So this game Sunless Sea? It has some game play, you can hunt Lifeburgs North of Venderbight or run out of fuel by Hunter's Keep. You can give your crew shore leave in Gaider's Mourn or become unaccountably peckish... but, what you will spend most of your time doing in this game is reading. What you will read is by far the most immersive bit of world-building I have ever seen in a game.
The whole thing is more akin to a really well done choose your own adventure novel, like, really well done. At one point I found myself on Nuncio, an island populated entirely by lost postmen. I did work on the beaches dredging up the post that would constantly drift onto shore, and swapped many a story with former postmen in the local tavern. Another island was home to a society of feudal guinea pigs who had their religious artifact stolen by rats. Another voyage took me to hell where crucified dragons spilled forth milk and blood and water while crying out the market's daily deals.
It's a fun game, too bad most people would rather complain about how easy it is to kite pirate dreadnoughts.
It's not my fault that everyone I know who's into games doesn't read.
Cooper Jones
Sunless Sea is interactive literature. It's created by a series of British Authors and artists whose primary game, Fallen London, is just a series of chance-based stories. They managed to craft an original world from an alternative version of our Victorian History that carefully (and in my opinion successfully) dodges all of the H.P Lovecraftian blunders when trying to formulate this kind of setting.
Also OP, this has to be one of the worst ways to introduce Sunless Sea to the Veeky Forums audience I have ever seen. It is a legitimately good, well-thought, intimate literary world which always leaves you guessing how any of it could make real sense- as a reader, you are constantly left with the notion that you don't quite have the whole picture of what is going on yet at the same time feel utterly confident that the author most certainly does and will reveal it to you in time.
That said, all of the truly good stories, world-and-lore building novellas, etc.. of this Fallen London universe are locked behind large pay-walls. Essentially they charge you the cost of a novel to read one of their short stories that might explain a single piece of their thousand-piece-puzzle.
Caleb Lopez
When it's actually a collection of silly short stories where you die in the end?
Brody Green
Looks like an interesting game, but the shitty ship combat turns me off.
Dylan Garcia
That's why I don't like Fallen London. Sunless Sea is worth the price up front.
Henry Bailey
The only type of game that could possibly be considered literature is a visual novel, IMO.
Gabriel Ramirez
The ship combat is more of an exploration mini-game. It's worth it for the art and literature.
Liam White
Most of the game takes place in this screen, in a way it is a visual novel. Just broken up with bouts of exploration.
Alexander Nelson
You are like a little baby, experiencing but the very surface of the surface of this undersea. Let me show you.
Jason Ross
That game may qualify then. There are visual novels that have RPG segments and things like that.
Kevin Wood
But at the same time, I think once you pass a certain level of interactivity, it becomes hard to classify something as literature. The line between literature and game isn't clear enough for some of these cases. But some things do clearly fall into either camp.
Caleb Lee
This thread is not Veeky Forums but tell me how this game compares to pic related?
Ian Howard
I mean, let's say someone wrote a choose-your-own adventure book that was actually good. That would be literature wouldn't it? What if it had illustrations and was written more in the style of a play? It would still be literature, right? The only difference between this and a visual novel would be music and possibly voice acting (which you could mute). Once you go beyond that, I'm not sure.
Blake Harris
Doesn't compare to Majora or Silent, haven't played the game on the upper right. Sunless Sea is entertaining genre fiction, nothing more. Doesn't make use of the mediums potential in a really interesting way. It's still a good game though
Cooper Robinson
Killer 7, not many descriptions of the game do it full justice, but about an assassin with seven split personalities contracted by the American government to take out a terrorist group known as the "Heaven Smiles" before they start an international conflict between the east and west. The story itself is nothing special, but the focus is more on the way it tells its story.
If you have a weak PC and a Wii but don't want to buy the game as it sells for 70$ on amazon, you could always mod your Wii and install DiosMios + a USB loader and play the game that way.
You could get the PS2 version, but that's considered the inferior version.
Colton Baker
Haven't played much yet but I found that santa monster guy that comes with you and has you deliver fucked up presents around, every often demanding "all of something" from you to take in his red bag. You can dodge him around for a while giving him "all of your compliments" and such but eventually if you take too long he will take some "all" that is important, culminating in a horrific death.