Tag: failbetter games

Zubmariner DLC for Sunless Sea

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The Zubmariner expansion for Sunless Sea is out… now. I was the writer for three of the ports — Aigul, Anthe, and Dahut. (As always with Failbetter projects, the writer is not alone: a number of other people contributed significantly, from concept to mechanical QA to prose editing, and of course I’m not behind the art, either. That’s why I say “was the writer” rather than “wrote,” which might make it sound like I did all the work.)

I’ve talked before about writing for Fallen London and its extended universe (which includes Sunless Sea), about how receptive I find that environment for endangering the player character as well as writing about fear, pain, and grief. The fantasy and humor of the setting make it possible to tell stories that might otherwise demand too much from the reader. And through all that, the Failbetter team are superlatively on top of giving quality feedback and direction.

Sunless Sea is a darker, scarier place than Fallen London, and Zubmariner is more monstrous still. Zub didn’t just permit me to go dark; it demanded that I do so — and then also write funnier or more beautiful in order to keep the experience in balance. Dahut contains some of my favorite imagery of anything I’ve written. Anthe provoked a lot of appalled laughter from my editors. Aigul… well, I’ll let you see when you get there.

I’m proud of what’s in this one. I hope you enjoy it.

January Link Assortment

Upcoming events:

Thanks to a burst of focused planning, we have a bunch of forthcoming meetings scheduled for the Oxford/London Meetup. They are

London, February 16. We will be playing a variant of San Tilapian Studies, along with other short card and boardgames focused on storymaking with other people. I’m psyched about this – San Tilapian Studies takes a fair amount of prep to put together and I don’t run it frequently, so if you want to play, this is an unusual chance. We’re using a different setting and sticker set than in the original.

Oxford, April 3. Sunday afternoon pub meet-up; you may bring WIPs or other items to share if you like, though we’re not set up for actual projection or anything like that. Consider this one a really late March meeting, because SXSW/GDC/Easter weekend use up all of my actual March.

London, April 19. Exact activity TBD, though I have some interesting prospects I’m looking into.

London, June 14. Exact activity TBD, though I have some interesting prospects I’m looking into.

Thanks to Failbetter Games for their on-going willingness to co-host!

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If you are planning to be at GDC, here’s some IF-related content for you:

I will be talking in a short format about visualization and design, with many examples from interactive narrative contexts (as well as some from elsewhere).

inkle studios folks will be talking about their tool ink that is used for 80 Days and the Sorcery! series, and which they will be open-sourcing. (!)

Meg Jayanth is speaking twice, once about writing NPCs with agency and once about diversity.

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