“The sea has never been friendly to man.” Joseph Conrad’s Topoi in the Digital Game Sunless Sea

• Authors: Magdalena Kozyra

Abstracts

EN

The aim of this paper is to find connections between the digital game Sunless Sea (Failbetter Games, 2015) and Joseph Conrad’s novels, particularly the ones touching on the subject of sea voyage. Sunless Sea is an exploration role-playing game which focuses on the topics of sailors’ loneliness, dual nature of the sea, and above all, player’s inevitable failure. These tropes are shown not only in the narrative structure of the game, but also in its mechanics and design choices. I believe that the game is heavily inspired by the notion of maritime life created by Conrad, as indicated by the quote from The Mirror of the Sea opening the game: “The sea has never been friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human restlessness.”

Keywords

EN

Joseph Conrad; Sunless Sea; digital games; cRPG; sea; sailor

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Jagielloński
• Journal: Yearbook of Conrad Studies
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 14
• Pages: 83-92

Dates

published

2019

Contributors

author

Magdalena Kozyra

• Uniwersytet Jagielloński

• https://orcid.org/000000017900399X

References

• Conrad, Joseph. A Personal Record. [online:] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/687/687-h/687-h. htm. Accessed on 20 July 2019.
• Conrad, Joseph.Lord Jim. [online:] http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5658/5658-h/5658-h.htm. Accessed on 20 July 2019.
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Identifiers

DOI

10.4467/20843941YC.19.004.13230

Biblioteka Nauki

2188123