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

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