Announced in September 2016, Failbetter Games' narrative-rich Sunless Skies is the indirect, same universe follow-up to the wonderful Sunless Sea—this time swapping the murky depths of the Unterzee for plains tens of thousands of feet above. In February past, Sunless Skies ran a successful Kickstarter campaign which not only met its funding ask inside four hours, but also accrued close to four times its original ask.
Developer Failbetter Games has now revealed a provisional roadmap that'll see the game from where it's at now through to its proposed Early Access launch.
As explained in this post, Failbetter plans to operate in fortnightly 'sprint' sessions but qualifies this by saying the development process is fluid and that certain aspects—such as combat, art or writing—are unlikely to be completed in just fourteen days.
Nevertheless, the roadmap suggests works begins with initialising the game's UI pipeline set up and its initial locomotive designs. At this stage the foundation mechanics of the game's hunger, death, fuel, time, and procedurally generated movement through the game world are put in place. Fast forward 11 sprints and everything from combat, sound, a closed beta and final preparations for Early Access should be in place, assuming there are no major hiccups.
Against this two-weekly timeline, this suggests Sunless Skies will be ready for Early Access in September this year. But, again, Failbetter does stress roadmaps are always provisional and subject to change.
Check out the roadmap in full this way, and if you'd like to hear more about Sunless Skies' development, here's the Failbetter devs themselves speaking from the PC Gamer Weekender:
