Fallen London is a game that “requires” a wiki, as defined in this youtube video. Some general examples of such games are Minecraft, Stardew Valley and Elden Ring. For our purposes, I believe this definitely includes Sunless Sea, and as I haven’t played it and it hasn’t come out respectively I have to say likely includes Sunless Skies and Mandrake as well. I will list the points as they are in the video and use examples relevant to the discussion.
So, some or all traits of a wiki game are:
- They don’t tell you s__t Although Fallen London does have some in game text explaining the mechanics, this pales in comparison to how much you need to know to progress.
- Too much s__t to remember I often find myself going to the wiki to look up grinds for certain items. I know which ones they are, as I’ve done those things before, but can not remember for the life of me.
- Consequences are too much god d__n This has been on my mind for a while, bu what finally got me to start writing this post was making a small mistake during Evolution: During the pilgrimage in Godfall, I didn’t clear the wax wind for one station before getting to it, thinking I will first get to it and then clear it. Which is impossible and oops you just have to spend another 20 actions getting to where you were. I was complacent as there actually are extensive in game instructions for the section, but it doesn’t clearly tell you the order in which you do these two in is important. The wiki does however, which I didn’t check because the in game explanation is actually pretty good and for another reason I will talk about later down in the post. I have an earlier example near the end of Watchful MYN. There is one point where you are called by the masters and you can go to them, recieve them in your lodgings or refuse them. The second option loses you a point of connected with them without gaining you anything, which might be a bad thing if you need it soon as getting that point back is quite expensive. For the most part you are notified in this game before you make a consequential action, and if you aren’t then the consequences are usually eventually reversible (in which case the consequence is actions) but it’s enough to start constantly checking the wiki if you get paranoid enough.
The pros of playing these games with a wiki tab open:
1. You’ll never miss out on anything
2. You find the exact information AND MORE
3. Find tips, tricks and guidance from the community Hello community! You are lovely.
The cons:
1. Spoiling the surprise for yourself Although the wiki does it’s best not to spoil too much, plenty of times it will. Something that was supposed to ruin you and be a gut punch will be something you’ve prepared for.
2. Disrupts the flow of gameplay This is a bigger problem for non browser based games. In my opinion Fallen London really doesn’t suffer too much from this, as you’re supposed to take breaks by design.
3. 50+ tabs
With all this in mind, there are several approaches for such games:
In Sunless Sea for example, I have tried to only use the wiki to look for items, and tried to avoid anything narrative related on the wiki as it’s the game is very much supposed to be consequential and unforgiving. This did once lead me to editing the save file as I gained Unnacountably Peckish (which I really didn’t want) trough an innocuous action, and felt so annoyed it was either that or deleting the entire d__n game.
Book of Hours (the game through which I eventually discovered Fallen London) is so extreme in point two, too much to remember, that it’s ridiculous. It’s helped however by the wiki being on fandom MAN that site is unusable being extremely lenient in points one and especially three. The game will eventually and rather esoterically tell you everything you need to know, but much more importantly you can just try again! Whenever! It is extremely chill in this regard, and doesn’t punish you for mistakes with a loss of however many hours of progress.
The problem is that very few wiki games can do that. If Sunless Sea was only chill and relaxing it wouldn’t be any good. One of the most impactful moments for me was finding out the hard way what Salt’s curse does. And I loved it. It was a gut punch but it made the experience much more meaningful. It also required restraint not to look it up on the wiki, as there is always a chance it’s gonna be something like the point about UP I listed above.
I’ve found for the most part such games are a lot more fun and meaningful if you don’t look everything up on the wiki. They’re probably the best if you don’t open the wiki at all. But in Fallen London for example, for me, that would’ve meant missing out on a lot of stuff, often feeling like I’ve “wasted” actions and feeling lost every other day pretty much. On the other hand opening the wiki too much would mean constantly spoiling yourself and taking out a lot of fun exploration out of the game.
In terms of design, I think the devs have struck the best balance they can (I also feel this way for Sunless Sea). The game can’t tell you everything as that would ruin the experience for more exploration minded players, which is the main draw of the game in the first place. And it can’t remove all consequences cause this is gothic horror and not Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
Regarding consequences, everything in this game uses actions. That’s how the entire game is designed, meant to be played, it’s the core principle of the game. People generally reccomend not refreshing your actions unless you absolutely have to, not because they want FBG to earn less money, but because you’re meant to take breaks.
This has the unfortunate consequence of disincentivizing exploration. When everything costs actions, there’s a cost to trying something just to see what it does. In the above mentioned Book of Hours, I used to look up how to make things and what things do for everything before I realised it’s way more fun to just try and see what happens. I believe this is true for Fallen London as well to an extent, but I haven’t often been able to force myself to do this as much because of the action cost. For narrative content I’ve tried to, as seeing what happens is literally the main reward and the most rewarding thing to spend actions on, even if it gives you literally nothing materially. On the other hand, I still haven’t gone trough the Brawling with Dockers carousel, because I’m waiting for when I’ll need to do it for something else, and doing it just to see what happens will mean stopping whatever I’m doing now for today. For the record, I don’t mind that this is the case. The pros of the way actions work far outweigh the cons, and nothing’s stopping an exploration minded player from taking more time to see the nooks and crannies of the game to figure out for themself what they want and need to do.
But for everyone between the extremes of totally exploration focused and unworried and complete minmaxxing and paranoia there is a balance we have to strike with our use of the wiki while playing. I try to do this the same way I did with Sunless Sea (look up items avoid narrative) although sometimes I’ll look up narrative too. At the end of the day, trying again in Sunless Sea costs at worst some hours of playing, while in Fallen London it costs months or years of your actual life (thankfully not literally). Being paranoid of getting a UP situation (as I described above, not literally getting UP that’s fine) I sometimes won’t be able to force myself to avoid the wiki, and will check the consequences of a certain action. In Watchful MYN that’s how I found out the above point, by checking on the wiki first just in case it does something irreversible or out of character for my character. For the record I went with option two anyway because it was very much in character even if it was suboptimal.
My question for you and the reason this is a forum thread and not like a blog post or something is, what do you think and what do you do? Do you agree or disagree with these points and how do you personally strike that balance, and how does one strike that balance generally?
P.S.: In the time it took to write this most of my actions refreshed, so this time the consequence of “wasting” actions was much smaller haha. Hope you like the post.