Welcome to our CHEATfactor Game Review of Sunless Sea. We review the game and then factor in how the available cheats affect the overall game experience. For better or worse, our reviews will help you decide whether or not to use cheats when playing the game.

From time to time when people find out what I do, they ask me to recommend a game for them to play. I'd almost never recommend Sunless Sea. Don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic adventure game that challenges you at all costs but it's also not for everyone. It's slow pace and reliance on reading and decision making almost ensure that the average gamer won't appreciate just what Failbetter games was able to accomplish here. If games like FTL and even Sid Meier's pirates are in heavy rotation on your PC though, you find a lot to love in Sunless Sea, just be pepared to not put it down anytime soon.

Sunless Sea puts you in the boots of a ship captain in Fallen London, a strange version of the city that's somehow buried far beneath the earth's surface. You're given a number of choices in just how you want to customize your captain; from cosmetic choices like your look (it's more of just a silhouette) and how your crew will address you to bigger picture choices like your captain's past and they're desires in life. The later has some deep repercussions through the game as it will effect just how you'll achieve success, or fail ultimately. What you did in your past will determine what you excel at like better firepower or navigation skills) but your desires are a bit more complex and have a deeper impact on the end game. Choosing wealth means your goal is to find enough treasure to buy a mansion and retire while another desire finds you focusing on doing enough to write your own book. There's a ton of combinations here and it all makes for some great replay value.

Sunless Sea is really all about choice, just be warned though that those choices could mean the end of your trip. In Sunless Sea you're navigating your ship around a huge map of oceans, rivers, islands and caverns and making choices as to how you deal with certain situations. Do you turn off your ship's lights in an effort to keep sea monsters and other predators away? It might be a good strategy but doing so will terrify your crew and you'll run the risk of them going crazy or declaring a mutiny on you. Or do you fire up all of the engines to escape danger, risking starting a fire and killing everyone? The game is full of choices like this and some are pretty dark, like the choice of whether you're going to eat your crew to survive another day. Yeah, that happens.

You can expect to die a lot in Sunless Sea, and for a variety of reasons, but like a lot of games now-a-days, death is only the beginning here. While a Captain's death is permanent, he's able to pass something (money, resources, crew, maps) down to an heir each time. Particularly successful playthroughs result in being able to write a will and pass more down. It's not exactly a new game plus mode, but it does allow you to take what you've learned and use it for your next play through.

Sunless Sea is really a game meant for those who like the journey more than the destination though. The game is full of events, both scripted and unscripted that can change your game in an instant. Encounters with locals and strange creatures could prove to either help your journey or you could upset them and you'll end up on the wrong end of a knife fight. While the game isn't procedurally generated like many games these days certain things like an island's location or the behavior of certain characters does change from game to game and makes for interesting repeat play throughs. I'm not ashamed to admit that I made some terrible decisions in Sunless Sea, even on my later times with the game, but dealing with the consequences is what makes this go so captivating.

Be warned though, Sunless Sea is not a fast paced game by any means. Your ship plods along huge maps at a slow pace and while there are opportunities to purchase new gear that may make your ship move a bit faster, the game rarely tells you just which parts will work for your boat so I found myself mistakenly buying parts for a boat that I didn't have, and thus just either forgetting about them or leaving them to my heirs. Much of Sunless Sea's story takes place in the form of written text but it's not a huge deal since the writing in the game is top notch. You can skip through a lot of the story but you'll be missing some important beats so it's not advised.

Sunless Sea is not a game for everyone, it's slow, requires reading will likely frustrate you to no end but if you stick it out, and give the game a decent enough chance you're likely to find an engaging experience that's like few other in gaming right now. It's a game that's different each time you play it, even if you make the same choices the whole way through and a game that challenges you to think not like a game player, but like a ship's captain. Don't be surprised if ten months from now you see Sunless Sea in a discussion for Game of the Year.