# Sunless Sea > Victorian Gothic exploration and survival RPG with narrative and combat. (iPhone/iPad app by Failbetter Games.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/sunless-sea/id1133500069 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [Failbetter Games](https://appshunter.io/developer/1056672890) - Category: Games, Adventure, Role Playing - Price: $9.99 - Rating: 4.30/5 from 93 App Store ratings · 102 written reviews indexed - Age rating: 12+ - Requires: iOS 8.0 · 510 MB - Languages: American English - Released: 2017-03-22 - Data updated: 2026-07-08 - Monetization: paid - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/sunless-sea/id1133500069/reviews.md ## What is Sunless Sea? LOSE YOUR MIND. EAT YOUR CREW. DIE. Failbetter’s award-winning PC game is now on iOS! 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. If the giant crabs, sentient icebergs and swarms of bats don’t get you, madness and cannibalism certainly will. But that old black ocean beckons, and there’s loot for the brave souls who dare to sail her. Betray your crew, sell your soul to a Devil, marry your sweetheart. Survive long enough and you’ll achieve your life’s ambition. You will die, but your legacy will live on… KEY FEATURES - A deep, compelling world packed with 350,000+ words of stories and secrets. Find your father’s bones. Determine London’s destiny. Defy the gods of the deep sea. - Beautiful, hand drawn art: castles of sparkling ice, prisons perched on lily pads, fog-shrouded lighthouses and the DAWN MACHINE. - Your captain will die. But you can pass on resources from one generation to the next. Acquire a family home and a hoard of heirlooms. Build up your own story across generations of zailors who braved the sea and lost - or won... - Real-time combat against ships and Zee-beasts, spider-crewed dreadnoughts and sentient icebergs. - Light and dark, terror and madness: stray too far from the gas-lamps of civilisation and your crew will grow fearful and eventually lose their sanity. - Upgrade your steamship with powerful engines, cannons and pneumatic torpedo guns. (Or buy a bigger, better ship.) - Hire unique officers like the Haunted Doctor and the Irrepressible Cannoneer. Each has a story to tell, if you can draw it out of them. - Choose a ship’s mascot: the Comatose Ferret, the Wretched Mog, the Elegiac Cockatoo, and more! - Trade or smuggle silk and souls, mushroom wine and hallucinogenic honey. REVIEWS - “Absolutely the best writing in any video game since, well, as long as I can remember.” (10/10 – PCGamesN) - “A very compelling and satisfying adventure... The realm of possibilities seems endless, and every time I set sail I find something new.” (9/10 – Destructoid) - “Sunless Sea's method of storytelling isn't unique, but it has never been realised with such impact and elegance.” (10/10 – Eurogamer) ## Key features - Vast narrative-driven world with 350,000+ words - Hand-drawn art and atmospheric visuals - Generational gameplay with legacy progression - Real-time combat against ships and creatures - Manage terror and madness - Ship and crew customization - Engage in trade and smuggling ## What do users think of Sunless Sea? Overall sentiment: mixed **Pros** - ✨ Masterpiece writing and lore - 🌍 Huge, explorable map - 📚 Deep, complex narrative - 🎨 Beautiful art and atmosphere - 💎 Unique and original gameplay - 💡 High replayability - 🎮 Immersive experience - 👍 Controls suitable for touch - 💎 Excellent port from PC - 💰 Good value for PC game price **Cons** - 🐌 Slow pace and travel - 💀 High difficulty and permadeath - 💸 Tedious grinding for resources - ❓ Unclear objectives and tutorials - ⚙️ Clunky or unintuitive UI/controls - 📉 Steep learning curve - 🔋 High battery consumption - 💸 Expensive supplies - 🗺️ Static map elements (contradicted by other reviews) - ⚔️ Shallow combat - 😵 Overwhelming at first **Commonly reported bugs** - Crashes frequently - Screen turns purple - Audio stutters - iPad restarts - Black bars on iPad Pro 11" - Does not work on iPad Pro 2020 (device restart) - Lagging since iOS 11 - Game crashes immediately upon loading - Loads to menu but crashes on new/continue game - Unstable, crashes frequently - Cannot launch from dock after trading for a new ship ('battle' bug) - Screen rotation issue - Half throttle broken (forward/backward) - Excruciating freezing from tapping HUD elements - UI not properly adapted for touch **Most requested features** - Zubmariner DLC for iOS - Sunless Skies for apps - Russian language support - Italian language support - German language support - Full screen support for newer iPads - iPad Mini 6 screen support - Link Fallen London accounts - Improve battery life - Add a 'Fast Mode' for travel - Improve journal/quest log - Add job mechanics (fisherman, bounty hunter, etc.) - On-screen joystick for steering - Adjustable lore window opacity/size/location - Automatic screen rotation - Russian or Ukrainian localization - Zubmarineer DLC on iOS - Pirate Poet quest on iOS ## Recent user reviews (10 of 102) All indexed reviews: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/sunless-sea/id1133500069/reviews.md ### 5/5 — Great game *2024-12-26, version 1.25* This is an excellent game. Everything Alexis Kennedy touches is pure gold. His writing really shines in this. ### 1/5 — I’ve never seen literature commit self-harm with game mechanics before *2023-06-17, version 1.25* This is an enormous, extremely complex choose-your-path novel strapped to one of the worst games I have ever seen in my life. The story is witty and well written and engages with deep, unique lore that I really enjoy. Unfortunately, the tedious, luck-based, and shallow gameplay actively prevents you from engaging with and enjoying it. As I note, the novel portions are great, but your progress in them is limited in every direction by resources - you need money or certain trade goods or a tough enough warship to advance in virtually every storyline. But the best ways to earn money, trade goods, and better equipment require those things - money to buy goods in bulk for reselling at a markup, goods to trade, and powerful equipment to kill the few tough enemies who consistently drop valuable enough items to make them worthwhile targets. Not only that, but doing ANYTHING costs you, because moving around consumes resources you need to pay for. Thus, the early game is horrifically grindy. You have to squeeze out the same repetitive hauling runs that reward maybe one to three hundred currency, avoiding all the enemies because it’s not cost effective to fight them, while you save up for hours towards ships or equipment that can cost into the thousands. Even once you get to that point you’re not safe, because this game made the baffling decision to be permadeath by default (there’s apparently an option to change this, but I can’t figure out how). And you can die FAST - text/story events with stat-influenced RNG outcomes can be triggered at random or without foreknowledge of what you’re doing, and some of these will kill you instantly if you happen to roll poorly. In the worst cases, you can spend hours clawing your way out of the mindless early game slog only to randomly trigger an event and then die through no fault of your own because you didn’t get a high dice roll on it (this is particularly bad with the “Terror” stat that functions as crew morale, because so many events can increase it in large increments, it’s expensive and hard to reduce, and when it caps out you get a guaranteed event with very poor odds of success that kills you instantly if you fail). I love the story here. But I’ve played about fifteen hours and haven’t gotten to experience hardly any of it because all my time is spent grinding out resources to set myself up and then losing them to inexperience or getting bad event RNG. The combat is shallow, the exploration becomes stale because the map remains largely static between lives, and the progression is both deeply unsatisfying and schizophrenically balanced. It feels like a freemium mobile game trying to frustrate you into paying to skip content, but it’s not malicious, just really stupid! Look, unless the story, writing style, and setting of the game really appeal to you, don’t get it. And if those do appeal to you…also don’t get it. All of the dialogue and story paths are available for free on the wiki. Just go read it there and avoid the self-sabotage of the paid product. ### 5/5 — Fantastic *2023-03-04, version 1.25* This is honestly the best roguelike rpg I have ever played, the story is incredible and the exploration element is eery and exciting as you take risks regarding having enough fuel/food/money for your crew and engage in combat with other ships / monestets. In particular the map is mostly randomised upon each death, some ports stay in the same places but others move considerably and this both helps exploration and also massively increases replayablilty as you do storylines in different orders etc. There are many many ways to win, even more to lose. In particular, this is absolutely ace on iPad / switch, with headphones, whilst it’s raining / stormy outside. To the developers: thank you so so much for putting this on iPad, at least 3 of my friends have bought this game from me banging on about it to them. You guys are great, I’ve heard sunless skies is a blast too! Hope it comes to iPad with controller support maybe? Haha ### 3/5 — Please add support to iPad mini 6! *2022-06-07, version 1.25* Real masterpiece but not support iPad mini 6 screen! Please add support! ### 3/5 — No DLC *2022-06-05, version 1.25* The game will always feel incomplete with the DLC being brought to IOS ### 5/5 — Niko *2022-01-23* This game has good and bad : The good: -A literate masterpiece -HUGE map! -Lots of different items -Scary enough The bad: -Limited transport options How to improve: -Zubmariner DLC(free?) -Also sunless skies would be cool ### 5/5 — Great game but takes a while *2021-12-26, version 1.25* You have to be patient with this one. Also I recommend reading about how to sell sunlight. The money it brings in will make this one bearable. ### 5/5 — Great conversion *2021-10-04, version 1.25* I was a kickstarter backer for this and have all the content on my PC. But I find that I much prefer to be able to play this tense and beautiful mix of text and survival arcade on the move. My only great sadness is that I have now played through much of the content and I am aware that there is more in the submariner expansion. Oh how I long for that expansion on iPad… ### 5/5 — Amazing *2021-07-12, version 1.25* A beautiful, enthralling game. It’s not easy, and it has a pace about it which some may find slow, but both those are positives in my view. I simply cannot stop playing it. Total immersion in the created world. Thank you developers. ### 2/5 — Could be an awesome game... *2021-07-03, version 1.25* ... If the black bars on the iPad pro 11 2021 would be fixed. The game itself is pretty brilliant! ## Frequently asked questions about Sunless Sea ### What is Sunless Sea? Sunless Sea is an award-winning PC game now available on iOS. It's a game of discovery, loneliness, and frequent death set in a Victorian Gothic universe. Players captain a steamship, explore a vast underworld, and uncover stories and secrets. ### What are the key features of Sunless Sea? Key features include a deep, compelling world with over 350,000 words of stories, beautiful hand-drawn art, generational gameplay where your legacy continues, real-time combat, managing terror and madness, ship upgrades, unique officers, and the ability to trade or smuggle goods. ### How much does Sunless Sea cost? Sunless Sea is a premium game, meaning it requires a one-time purchase to download and play. There are no in-app purchases or advertisements within the game. ### What platforms is Sunless Sea available on? Sunless Sea was originally a PC game and is now available on iOS devices. Ensure your device meets the compatibility requirements for the iOS version. ### What kind of gameplay can I expect in Sunless Sea? You can expect a mix of exploration, narrative choices, resource management, and real-time combat. The game emphasizes discovery, survival against environmental hazards and creatures, and making difficult decisions that impact your crew and your captain's fate. ## Version history (last 4 releases) ### 1.25 — 2017-05-26 This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon. - storylets now showing in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen now fixed - fuel bar no longer resets to 0 after loading manual save - no Zubmariner-specific ports should now appear on the chart ### 1.2 — 2017-05-18 Fixed in this update: - buying new ships no longer strands you in harbour, stops you being able to launch or enters a docked-combat situation - fixed 'no engine' bug with engine swapping at the Fathomking's Hold - fixed black-screen issue with teleport storylets - fixed issue with fully-revealed charts - fixed issue with combat triggering while docked at ports - fixed usability/re-opening issues with Officers UI - 'Something awaits you' is no longer triggered by carrying Sunlight-Filled Mirror Boxes - optimisation for overheating on iPad Airs ### 1.1 — 2017-04-11 - landscape screen rotation now in, at the request of many players! - music playing on your device will now override in-game music, so you can set your own soundtrack to the Unterzee - scrolling optimised to reduce occasional choppiness - notifications bug where text would run off-screen now fixed ### 1.0 — 2017-03-22 No release notes. ## Apps similar to Sunless Sea | App | Rating | Price | Category | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | [勇者いただきデリーシャス](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/id1012881840) | — | Free | Games | | [Mutiny: Pirate Survival RPG](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/mutiny-pirate-survival-rpg/id1490838880) | 4.6 (1,939) | Free | Games | | [Bomb Friends - Free Games for Family Baby Boys And Girls](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/bomb-friends-free-games-for-family-baby-boys-and-girls/id1000473480) | 3.0 (2) | Free | Games | | [Clash of Legendary Titans](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/clash-of-legendary-titans/id800927520) | 3.5 (22) | Free | Games | | [Pathos: Nethack Codex](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/pathos-nethack-codex/id1045848120) | 4.7 (353) | Free | Games | | [Hardboiled](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/hardboiled/id977874600) | 4.1 (46) | $1.99 | Games | --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-07-08.*