# Sunless Sea — user reviews

> 102 indexed App Store user reviews of Sunless Sea by Failbetter Games, rated 4.30/5 from 93 ratings.

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/sunless-sea/id1133500069/reviews
- App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/sunless-sea/id1133500069.md
- Rating breakdown: 5★ 68 · 4★ 7 · 3★ 6 · 2★ 5 · 1★ 7

## 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

## Newest reviews (17 of 102)

### 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

### 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!

### 2/5 — Keine Übersetzung auf deutsch...

*2021-06-08, version 1.25*

...3 Sterne Abzug! Sonst gäbe es 4–5. Es gibt nichts schlimmeres als Spieleentwickler, die sich auf Ihren Lorbeeren ausruhen!

### 2/5 — Brilliant game, let down by crashes

*2021-05-31, version 1.25*

I love this game and have played so many hours of it. The trouble is that there are so so many crashes. The screen turns purple, the audio stutters and my iPad restarts. Really not ideal as I want to be able to switch in and out of it, and I’d rather not have to resort to manual saving. Also the lack of the Zubmarina is a bummer. Highly recommend the game, just play it on a different platform.

I’m using an iPad Pro 11 inch 2nd gen, iPadOS 14.2 (in case the devs want to fix this :) )

### 4/5 — DLC needed

*2021-04-21, version 1.25*

Since you've already ported the game why not complete it and release the DLC

### 2/5 — Mixed feelings, mostly negative

*2020-08-25, version 1.25*

Pro's: Lovely ambiance and sound design, and the characteristic Failbetter grim, quirky, mindbending writing is always a delight.

Con's: Terrible, non-intuitive interface, difficulty curve for performing even basic tasks is frustratingly steep, no tutorial section to speak of besides the occasional dropped "hint" that explains a fundamental mechanic of the game *several hours in*. Not for players even remotely interested in casual play. The difficulty of this game comes not because it sets challenges per se, but because everything from the interface on up seems designed to be as cumbersome and opaque as possible. It's a full-on misery simulator. I have to suspect this was the devs' intent, as it dovetails perfectly with the ambiance; it's just not for me.

### 5/5 — Amazing writing, now give us the DLC!

*2020-07-03, version 1.25*

A fantastic iPad port, totally addictive gameplay and setting.  Just a shame there is no sign of Zubmariner for iPad players.  Help us out FailBetter!

### 5/5 — Amazing game!

*2020-06-24, version 1.25*

Writing is amazing, slow at the beginning but by the mid to late gameplay you just want to know all the secrets.

### 5/5 — One issue

*2020-04-19, version 1.25*

This game is great, other than that you can’t link your Fallen London accounts. I hope you will be adding it soon.

### 5/5 — A Comprehensive Review

*2020-03-13, version 1.25*

TL;DR: This is an amazing game. I tottaly recommend it, even though the price is somewhat high. The gameplay time and replayability of this game is golden and definitely worth the high price IMO. (I paid $60 for CIV VI when it came out for iPad. I might just be a big spend guy.) [TAP READ MORE!]

- Gameplay -
Sunless Sea excels in its stories and quests, but lacks a lot in zee travel possibilities. Storylets you get at ports are exciting and fun, but taking multiple minutes of your time to travel from island to island is not, at least most of the time.

- Lore & Quests -
The lore of Sunless Sea is one of the best that I have played so far! It is hands-down a perfectly crafted literary masterpiece, and probably deserves a book. I recommend playing Fallen London (it works decent on iPad too!) to get a good look at the lore and backstory.

- Miscellaneous -
1. Please add the Zubmariner DLC, preferably for free. (:D)
2. Improve battery life, this game is literally Google Chrome.
3. Sunless Skies on iPad? Wink, wink? Pretty please?

A review by Josef Leventon.

### 5/5 — NOT hard lol

*2020-02-21, version 1.25*

Amazing game, I’m about halfway through I think, haven’t died once.

Love the open world, resource gathering, battles, great value, no brainer

### 5/5 — Engrossing and Challenging

*2020-01-08, version 1.25*

I love this game.

### 5/5 — Excellent

*2020-01-02, version 1.25*

Ok a bit overpriced at £10 but as a piece of gaming art and product of imagination just great. Those who miss open world in the swamp of free games with in app purchases will love it. As I did, buy once and have the whole adventure.

### 5/5 — Amazing game. Real hidden gem

*2019-11-17, version 1.25*

Looking forward for sunless sky

### 3/5 — Kein Support für iPad Pro 11“

*2019-07-29, version 1.25*

Gutes Spiel, allerdings gibt auf dem aktuellen iPad Pro Modell nur den kleinen Kasten als Anzeige. Schade.

### 3/5 — Full Screen?

*2019-07-23, version 1.25*

I like this game, but am frustrated that it still has not received an update to run full screen on new iPads.  I know it might sound petty, but it just feels weird playing a game that only takes up three quarters of the screen. Please fix this so I can enjoy the game!

## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated)

### 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.

### 1/5 — Sunless sea

*2021-03-06, version 1.25*

Does not work on ipad pro 2020. Cause device restart.

### 1/5 — Ridiculously hard

*2020-05-10, version 1.25*

Stupidly difficult. Supplies are unnecessarily too expensive. The “tutorial” is just occasional tips that appear every now and then. No explanation as to what to do or how the mechanics of the game works. You go from port to port collecting a ton of different stuff, losing a whole ton of stuff, and you never are told what they are and what they’re for. I bought a new weapon for my ship in the hopes of having better luck in combat, only to not be able to equip it on my ship. Thanks, there went precious echoes. How about put a label on weapons saying which ships can equip them? Lost my ship to a swarm of bats... that’s right, bats can take down a ship. All because my crew couldn’t aim and hit them. Horrible game. The one star is for the art design and music. Save your money for a better survival game.

### 1/5 — Incomplete version

*2019-04-20, version 1.25*

Unfortunately this is an incomplete version of the game; the DLC available for every other version isn’t included for some reason.

### 1/5 — Horrible

*2019-01-30, version 1.25*

This game is confusing and poorly made, the help and tutorial provided are completely useless, the game looks way cooler than it is.

### 1/5 — Horrible grinding simulator

*2018-01-02, version 1.25*

Игра для мазохистов. Много контента, но вы его не увидите, потому что будете умирать. Сплошной утомительный бесконечный грайнд. Жаль, что не могу вернуть деньги.  
A lot of content you'll never see because you gonna randomly die. All the good points of game are not working because of endless grind. Buy if you are masochist. I wish I could get a refund.

### 1/5 — Even Star Wars was just 2 hours long

*2017-07-23, version 1.25*

After putting in a good 5 hours I just had to give up. Staring at a tiny ship putter on a black sea is just pinnacle of boring. 

This game is longer than Game of Thrones - and even that show knows enough NOT to make you watch them actually sail across the sea. The game needs a "Fast Mode." How much fun do they think it seriously is to watch that ship? 

The atmosphere, writing, and secrets were all compelling - but watching the ship...sorry...we all have *real* lives to live.

They need a mode for people who actually have lives but would like to enjoy their game. 

It would be really great to be able to experience all the content in 5-10 hours. 

Is it really that hard to make a "Fast Mode"?

### 1/5 — Crashes immediately

*2017-07-15, version 1.25*

Won't even load the game. Crashes immediately. Great use of ten bucks!

### 1/5 — Не хватает других языков!

*2017-06-17, version 1.25*

Бесспорно, игра великолепна, но из-за огромного содержания текста не получаеться играть в неё не зайдя хотя бы один раз в переводчик. Очень хочется, чтобы в игре был русский, и ещё не совсем понятно как плыть на 1 скорости и на -1.

### 1/5 — Crash with update

*2017-05-19, version 1.2*

Since the most recent update: Loads up to the menu, but if you try to start a new game or continue, the game will crash. Really displeased since it is one of my favorite games.

## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated)

### 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.

### 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

### 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.

### 5/5 — Outstanding

*2021-04-04, version 1.25*

Really engrossing game with many and varied possibilities depending on your choices.

I understand that this is cut down from the desktop version, but it's good enough.

### 5/5 — Truly a masterpiece!

*2021-03-24, version 1.25*

Was definitely worth the $10. Found Fallen London afterwards and can’t stop playing that as well. I wish you could connect the Fallen London to the Sunless Sea app however, but I think it is only possible with the PC and Mac versions. When is the Sunless Sky coming to apps??

### 5/5 — ระบบที่ค่อนข้างลึก

*2021-02-07, version 1.25*

เกมส์นี้จะเดินเรื่องช้า ไม่ใช่เพราะเกมส์ แต่เพราะเนื้อเรื่องทุกอย่างยาวมาก และเราไม่รู้ว่าส่วนนี้สำคัญหรือไม่ส่วนระบบของเกมส์และ HUD สวยงามมาก ตอนแรกระบบอาจจะดูซับซ้อนแต่พอเราเปิดใจลองเรียนรู้ดูแล้วแม่งโคตรง่ายและสะดวกมาก

เวลาที่เรียนรู้ระบบเกมส์ทำให้รู้สึกเหมือนเป็นกะลาสีจริงๆ ทำให้อินไปอีก เวลาที่เราทำภารกิจเราไม่รู้เลยว่ามันจะมีอะไรรอเราอยู่บ้าง

แผนที่เกมส์นี้จะสุ่มทุกครั้งที่เริ่มเกมส์ใหม่ ยกเว้นเมืองหลักที่อยู่ขอบแผนที่จะไม่เปลี่ยน ทำให้ทุกครั้งที่แล่นเรือไปเมืองต่างๆ ทำเอาขนลุกเพราะไม่รู้ว่ามันมีอะไรรออยู่ ซึ่งไอ้พวกที่มันรออยู่เนี่ยแหละแม่งทำให้ผมต้องเริ่มเกมส์ใหม่55555

โดยรวมผมคลุกคลีอยู่กับเกมส์นี้นานมากเพราะเนื้อเรื่องและภาพของเกมส์มันทั้งลึกลับและน่าค้นหาในเวลาเดียวกัน ดึงดูดให้กะลาสีใหม่ทุกคนอยากจะมีส่วนร่วมใน “มหาสมุทรไร้แสง” แห่งนี้ถือว่าคุ้มค่ามากครับ

### 5/5 — Lingua italiana

*2021-01-15, version 1.25*

Peccato non ci sia la lingua italiana per poter godere appieno la trama del gioco.

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*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.*