villainy 3+ or Veils 40+, the Gloomy Middleman will approach you directly. Once unlocked, Contraband items will appear in one shop per region across the Reach, Albion and Eleutheria. You will need to pay attention to Prospects to make a profit. Smuggling also adds hidden compartments for your locomotives equipment to hide contraband from customs.
Twin Mirror, The Dark Pictures and The Gardens Between number among the new releases shown, focusing mainly on darker more story based theatrical games while Cat Quest 2: The Lupus Empire is a quirky, bright RPG starring a cat and is the only direct sequel announced so far.
Not exactly sequels, Playlink: Chimparty adds some more games to the Playstation Playlink, while other titles such as Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition takes an existing game world setting with a new art style and story, Fist of the Northstar Lost Paradise sees Kenshiro enter a new play style by the team that brought us the Yakuza series, Persona 3 Dancing in the Moonlight + Persona 5 Dancing in the Sunlight is a new entry in the bizarre dancing spin-offs to the popular Persona RPG series, and lastly everyone’s favourite purple dragon is having his classic adventures updated for the PS4 with the Spyro Reignited Trilogy.
And a quick round up of the games shown ont eh Playstation stream –
You can check out the trailers over in our playlist
That’s it for the day one roundup, a strong first day for lovers of new and classic gaming. make sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for live blogging of the developer sessions!
~Sirhc
SAIL THE STARS. BETRAY YOUR QUEEN. MURDER A SUN. Set a course for the heavens in your steam locomotive! Lose yourself in a changing universe where even time can be bought. A Victorian Gothic adventure for PC, Mac and Linux.
Sunless Skies is currently an early access title and is the sequel to Sunless Sea which itself is a sequel and spin off of Fallen London, the browser based text game that started the world of the sunless games. Sunless Skies is one part rogue-lite, one part trader sim, one part narrative focused RPG. The game is built on the Unity game engine and Failbetter’s own narrative platform StoryNexus. Failbetter has once again managed to make a charming game that captures the whimsical humor of their fallen London universe and the Lovecraftian adventures one could find there but now set in space on a steam powered locomotive.
For better or for worse the core of the gameplay remains the same as that of sunless sea, you create a captain, and you navigate your vessel through the dark and dangerous expanses of space trying to make your fortune or become famous. If you die that captain is dead permanently in the legacy mode but your new captain may inherit a higher starting level, money, and star chart. As of writing this I have gone through 6 captains, each having died hilariously and horribly from my own growing pains trying to learn my way around the map. You have to manage your sanity, your fuel, your supplies, and of course your cargo. The farther away from the starting port you get, the more dangerous things become, I was killed in two shots by an enemy locomotive while I was distracted by the beautifully creepy homestead I discovered. Combat is simple with you firing one of two weapons and trying to hit the enemy while at the same time trying not to get hit by said enemy. This usually end up revolving around you flying circles around the enemy to line up a clean shot to their starboard or port broadsides so you can avoid the front of the enemy as all weapons currently fire directly ahead of the locomotive.
Like any good narrative, the meat of the story and immersion is what happens between start and finish, and having the legacy of your previous captains help to make a unique story for each play through. Much like the heirs of your heroes in rogue castle changed gameplay, so too does your next captain. I have had captains that found devils and rats to be officers aboard their locomotive, each with their own story to pursue, and then i have had captains that instead found passengers that lead to their own stories and quests but never found the same officers. This randomness keeps things fresh and unique in between traveling from port to port when travel is getting tedious and the monotonousness of the dark space between ports sets in.
Sunless Skies is a great narrative and a superb time killer. The writing is great and the art is appealing. Failbetter has most assuredly learned from their previous titles and seem to have once again struck gold and I expect them to further tune the gameplay in this early access title as they continue to integrate player feedback. That being said, this game is not for everyone and I can only seriously recommend it to those looking for something slow paced to kill time and wanting to try something different or to fans of the old star trader style games as the game can get tedious and boring during long stretches of exploration if you are not into games like this. I had a blast playing this title and am looking forward to seeing how it progresses from here and have even gone to take a look at the browser based adventure game that started it all, Fallen London. I am giving Sunless Skies a 6 out of 10, I have fallen in love with this universe and can’t get enough of it.
For the first time in history, the long-closed borders of Summerset are open to foreigners by decree of Queen Ayrenn. But darkness looms over the ancestral home of the High Elves, and whispers stir of Daedric followers organizing in the shadows. Rally your allies, brave champions. Summerset awaits.
Explore an all-new zone packed with adventure. Join the mysterious Psijic Order and gain powerful new abilities. Reunite with old friends, forge new alliances, and work together to unravel a conspiracy that threatens Tamriel’s very existence.
Summerset is the newest chapter to the The Elder Scrolls Online, and while it adds much new content, a new crafting skill line and a new skill line focusing on time manipulation from the Psijic order, new mobs, two beautiful zones to explore and an amazing continuation to the main overarching story, it does not do much else, which is a good thing. ZOS stuck with what makes ESO great and avoided trying to reinvent the wheel.
When I do a review I have one main question I always ask myself and set out to answer. Is this fun? And the answer is a resounding OH HELL YEAH. I have long loved the elder scrolls franchise and I love ESO, but the game is not without its flaws, which is true of all games, but I have to say that Summerset is some of the most fun I have had in a long while in an mmo, from new trash mobs with interesting combat mechanics in the open world too the amazing new coral crab mob designs and the quest stories and writing has gone a long way to making this one of the best expansions yet for ESO.
Underneath the beauty of the High Elven island lies a darker side, The high elves prejudice against the “lesser races” is on full display, their political intrigues show up in force in Summerset’s main story as it is both a continuation of the Morrowwind Clock Work City story picking up right where it left off with more daedric cults and daedric princes up to no good and a continuation of the Aldmeri dominion’s story lines surrounding queen Ayrenn’s ascension to the throne. The quests diving deeper into the motivations of the characters around you and not simply praising your prowess as a world-class savior brings a human quality to the game that helps you feel more connected and immersed in the game. One example of this is Razum-dar, a long time fan favorite, he is not just another NPC but a friend to the player. As a result, Summerset is both familiar and foreign. The new Public dungeons are a breath of fresh air in how they are designed and some of the new bosses look amazing. The new trial, Cloud rest, has you taking on one to the ancient long thought extinct sloads, a slug devil toad abomination that just wants to smash your face with the help of mind controlled minions and crazy daedric magic.
Summerset brings a host of new additions to the game, The main story as mentioned previously, 6 new delves, 6 new Fun world bosses, 6 abyssal geysers which function like dolmens. 2 new public dungeons which have farm-able collections that net you prizes such as the new ginger kitten vanity pet. A new trial that can be completed multiple ways. The new psijic order skill line which adds 5 active abilities, a new ultimate, and new passives. It also adds Jewelry crafting which allows you to craft your own jewelry and make set piece jewelry. Both of these new skill lines drastically open up build diversity. The champion point cap was also increased to 750 and the game adds several new interesting gear sets to the game.
If I had to rate Summerset on a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate it a solid 8, it just does so much right in terms of what an expansion should add to the game but it still has old flaws that still need to be addressed from older versions of the game and class balance & build balance issues that continue to still plague the game.
~Darsch
The Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset is available now on –
Today we are taking a look at Cultist Simulator by Alexis Kennedy and Weather Factory studio, Alexis being notable as the creator of Fallen London and Sunless Seas.
Now if you’re familiar with Fallen London or Sunless Seas then you’ll have a good idea of what is on offer with Cultist Simulator, essentially a narrative based game based heavily on making decisions, sometimes tough, sometimes easy, but always with purpose. Cultist Simulator however, unlike the other games is a card based strategy game as opposed to the adventure, exploration style of the others.
Set in the 1920’s Cultist Simulator puts you in charge of a regular person, one that has been beaten down by the world and lacks purpose, just spending their days working in a soul crushing job, although the open of the game places you on their final day of menial work so you can receive your last pay and start your journey proper.
Now, the plot of the game is quite difficult to sum up, as the game is basically the next evolution of the choose your own adventure story; so you can drastically shift what will happen based on your choices (even waiting too long to make a choice is in itself a choice that will shift the story and your subsequent choices).
The main point of the game is to select an old god (from literary icon H.P. Lovecraft’s work) to worship and base your cult around, and then bringing the old god to the current world to take their rightful place, but how you choose to do this is up to you.
In case you were wondering about the whole “aren’t Cults inherently evil” thing: yes they are. You are the bad guy in this game – but that’s not how you see it, following the will of a higher power and all.
As a card based strategy game you have a board and cards, sounds simple enough, however as a video game there are plenty of secrets and surprises in store, the more choices you make the more cards appear which means more choices become available to you, after a few minutes of playing you’ll find yourself with a dizzying amount of cards, how do you use the cards though?
Well you begin with an “option” slot and resource cards, as you make choices you will receive more option slots, more resource cards and modifier cards, so you can drag a resource card into an appropriate option slot which will create a timer countdown while it processes, during this time you can read other cards, make other plays or if available drag modifier cards into the option to change the outcome.
As you can have multiple timers counting down at once, you never really are stuck waiting for things – but if you do find yourself wanting to speed things up, there is a speed modifier you can select at the bottom of the screen.
One terrifyingly realistic aspect of the game is that in order to survive and continue playing, you must expend wealth cards, this also means that you need to find ways to bring in wealth consistently so you don’t burn through it all, again you have multiple options for this that expand as you play, but your first way is to have your character work, this negatively impacts their health (which is something I can relate to before joining Sanitarium FM of course) so there are always ramifications to your choices, if you work to hard you could deteriorate your health, but if you work too little you could run out of money, in the same fashion there are things you can do that will raise your fame which could make it easier to gain new followers, but it will also make you a target for detectives (however you will need to break laws for the detectives to get any evidence against you) so again you’ll need to find the balance that works for you.
These things coupled together make the game surprisingly fast paced and tense, with new cards appearing all the time, some of them also with expiration’s of their own, so you always need to be on top of things if you want your cult to prosper and your god to awaken.
What seems like a basic and even boring game at first look is one of the deepest and most manic experiences I have had in a while, if you like H.P Lovecraft, reading, strategy and using your imagination then Cultist Simulator could be just what you’re looking for, the game has also seen fairly frequent updates since release so it looks like you’ll have a lot more options soon too.
I’ll leave you with a quote from the developers summing up the game:
Become a scholar of the unseen arts. Search your dreams for sanity-twisting rituals. Craft tools and summon spirits. Indoctrinate innocents. Seize your place as the herald of a new age.
