We’re Failbetter Games, makers of Sunless Sea and Dragon Age: The Last Court. Today we’ve launched the Victorian Gothic text adventure Fallen London in the App Store! AUA about storytelling in games, the state of the industry, or whether to sell y...

Hello, delicious friends! You might know us from Sunless Sea, the exploration RPG in which you lose your mind and eat your crew.

You might call Fallen London the text adventure prequel to Sunless Sea: it’s almost 1.5 million words of the same kind of darkly funny stories, and as of right now it’s available to download for free on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch!

Things you can do in Fallen London:

  • Run a literary salon
  • Learn the incendiary language of suns
  • Marry a squid-person
  • Consume hallucinogenic honey and mushroom wine
  • Breed abominable animals
  • Behave so disgracefully that you have to flee to the colonies and write pleading letters to your former friends

Since our last AMA (on Sunless Sea’s launch day), we’ve grown from a team of seven to a team of 15, moved offices to a converted Victorian church, sold 350,000 copies of Sunless Sea and begun work on the Zubmariner expansion, which is due out in Autumn.

We'd like to release an Android version of Fallen London, too. You can sign up to our dedicated email list to get news about it.

I’m Hannah, your humble host, using u/failbettergames. Here’s our proof! More Failbetters will be answering questions, too. Ask us anything!

Edit: What fun! We'll be around later on this evening, UK time, so keep the questions coming. :)

Edit2: Thank you everyone for your insightful questions! We hope you're enjoying Fallen London on your iDevice of choice, and if you have any more feedback we'd appreciate receiving it to: [email protected] We hang around r/fallenlondon and r/sunlesssea too, so see you there!

Comments: 318 • Responses: 19  • Date: 

cirion526 karma

Which Master oversees commerce in Apps?

failbettergames38 karma

Mr Apples.

spacemarine921 karma

Is London okay? Did it hurt itself when it fell? Do I need to call an ambulance?

failbettergames60 karma

The screaming has largely stopped.

yoy1zoz2mom320 karma

What's your favourite sun-god and why is it the Dawn Machine?

failbettergames40 karma

E SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN TH

alexisaisu14 karma

Hi, asking on behalf of my girlfriend who refuses to get an account (although I love you guys deeply)!

Do you ever feel like there are fragments or parts of the lore overlooked by the fandom or which you thought would have been more popular? Or the opposite - things the fandom unexpectedly latched onto?

failbettergames25 karma

Things people latched onto: initially one person, and now a lot of people, send rats on a string to us on the 7th of December every year, which they have termed 'Ratmas'. Couldn't have predicted that one.

spacemarine919 karma

Give people the option to send rats and they'll do it. It's scientifically proven.

failbettergames15 karma

You can't argue with rat

MrFireHead_11 karma

Is Tea grown in the Neath? Or has it been replaced with mushrooms like the wine?

failbettergames21 karma

There is mushroom tea!

kav2k8 karma

Do you have any plans to share on Ambitions updates in Fallen London? Which one is up next?

failbettergames13 karma

Light Fingers is due an update next. No date currently!

GuestCartographer8 karma

Congratulations on the launch of the app, cannot wait to try it out.

After Zubmariner launches, are their plans for additional Sunless Sea expansions? Or maybe another Fallen London spin-off game?

Thanks!

failbettergames10 karma

Thank you! Hope you enjoy it. :D

No concrete plans that we can share yet, but we're certainly not done with this universe.

mikey_thinkin7 karma

Congratulations on launching the app! To what extent will the features of the browser and the app version be synced eventually? For example, will the browser eventually have music and will the app have the journal?

tituscarbuncle12 karma

[Lottie, Producer] Thanks! We're super pleased and are a) eating raw fish b) wearing matching t-shirts c) shivering in our painfully on-brand Victorian chapel. We do have plans to revamp the Fallen London browser game, aiming for a beatific synchronicity between the browser and the mobile versions in due course.

They won't be exactly the same (browsers have never got on with music, for example), but they'll look very similar and will share the same features. Watch this space for more information on our plans for the browser game later on this year...

witcheriest4 karma

Are you folks going to install some heating and insulation in that place? I'm a little worried about you all.

failbettergames10 karma

We had a Man come round today and fix things. It's still several degrees warmer outside.

TurbanatorUK7 karma

As a writer who loves gaming, how does one enter the field of game development looking to use that ability?

I have an idea on planning a visual novel with hopefully a million words but I need capital etc and time.

Yet I rarely see jobs advertised for story writers in game studios, mostly coders and so on, which is expected to be honest. Is it done in-house always and by one or two people only? Do you occasionally hire a third party?

You really love your Cthulhu Mythos! Nice to see Lovecraft inspired situations.

failbettergames12 karma

We have gathered together all of our wisdom on writing for games for just this kind of question! We do occasionally hire freelance writers - like Em Short, Richard Cobbett, and Meg Jayanth (who wrote 80 Days). The short answer is: write something in a free interactive fiction tool (Twine is good), finish it, show it to people, repeat. Good luck!

Televangelis8 karma

What FL/SS content did Meg Jayanth write? I'm a big fan of Samsara.

failbettergames10 karma

Varchas and the Isle of Cats.

MrFireHead_5 karma

What is the most popular pet in the Neath?

failbettergames10 karma

The ten most popular pets in the Neath are, in this order: * Cheerful Goldfish * Lucky Weasel * Sulky Bat * Disgraced Rattus Faber Bandit-Chief * Araby Fighting-Weasel * Reprehensible Lizard * Talkative Rattus Faber * Hungover Terrier * Cardsharp Monkey * Racing Slug of Fine Pedigree

(The Lizard is my favourite.)

troper375 karma

Approximately how many asks regarding Seeking do you predict you're going to get during this AMA?

failbettergames16 karma

Seven.

YorkshireASMR5 karma

Hi Hannah - as a prospective Game Designer / Writer who'd love to work for Failbetter, how can I effectively bribe my way into the company?

As a more serious question, has Failbetter ever considered the world of Board Games? I have an idea for a Sunless Sea-themed board game.

failbettergames6 karma

I accept bribes in the form of rats on a string, but only at Ratmas.

We have! We're asked this quite often. A promising project came to nothing a few years ago, and we're now really focused on the video games business. If a team with a track record and business plan came to us with a commercially viable idea, we'd be interested.

As it is, we're glad to hear that people are homebrewing their own and enjoying them with friends. As long as it's not for profit, that's ok. Here are our fan work guidelines, in case they're useful to you.

Oreolek5 karma

What do you think of the wiki? It has spoilers for almost every questline.

failbettergames13 karma

We have a gentlemen's agreement with the wiki contributors which suits us. :)

sylvar5 karma

Why does a delicious web-based game need an app? Were there things you couldn't achieve in a mobile browser? Cheers!

failbettergames4 karma

The time people spend on their phones is driven much more by apps than mobile browsers (something like 10% of time on phones is spent in-browser, now). Also, we want Fallen London (and other games we make in the same universe) to cover lots of play styles and systems, so there are multiple ways in to the universe that suit different people, situations, times of day, and so on.

StormUnit003 karma

Hi! First of all, thanks a bunch for doing this AMA! It really means a lot to us. I'm a translator and I really wanted to get on the videogame industry but I'm not really sure how to approach people, so I thought I'd ask you guys what do you consider good qualities someone who wishes to work in that particular industry should have?

failbettergames7 karma

There is one particular thing we look for: a person, who when left in a room by themselves, would find something useful to do. :)

Other than that, there are lots of game localisation companies who are constantly looking for remote translators. Be proactive, send samples of your work, and tailor your application to each place. Best of luck!

alertbert3 karma

I got Sunless Sea for SteamOS in the humble bundle, and I'm absolutely in love with it.

Have Linux sales been profitable for FailBetter? Will you continue to develop for Linux and possibly release future games with day one support?

Thanks again for making an incredible game.

failbettergames5 karma

Linux players are the most persistent, and the most generous. Thanks for supporting our game!

I hope we'll keep developing for Linux now that we have more expertise in-house. :)

CrimsAK3 karma

Thank you for some of the most atmospheric experiences I've had in gaming for a while - it was especially fortuitous that you found Mickymar Music as they're doing a fantastic job with the score.

I asked my big questions in the last AMA, but what games are you all playing now?

failbettergames8 karma

Dark Souls III, says the office chorus! I'm about to go home and play Danganronpa 2, probably for far too long into the evening, and then have weird dreams.