We’re nearing the end of a long, exhausting and creatively fulfilling journey, one that has been shaped by your feedback at every turn – from the bizarre islands dreamed up by our Kickstarter backers to the player-driven overhaul of naval combat.

We’ve flirted with earlier release dates in the past. If you’ve been following our Roadmap, you’ll know that we were hoping to release in December. But this stage of development, when we focus on polish and balance, is critical. It’s what turns a good game into a great one. We want Sunless Sea to be a game we’re all proud of, and we want to justify your faith in Early Access by delivering something that is ‘completely done’ not ‘mostly done’.

We’ll keep pushing out updates and new contents in the meantime, of course. We’re working to get our remaining Kickstarter rewards out for Christmas. And we’ve updated the Roadmap, here, so you can see what’s coming next.

We are proud to reveal Dragon Age: The Last Court, a very Failbettery game set just before the forthcoming Dragon Age: Inquisition. It will be playable in your browser and features the text-driven, story-rich gameplay that powers Fallen London.

In Dragon Age: The Last Court, you are the ruler of Serault: an eccentric fiefdom at the farthest ends of Orlais. As the Huntress or the Scholar you’ll guide your realm through the most crucial period in its history. Will its ancient Shame be forgiven? Or will Serault fall into obscurity?

This is a game of lordship. You’ll manage the affairs of your court. You’ll choose a counsellor, a bodyguard, an accomplice and a lover. You’ll balance the concerns of your subjects. Will Serault be renowned for its dignity or its freedom? What is the greatest threat: outlaws, revolutionaries, or the the nameless ancient things that slither in its deep woods? There are stories to explore and secrets to unravel. What lies in the Sealed Chantry? Who is the Horned Knight? Who is behind Serault’s recent troubles? You’ll meet a host of new characters, like the Purveyor of Teas and the  Acerbic Dowager. And maybe you’ll run into a few familiar faces from other Dragon Age titles…

Working with Bioware has been something Alexis and I have dreamed of since we used to build modules in Neverwinter Nights. Or maybe even earlier, around the time Sarevok killed Gorion. Damn you, Sarevok. We can’t quite believe it’s actually happened.

The Last Court will be available soon as part of the improbably sexy Dragon Age Keep. We’ll be shouting about it the moment it’s live.

Chris Gardiner

You can see some preview videos of the game here:

AbilityDrain’s video
GamerMD83′s video
LadyInsanity’s video

CONTENT

Visit Saviour’s Rocks, seat of the Tree of Ages

Guest content by Richard Cobbett, highly appropriate for some late-night, lights-off Halloween zailing: Saviour’s Rocks, home of the sorrow spiders.

Richard is a UK-based freelance writer and journalist specialising in games and story, whose words have appeared for over a decade in publications like PC Gamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, Eurogamer and IGN. He infamously hates spiders, so having him write an island full of them seemed a perfect revenge for his parody of Fallen London, Fallen Swindon.

Read about his experience of writing the island on his blog.

Speak to the Merchant Venturer

He has need of a reliable agent – or a resourceful one – and he will make it worth your while. Find him in Fallen London.

There are also new pretties to marvel at, like the Dawn Machine Grand Geode and Port Carnelian. Stories for these are coming soon.

COMBAT

Balance

The combat system has been rebalanced to address feedback from the community. You should notice the following top level differences:

• Provided you are properly equipped and have decent combat stats for the area of the zee you are exploring (the further from Fallen London you go, the more dangerous the waters), you should be doing more damage than the enemies you are encountering and have more health.
• Combat is now less about whether you can survive each individual battle, but more about controlling the threat of sustained damage. Can you make it home with your ship in its current state? Will you be able to survive another battle?
• Combat should generally be a bit more forgiving, until you reach less than 50% hull integrity. At this point, you have to start worrying about things other than just the damage dealt to your ship.
• You should now be completing firing solutions faster, but doing less damage. This means killing enemies (or being killed) will take more shots. This is to allow for a mid-combat decision to disengage when you find yourself in over your head with an enemy much tougher than you.
• Enemies should no longer be running circles around you. Generally speaking, organic creatures will be more agile than ships, but provided you have a decent engine equipped for the size of ship you are in, you should be able to keep pace with all but the fastest foes.

Fixes 

• Enemies life, hull, crew and damage numbers have been rebalanced.
• Enemy speeds and turning circles have been rebalanced.
• Player ship hull values have been rebalanced.
• Player weapon damage numbers have been rebalanced.
• Player deck weapon ranges have been increased.
• Enemies now spawn more frequently and more evenly across the entire map. The spawn locations have also been balanced, so you should no longer be encountering very tough enemies close to home waters.
• Fighting multiple enemies is now possible. You are only able to target one enemy at a time, but they will be able to attack you simultaneously, so be careful when engaging multiple foes!
• Removed selection circles around enemies when they are selected.
• All enemies how have the same clickable area size, so you should no longer have problems clicking smaller enemies.
• Not all ships will have the same equipment slots anymore. Small ships will only have a deck weapon slot, medium sized ships will add a forward slot and large vessels will feature an aft slot.
• Combat attack tooltips should give you better at-a-glance information and no longer obscure one another.
• Repairing at zee should no longer be as time consuming or expensive. However, if your ship is too damaged (below 50% integrity), you will need to dry-dock to repair it.

Features

• New combat user interface. This has been visually improved and now allows you to toggle in and out of the combat UI at any point. Being engaged by an enemy will automatically open this screen.
• Cannon, Flensing and Torpedo weapons now have different animations.
• While in combat, if you or your foe’s hull is lower than 50%, you (or they) will start being exposed to additional damage! For example:
  • Most ships will start killing off your crew.
  • Bat swarms will begin devouring your supplies.
  • The voice of the Lorn-Fluke will increase your terror.
  • Expect more to come…
• In addition to enemies dealing damage to your crew, you will also be able to kill off their crew. When a ship has no crew left, you will be able to approach it and collect your reward. Eventually, you will be able to send these ships home with members of your own crew as a prize ship.
• If you want to attract an enemy’s attention, nothing is quite as effective as a blast from your horn.
• More items have been added that will allow you to change the course of combat:
  • Rattus Faber Assistants can help repair your hull while engaged.
  • Strange Catches will lure submerged zee-beasts from below the water back to the surface.
  • Blue Scintillack will immediately fill all of your firing solutions – this can now be used multiple times, rather than consuming the item.
  • The Unclear Device will obscure you from your enemies, giving you time to escape or manoeuvre behind them.
  • Flares will light up the zee, illuminating anyone nearby and speeding up the time it takes to build up a firing solution.
• Information on the damage you receive will now be recorded in your log book.
• New boat abilities/hotkey user interface. The old interface has been re-designed to match the style of the combat interface. In addition, the buttons will now be greyed out to indicate when they can and can’t be used.
• The Hold page has been redesigned, to give you detailed information about your currently equipped weapons and items that are available for use in combat.
• The officers page in the gazetteer has been redesigned, making it clearer who you currently have equipped and allowing you to equip officers directly from the gazetteer, removing the need to have your officers panel out on the main HUD to speak to or switch officers.

Known Issues 

• You should not be able to close the combat interface while engaged in a fight with an enemy, though it is currently a bit temperamental. We are working to improve this.

As ever, we appreciate your feedback!

Sunless Sea , along with a number of other Unity games, saves data into this directory, so upgrading will wipe your save data. Don’t worry though, if you save a copy of this data somewhere safe before you perform the upgrade, you will then be able to paste it back into the same directory after the install.

Here is how to access the directory you will need to copy the data from:

1. Activate the Finder.

2. Use the Go menu and choose Go To Folder, or press Cmd-Shift-G.

3. Type /Users/username/Library/Caches/Unity.Failbetter Games.Sunless Sea , replacing username with your sign on username.

4. Copy the contents of this directory to a safe location (personal documents, desktop etc.) NOTE: Ensure that you have definitely copied a directory called ‘saves’

Once you have copied that, you can install Yosemite. Afterwards, run Sunless Sea, prompting the game to re-create your ‘Unity.Failbetter Games.Sunless Sea’ directory. At this point, you won’t have any save files. If you close the game and overwrite the contents of your ‘Unity.Failbetter Games.Sunless Sea’ directory with the files you saved prior to the Yosemite installation, you should now have all of your save files back!

Failbetter Games has an enviable reputation for storytelling. Ken Rolston (lead design on Elder Scrolls III and IV) has called us ‘a constant North Star of narrative design’. We’re growing, and we want to recruit a full-time writer with narrative design responsibilities, to work on our online game Fallen London, our PC game Sunless Sea, and related future projects in the same universe.

If you’re a games writer, this is a dream role, and one of those good dreams, not the one where the bookshelf eats your dog. Writers get respect at Failbetter: they have a strong voice in the creative process here throughout the whole production cycle. Quality writing is at the heart of everything we do. We pay good market rates, our office has amazing views, there’s a private health plan, we sometimes provide ginger cake.

But we are also small. We punch above our weight in terms of reputation, but we’ll need help to get the word out. And although this is not an entry-level role, we want to make sure the door is open to applicants from diverse, under-represented and unusual backgrounds.

This is a permanent full-time on-site hire. You must be able to interview in person in London, and work full-time on-site in London if successful – we could sponsor a work visa for the right applicant, but a physical interview is essential. (At least one person from the US always applies for our roles, and asks for a Skype interview: I’m afraid we always say no.)

THE REQUIREMENTS

Please send the following to jobs@failbettergames.com -

• your CV
• a concise, appropriate covering letter
• links to / copies of two finished, commercially published digital interactive narrative pieces.

If we want to take your application further, we’ll ask you to do a small Fallen London demo piece in StoryNexus. You don’t need to do that yet.

These things would make you the ideal candidate:

• a vivid, intelligent prose style
• deep, varied understanding of interactive digital storytelling
• enthusiasm for a collaborative creative process – not a lone gunman
• strong affection for the Fallen London universe, and Failbetter’s other work
• restless enthusiasm: the initiative to find and pursue new projects and ideas
• a thoughtful, meticulous attitude to your craft

CLOSING DATE FOR APPLICATIONS: 30th November 2014

NOTE: We originally said we’d open applications on 3rd November. We’re going in early for boring logistical reasons. If you have been working frantically on a piece to publish for 3rd November, don’t fret! The closing date is still the 30th November.

THE QUESTIONS

Q. What about pay and conditions?

We can’t compete with big developers on free saunas and skiing trips, but we’ll only make you an offer if we can match or improve your salary. We like to hire for the long term. (In five years, no-one has ever resigned from a Failbetter role.)

Q. What does ‘commercially published’ mean?

We’re defining it loosely. It includes working in a team on a mainstream videogame, or self-publishing a one-person indie game. It also includes (e.g.) a successful (and successfully fulfilled) Kickstarter, a Patreon reliably used to subsidise projects or a Twine story sold through digital distribution. If you can produce finished, polished interactive work, and have done so at least twice, that’s what we’re looking for as a starting point.

Q. What does ‘digital interactive narrative’ mean?

We need someone who’s dealt with the specific challenges of branching or interactive or non-linear fiction. The acid test is: do players/readers encounter different words (spoken or written) in a different order depending on their actions? If so, then we’re good.

Q. Why ‘commercially’?

It’s a basic proxy for quality, and for the ability to finish work to a polished standard. It’s not a great proxy, because there are a lot of extremely high-quality free games. But working on a passion project in unpaid time is different from working under commercial pressure. We care deeply about our craft, but we’re a commercial operation.

Q. Should I be familiar with StoryNexus?

Lord no. Familiarity would be a small advantage, but if you’ve used Inform 7 or Twine or ChoiceScript or Undum or the NWN scenario editor or inklewriter or any of a hundred proprietary in-house tools… you’ll be familiar with the basic challenges.

Q. Can you sponsor a work visa?

You must be able to interview in and move to the UK, but yes, we’ll sponsor a visa if we think you’re the best candidate. Like we said, key role.

Q. You say you’ve got good office views. Of what?

I think the answer might be ‘the future’.

Fortunately, King Dinosaur Games are making one. Their Kickstarter has already passed nine out of ten stretch goals, with 28 hours left to go; you can check it out here.

It’s been a while since we continued the ambitions. Some of them had been paused at cliffhangers or on unresolved mysteries. Today, we’ll begin to answer them. We’re implementing major updates to each of the ambitions, beginning with Bag a Legend. Stealing a trick from Dickens, we’ll be releasing it in three chapters: one today, one tomorrow and one on Thursday.

If you’d reached the limit of the Bag a Legend ambition, set zail for the convent to continue your story. If you hadn’t got that far yet, ignore everything I just said. Convent? What convent? I don’t know what you’re talking about.

After the Bag a Legend update is complete, we’ll be updating Nemesis in a few weeks, then Heart’s Desire and finally Light Fingers. We’ll intersperse these releases with other new content (like Hallowmas) that will appeal to players who haven’t fully explored their ambitions yet.

To whet your appetites, here are a handful of fragments from the forthcoming ambition content:

• The Christmas Card List
• An Appointment with April
• The Masters’ Daybook
• The Secret in the Sock
• Virginia’s beloved: the Prince of Corpsecage
• Recovering the Blind Guide
• To trespass among the Starved Men

This is still the first release and there are issues, quirks and missing features – but it works, and is definitely fun.

Here’s Liam to talk you through what’s new:

We’ve made some changes to the way the map is laid out in terms of balance and variety. If you want to get the most out of Steel, we recommend you start with a new captain and a new chart. It’ll look better, and there’ll be more ports, so you can save more often.

Talk To Us

Tell us everything! We’re still refining combat, and your feedback is crucial. If you find a bug – or aren’t sure if it’s a bug – do let us know at sunlesssea@failbettergames.com. We are in your debt.

Remaining known Issues…

- Macs won’t be able to contact our server to get Storylet updates. We’re working to fix this ASAP. UPDATE: Mac users should now be able to access new stories.

- The UI is all still quite placeholder

- The content is currently very limited, so almost all beastie attacks are identical

- Very little artwork, animation or sound design has been implemented at this stage

- Docking while in combat will partially obscure the dock button

- Some enemies and weapons remain unbalanced

- There are some framerate issues as a result of the new combat system that we are working to address

- Some smaller enemies can bit a little hard to click

- Turn speed is not based on weight or engine power, and so faster ships will appear to turn much more slowly

For the #longread version with lots of detail about the new combat system, see Alexis’ original Steel announcement.

The Dead Space series relies on monster closets. It does pretty well with monster closets, lovingly and abundantly placed.

The first Dead Space is set on the Ishimura, a colossal mining ship with some memorable internal spaces. The second is set on a colossal-er space station to which the Ishimura is docked. One segment has you detouring through the ship – now filled with decontamination equipment and protective sheeting, like the dust-sheets in an abandoned house.

If you’ve played the first game, you’ll vividly remember where all the monster closets were the first time round, and be braced every time you pass those points. Of course, the designers don’t put any monsters in closets until you’re most of the way through. It’s a nice callback to the previous game, and a great way to build tension.

–
‘Anything Nice’ is is a series of very short posts highlighting things I liked about the treatment of narrative in other people’s games. It’s a deliberately magpie, grab-bag approach. Some of these games I adore, some I don’t even like, but I learnt from all of them.

One example of a small thing done exactly right. As with many MMOs, beasties (oh all right, ‘mobs’) have a general type as well as a specific type – ‘Goblinkind’, ‘Spiders and Insects’). Undead enemies aren’t called ‘Undead’. They’re called ‘The Dead’.

–
‘Anything Nice’ is is a series of very short posts highlighting things I liked about the treatment of narrative in other people’s games. It’s a deliberately magpie, grab-bag approach. Some of these games I adore, some I don’t even like, but I learnt from all of them.