#sunless skies

[neoria-sama]

[failbettergames]

Announcing Mandrake

You are the last of the Mandrakes, a sorcerous line of gardeners. At long last, you’ve returned to your family's abandoned home. Make friends, tend your gardens, and put down roots. Fish, gather and delve in the wilds. Make a place for yourself, and uncover the mysteries your family left behind.

The Lost Arts of Horticulture

Horticulture is a cursed and forbidden practice... except to you. You come from a long line of sorcerers who practiced the green and growing arts, and you’re able to grow such marvels as: runner beans! Cherry trees! The humble turnip!

And as your skills grow, you'll be able to plant stranger seeds, like thunder-calling taran, or rhewyn, which waters your gardens for you. Perhaps you'll even grow a goose-tree! (Where did you think geese came from? Other geese? Preposterous.)

Place beds, decorations and resting spots. Find, plant, nurture, grow and harvest plants both mundane and magical, and gradually expand your gardens into the tangled grounds of your family's abandoned castle.

A World to Inhabit

Discover a beguiling new world inspired by British history and folklore. A world of old, wild powers, of uncanny spirits that reside in those places mortals dare not go; of deep histories, and deeper mysteries.

You won't just work in your gardens. Forage for resources in the nearby woods and along the beach. Go fishing (but take care not to be cursed by the river). Delve into dangerous mines in search of bright minerals and stolen secrets.

Breathe life into the Mandrake lodge with your choice of furnishings and renovations; acquire old books, and spend the evenings reading in the candlelit comfort of your study. Learn to cook. Meet your neighbours, become entangled in their lives, give them gifts and learn their stories.

Fireside Menace

Long ago, the world changed. The Covenant of the Hearth decreed that the day belonged to humanity, but the night... the night belonged to other things. Now, all earthly lights save hearthfires go out when the sun sets, and the Mara ride the night-winds. Don't go out after dark – the night is not for you. 

For now. (After all, what self-respecting sorcerer follows the rules?)

Human, Humble Magic

Magic in Mandrake isn't about flashy fireballs and shimmering shields, but about folkloric ingenuity, whimsy and patience. Grow a cherry tree from seedling to maturity in seven days rather than seven years, then fashion your sorcerer's staff from its wood. Befriend a river. Eavesdrop on the dead. Spend a haunted night at the Butcher's Oak. Drink tea with the god who lives in your chimney. 

A Host of Lavishly-Realised Characters

Welcome to the village of Chandley. It's small, it's complicated, and everyone's got their own story. 

Meet Rosen – bee-keeper, candlemaker, rook-speaker – the even-handed village leader charged with steering this troublesome community of eccentrics. Or Gideon, the sombre hunter who makes pacts with the wild powers of the woods. Befriend Nessa, the village smith, whose kindness conceals the scars of an old tragedy; and Thackery, the effusive Voicer, who keeps technology that no-one – least of all he – fully understands. Visit the lighthouse, where Jory and Ruan Vicory live with young Tamsyn: the girl they saved from the sea, and who still hears voices calling to her from beneath the waves...

Chandley may be small, but it's old, thick with secrets, and set in its ways. Is it ready for the return of a Mandrake?

Beyond the firelight

Encounter the spirits, gods and bogles that live alongside the people of Chandley: the smiling revenant imprisoned in a tree, who claims he knows you (even though he's hundreds of years dead). Lonely, long-armed Granny Jakes in her hidden orchard, who offers you a sip of a drink that the world has forgotten how to make. The Regent of the Woods, bearer of a white crown. The shy thing that whistles an old tune in the depths of a mine no-one has worked in decades. Hroame, who is sometimes stone and sometimes not.

Come along with us

If you’d like to hear from us when we release Mandrake or upload a demo, please consider wishlisting the game on Steam.

Because Mandrake is complex and has some very unusual features, we’ll be seeking ongoing feedback from players. At first, that will be through playtests on Steam, and later we’ll be releasing Mandrake in Early Access.

If you’d like to hear about playtests or just learn more about the game, you can follow us here or sign up for our monthly newsletter, which covers music, internet ephemera, art and film recommendations, strange historical anecdotes, pigeons, various mines/caves/catacombs, and sometimes also updates on our games.

About Failbetter Games

Should you see this and not know us! Founded in 2009, we’re an indie game studio known for quality storytelling and highly atmospheric art. You might know us from our other games: Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies and Mask of the Rose, which are set in the world of our long-running browser game Fallen London. In a break from studio tradition, this is a game where you can't eat people.

[anomalouscorvid]

a scavenger basks in the safely filtered light of a distant star...

ms brood for sprout fight 2026, using the 'sunshine' prompt and the macarons palette! behold, it has Clothes

timelapse below cut

[alex-the-bard]

honestly i love the symbolism and metaphors in Fallen London, specifically around the nature of free will, the divine, and the self.

you come across a young woman, in the process of being petrified by her lover(?), a golem of living clay. her eyes, the only organic thing left of her, say she is terrified, but the Clay Man says she asked him to do this. do you free her, and in the event she does want it, deal with her anger, or leave her to her fate that she may or may not want?

if the stars and their light are actively malevolent, is darkness more moral than their tyranny? is utter chaos, lit only by impossible colors and prowled by things that should not exist, preferable to an oppressive, but orderly, comfortable, and relatively safe rule by spiteful gods, eventually damned to have your soul consumed by the stars? is either preferable?

you are twisted into uncountable variations of yourself, a hundred thousand million possible futures. in one, you are immolated by the raging death throes of a god. in another, you survive eternity, becoming the final Law, that No Thing Shall Be. another, you are the captain of a vessel that sails to the resting place of a sealed god, to be consumed by it. yet another, you march an army to the gates of the Garden of Eden, and batter down the walls to secure the secret of immortality to do with what you will. are all these myriad, infinite futures you? do you want them to be? do you want to be a conqueror, a saviour, a nobody? do you really have a choice?

you learn that the divine is not untouchable. the gods are awful, vulnerable to slights, wars, and petty jealousy. and they can be killed. both the highest gods of the Wilderness and the minor gods of the Zee. does that bring them down to the level of mortal, or elevate the mortal to the divine?

do you ever really have a choice?

does anyone?

if given the opportunity to wrench free from your shackles, would you take it, no matter how terrible the consequences, the pain it would take to be free?

would you?

would they?

would anyone?

[mushroomlasagna]

I COULD be playing one of the many games I have either on my to-play list or in progress. Instead, I opened up sunless skies after like 6 years and have been replaying that instead.

Anyway the Incognito Princess is still such a funny character. That's MY cutesy eldritch horror woman.

[bodhrancomedy]

@failbettergames

Fallen London is a free text adventure game that you can play in any browser at www.fallenlondon.com. It contains no ads and requires no installs. It's also funny, atmospheric, horrific, deep, dark and marvellous (and marvellously queer). Use the code visitlondon and get some fantastic treats to get you started.

Welcome, delicious friend.

I love this game. It kept me going through my dissertation and I had so much fun making this. Please show these guys some love.

[ericapalmer]

I love this game so much

[perfectlynormalbooks]

Sunless Knights by MacBudgie / @mushroomlasagna - a Hollow Knight/Sunless Skies crossover!! Casebound in folio. One copy for me, one copy for the author. Both games have very unique aesthetics, so I had fun figuring out ways to incorporate the iconography into the design.