Failbetter Games announces sequel to Sunless Sea called Sunless Skies

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It takes place in space, where the stars are dying. A Kickstarter campaign is planned for February.

Failbetter Games, maker of Sunless Sea, has announced its next game: a sequel to its murky Victorian naval exploration adventure called Sunless Skies. A post on Failbetter's site titled "7 Facts About Our Next Game" gives us a few details, namely that it will provide another world "rich with stories" that will "elaborate on Sunless Sea" by enhancing the original's features and refining its systems. As you may have guessed, Sunless Skies takes place in space. If you're wondering why there's no sun in space, which is typically—according to top scientists—filled with a whole bunch of stars, the post explains this, sort of:

"The stars are dying. The stars are the Judgements: the inventors, arbiters and enforcers of the universe’s laws – but a revolution has begun, and the stars are being murdered."

Despite the obvious early blunder of not naming the game STAR MURDER!—yes, with all caps and a slammer—Failbetter goes on to outline its plans for Sunless Skies. It is following in the original's wake and will seek crowdfunding through a Kickstarter campaign scheduled for February (Sunless Sea gathered  just over £100,000 during its campaign) to be followed by a stint in Early Access. Failbetter says the game is currently in pre-production, so hopefully we'll see some art—conceptual or screenshots—soon.

In the interest of disclosure, long-time PC Gamer contributor Richard Cobbett was a writer for the original game, though I just saw on Twitter that he states he is not currently involved in the sequel.

Christopher Livingston
Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.