Sunless Sea is one of the most intriguing games I've played in the past few years, mostly thanks to the utterly bizarre yet still somehow grounded story. Unfortunately, despite absolutely loving it I never actually managed to reach the end due to a combination of permadeath, randomness, and incredibly punishing difficulty that encourages grinding over anything else. As such, I am very glad to say that the developers are giving the concept another shot with the Sunless Skies sequel, this time around with much more player-friendly gameplay mechanics.

Instead of sailing the murky seas, however, in Sunless Skies you will be exploring space itself... though its not the same one as we know. You'll need to balance your resources carefully, keep a close eye on your crew as terror and madness might consume them at any moment, and naturally, try to survive against pirates, ancient leviathans, and even greater horrors that lurk in the endless darkness. To me all of this feels like a heavily modified version of Sunless Sea, but I don't consider that to be a bad thing given how much more room the developers have to further flesh out the gameplay and introduce even stranger locations to explore.

If all of this sounds like something you might enjoy, you'll be glad to hear that Sunless Skies will be coming to Steam Early Access on August 30th. The initial version will contain most of the mechanics and gameplay features, though there will obviously be a variety of bugs and issues to watch out for. As far as the available content is concerned, you will be able to explore one of the four regions of the High Wilderness, the Reach, with the rest coming in with future patches.

To learn more, or just grab yourself a copy once Sunless Skies arrives later this month, I would recommend heading over to either Steam or the official website. And finally, here's a very brief teaser trailer showcasing Sunless Skies in action: