SUNLESS SEA on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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LOSE YOUR MIND. EAT YOUR CREW. DIE. Take the helm of your steamship and set sail for the unknown! Sunless Sea is a game of discovery, loneliness and frequent death, set in the award-winning Victorian Gothic universe of Fallen London.
SUNLESS SEA is a exploration, lovecraftian and survival game
developed and published by Failbetter Games.
Released on February 06th 2015 is available in English on Windows, MacOS and Linux.
It has received 9,288 reviews of which 7,715 were positive and 1,573 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.1 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 18.99€ on Steam, but you can find it for less on Gamivo.
The Steam community has classified SUNLESS SEA into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows XP or later
- Processor: 2Ghz or better
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: 1280x768 minimum resolution, DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card
- DirectX: Version 9.0c
- Storage: 700 MB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible
MacOS
- OS: Mac OS X 10.6 or later
- Processor: 2Ghz or better
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: 1280x768 minimum resolution, DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card
- Storage: 700 MB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible
Linux
- Processor: 2Ghz or better
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: 1280x768 minimum resolution, DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card, OpenGL Core
- Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
It's taken me many hours to get a good hold on this game, but I can now firmly say that I enjoy it. For any new players, know this - the difficulty pretty much spikes right out of the gate. Getting over that cliff is (as far as I have experienced) the toughest part of the game. I recommend keeping a captain's log of your own, both to further immerse yourself and remember locations, shops, story beats, etc. The Zubmariner DLC is a great addition as it gives you (once you get the upgrade) more ports to work with and make money around. One tip I will provide to new captains is regarding fighting enemy ships. I learned that most do not have an aft (rear) gun, allowing you to sail behind them and continually pepper them until they sink! Don't forget to throw your engines into reverse if you need to maintain a tight turning circle. For those that do have an aft gun, there is a sharp angle at roughly 4 to 5 o'clock that you can sit at, ramming into the ship (ramming does no damage to either your or their ship, so feel free to pit maneuver). It is more difficult to sit in, however, so be careful! As a final note, I also recommend Sunless Skies. It is far more forgiving but just as beautiful of a game.
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I adore this game, it's really important to me--one of my absolute favorites. Sometimes i'll play it just to hear the music or feel the ambiance, I wish i could experience it for the first time again!
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My dear friend Tim strongly recommended this game to me years ago, on the basis of setting alone. The premise is that something offers a deal to Queen Victoria after the death of Prince Albert: she can have her royal consort back, but the price is London. She agrees, and the entire capital is dragged into a watery purgatory beneath the earth, the eponymous sunless sea. You play as a sea captain making your way across this perpetually-dark ocean, attempting to wrestle with the horrors and the privations of ordinary nautical life, plus all this extra weird and nasty stuff. The genre is apparently “survival”, which is not how I’d have thought to describe it, but seems very apt once I think about it. You are constantly managing six different things that can kill you: hull, supplies, fuel, wounds, crew, and terror. And cash, I suppose. “Echoes”, as the underwater currency is called. Cash is perhaps the most perpetual concern, barring supplies and fuel. But supplies and fuel are downstream of cash. You try to stock up on as much as you can in Fallen London, but you quickly learn which foreign ports will also sell, albeit usually at a significantly higher price. If you set out for a voyage with a full hold but an empty purse, you feel nervous the whole time you’re away. Even what feels like a bulging wallet at the start of an expedition can begin to wear thin by journey’s end. The hub-and-spoke set-up of your sea voyages is masterfully done. Fallen London is not just an important node through which many questlines run. It’s also the location of: many shops where you can buy and - critically! - sell things; the University where a weird scholar character will pay you for intangibles (zee stories, outlandish artifacts, extraordinary implications); your lodgings, where you can sleep off your accrued terror and wounds; and the Admiralty. The Admiralty is the British Royal Navy in its dystopian subterranean incarnation. You work for the Admiralty as a sort of … consultant, I suppose. The Admiralty is constantly struggling to maintain its hegemony over the entirety of the Underzee, and it needs intel updates to do that. Every time you go to a port, you can gather a port report, which basically means getting an informal update on what’s going on in the area. Sometimes you gotta bribe someone with a coin or a bottle of wine to loosen a tongue, but, most of the time, gathering port reports is free. You bring ‘em back to your contact in the Admiralty, you get paid in coin and favours. You redeem the favour for fuel, you spend the coin on supplies, you head back out to zee. Critically, you can’t hold two port reports of the same location simultaneously. If you head out to zee and swing by Hunter’s Keep to gather a port report there, you can’t gather a second one on your way back to Fallen London. You can still visit Hunter’s Keep, of course, but it won’t pay. You have to turn in your first report, and then you’re free to go gather a second. This means that planning your trips and moving in strategic circuitous patterns becomes critical. I say that Tim recommended Sunless Sea years ago, and this is true, but I tried it years ago and it didn’t grab me. What happened more recently is that I played Dredge, a fishing horror game, and in the Steam reviews I read afterwards someone recommended Sunless Sea as something like: “Dredge for grown-ups.” This phrase compelled me to give it another go. Dredge was wonderful … but only for the first few hours. After that, the challenge, the risk, the constant sense of danger - they all wore off. My vessel was too sturdy, the engine too powerful, the menacing sea creatures too familiar. And I never, ever worried about money. You don’t pay for fuel in Dredge. You don’t pay for supplies. You pay for upgrades to your boat, which you max out fairly quickly, and you pay very modest fees for repairs. That’s basically it. Meanwhile, you’re constantly bringing in expensive fish and selling them to local fishmongers. The financial pressure goes away almost immediately. Sunless Sea is indeed for grown-ups, in that sense. Fuel is expensive. Supplies are expensive. Repairs are expensive, especially when all you’ve got is a miserable starting cruiser with an unimpressive cannon and a sputtering engine. Some creatures can kill you by ramming or firing upon your ship merely twice. (Honestly, almost once. Your starting vessel has 75 hull and there are things out there that can do 60+ damage in a single strike.) By default, Sunless Sea is played in something called “Unforgiving Mode”, which it tells you about right at the start. This means your game autosaves whenever you reach a port, and your game ends if your character dies. You can manually save and load your game, but then you exit Unforgiving Mode and lose your precious Invictus token. Did you know 30 seconds ago what an Invictus token was? Of course not. But the early instructions tell you that Unforgiving Mode is how the game is meant to be played, and that finishing a game with an Invictus token is a badge of honour (I think I’m quoting almost verbatim here), and you know at once what your target is. I feel sometimes that I don’t enjoy video games. What I enjoy is learning video games. Learning the world, the lore, the dangers, and the mechanics. Sunless Sea taught me this lesson about myself again. There’s something quietly miserable about the moment you finally fill in the entirety of your map. Likewise, when you first get a really strong ship, and here I count even the corvette one level up from your starting vessel. (not counting an intermediate vessel where you sacrifice a lot of strength for speed). I now had 200 hull instead of 75, I had two guns instead of 1, and I no longer felt danger in the same way. Very much to the credit of the game designers though: cash still had meaning. I was still paying to get around, and although a sense of personal inflation meant that the 100 echoes it costs to put your ship into a reputable dry-dock for repairs was now trivial rather than a staggering fee, there was still a sense that money could run out if you’re not careful. The game is very well-written, I think I should mention that. It’s immersive, and the world is exquisitely described. There’s an island where everyone wears masks all the time (including you, if you visit), there’s a vertical pirate’s city built into a rock spire, there’s a giant monstrosity called the Dawn Machine which implants the endless mantra into your mind: UN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE S The Sun is actually a wonderfully well-rendered character in this game. Apparently you and other Neathers (inhabits of “the place beneath the world”) have been down here long enough that prolonged sunlight can kill you. So there’s this constant longing for the world upstairs, mediated by deep fear and repulsion. Beautifully done. Would I recommend this game? Yes. Would I play it again? Hmmm. Maybe after a significant break. There definitely seems like there was more to see, more to explore. But the sense of the Neath being vast and terrifying and exciting might well be gone the second time around. (Or fifth, I guess; I have three captains behind me in watery graves, though my fourth succeeded.) In summary: I give Sunless Sea a 9/10. I recommend this game if you're someone who likes literature and hard games and the awful awful call of the ocean.
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It's a very strange experience. I was expecting hardcore Endless Sky in an underground sea and I got a bundle of interconnected short stories and a high quality flash game in a trenchcoat. I'd still recommend it, it's a solid game, but it's gunna feel a little strange playing it for the first little while
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How to enjoy it: This game has two parts At the start it's about exploration and resource management, and it's great. But then you explore 90% of the map, and the only thing left to do is finishing the stories, including your Ambition. At this point the game is about finding better sources of fuel/supplies, optimizing your routes, trading items between. Every journey should give you some money. This way I never had to grind, as I was getting everything while progressing the stories. If you want to enjoy it, don't play by the rules. Save before challenges and reload as much as you want. It has nothing to do with skill, and failure just sets you back. Don't lose your mind. Don't eat your crew. This is not a roguelike.
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Frequently Asked Questions
SUNLESS SEA is currently priced at 18.99€ on Steam.
SUNLESS SEA is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 18.99€ on Steam.
SUNLESS SEA received 7,715 positive votes out of a total of 9,288 achieving a rating of 8.10.
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SUNLESS SEA was developed and published by Failbetter Games.
SUNLESS SEA is playable and fully supported on Windows.
SUNLESS SEA is playable and fully supported on MacOS.
SUNLESS SEA is playable and fully supported on Linux.
SUNLESS SEA is a single-player game.
There is a DLC available for SUNLESS SEA. Explore additional content available for SUNLESS SEA on Steam.
SUNLESS SEA does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
SUNLESS SEA does not support Steam Remote Play.
SUNLESS SEA is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for SUNLESS SEA.
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Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 24 January 2026 02:35 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 25 January 2026 19:57 |
| Steam price | 29 January 2026 12:44 |
| Steam reviews | 27 January 2026 10:06 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about SUNLESS SEA, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about SUNLESS SEA
- SteamCharts - Analysis of SUNLESS SEA concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck SUNLESS SEA compatibility
Game modes
Features
Online players
44
Developer
Failbetter Games
Publisher
Failbetter Games
Release
06 Feb 2015
Platforms
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