Fallen London
| Fallen London | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Failbetter Games |
| Engine | StoryNexus |
| Platform(s) | Browser, iOS, Android |
| Release |
Browser
|
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Fallen London, originally titled Echo Bazaar and developed by Failbetter Games, is a browser-based choose-your-own-adventure game set in "Fallen London", an alternative Victorian London with gothic overtones. The franchise subsequently expanded to other games, including a PC game of "survival, discovery and loneliness", Sunless Sea.
The game won The Escapist "Best Browser-Based Game" award for the year 2009.
The eponymous bazaar of the game is a sentient being. It is curated by several Masters, each with their own control over Fallen London's business (Mr Apples, for instance, controlling agriculture, while Mr Fires rules industry). The monarch of the city, Her Enduring Majesty the Traitor Empress, sold the city to the bazaar to spare the life of her husband Albert, Prince Consort in 1861. The entire city was then taken a mile beneath the surface by a swarm of bats, where it has remained for over thirty years.
London is only the latest, fifth city to be taken underground in a pattern stretching across thousands of years, although certain storylines show that it has not lost contact with the outside world. Surrounding Fallen London is the Unterzee, a subterranean ocean with many islets and infested with monstrous sea life; experienced players may sail across it to visit other locations in connection with story lines based in Fallen London. Among these is Polythreme, a country where inanimate objects become alive and sentient (and source of Clay Men, the golems used as cheap labor in London), the Iron Republic, a devil-ruled place in which even reality is subject to the capricious and constantly changing written laws, and the Khanate, a rival nation to Fallen London made up of the descendents of the fourth city that was taken, Karakorum.
Fallen London has also found itself much closer to Hell: devils appear constantly and casually in various storylines, and even maintain an embassy in the city itself. A dream-realm, Parabola, is closer to London than to surface locations, and is sometimes visible through mirrors.
Players take the role of new arrivals to the underground down on their luck, and make their way to the cream of the crop of the city's various legal and illegal activities. Players are gentlebeings of leisure, plumbing the vices and secrets of Fallen London. They have no living expenses, and though players may choose a profession for a weekly payment, they can publish a newspaper, serve out repeated prison sentences and feed coalmen to a man-eating plant without harming their job security.
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Wikipedia