Initial Critiques of Sunless Skies

Sunless Skies
1

Overall the game looks very much like it’s coming along nicely. There are a few issues that I have with it, however.

  1. When you dock, there’s no real differentiation between shops and storylettes on the left side, making things perhaps more confusing than they need to be. I very much liked it in Sunless Sea, how you would dock and find yourself in a ‘default’ location, giving a general description of the local area, and from there could navigate to different areas or go to a general shops tab. This made this sort of navigation really easy to understand and made it overall much less overwhelming.

  2. Minor issue; some of the clicking noises are way too loud. I’m sure this has been reported already, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

3: Typo : &quotWhat is that smell? Eggs? Sulpher?&quot (Sulphur is spelled wrong)

4: The most annoying thing to me is how virtually every character seems to be &quotThe <Descriptive Word> <Profession>&quot. The Punctillious Mayor. The Disappointed Magician. The Overwhelming Monarch. It’s fine at first, but after a while it starts to get really noticeable and annoying. Please, give those additional descriptors to the truly important characters and leave the rest alone. Honestly, they don’t need them; look at Sunless Sea, for example. The Mayor at the Empire of Hands wasn’t &quotThe Fleabitten Mayor&quot or &quotThe Ascended Mayor&quot, he was just &quotThe Mayor&quot. Even when they DID have that additional word, like, for example, the Factor at the Iron and Misery Funging Station, it was only mentioned once and then after that it was almost always just ‘The Factor’. I don’t know, it just feels like it’s been overdone a bit. Please cut back.

2

i like the side list, it just needs to not be hidden behind the portrait

i agree that seperating the storylets and shops would be good. Though that only needs to be done with an underlined title like

Shops

also personally, i’d disagree on point 4, the names are good

3

There’s already differentiation in the little icon on the left, the book vs the coins.

The typo’s in their known issues already.

And they’ve always used tons of that name system. Even the sardonic music-hall singer, who serves no purpose other than filling your deck (I don’t even remember when or how you start getting those cards) has that style of name. Not just major characters.

4

[color=#6666ff]Thanks for the feedback. Points 2 and 3 are bugs that will be fixed as soon as possible. [/color]