Failbetter Games

Failbetter Games is a British video game developer and interactive fiction studio based in London.

History
Founded in 2009 by Alexis Kennedy and Paul Arendt, Failbetter is chiefly known for its Fallen London Victorian Gothic franchise (comprising, to date, the Fallen London and Silver Tree browser games and the Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies and Mask of the Rose video games), which has garnered a cult following. Failbetter was also commissioned by BioWare to build a browser-game prologue for Dragon Age: Inquisition, and by UK publisher Harvill Secker to create a puzzle game to accompany The Night Circus. The studio has consistently won acclaim for the quality of its writing, world-building and storytelling.

In 2016, Alexis Kennedy left Failbetter, citing a desire to work with a variety of other studios and work on his own smaller, more experimental projects.

In February 2017, Failbetter ran a successful Kickstarter for a sequel to Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, raising almost half a million dollars. However, December that same year Failbetter unexpectedly laid off four members of staff, citing the under-performance of the Sunless Sea iPad port, and poor sales of their Sunless Skies in early access.

Failbetter was subsequently the target of an extensive but inconclusive investigative report by Eurogamer, which cited Kennedy and other unnamed staff in claiming poor management and a 'toxic' culture had developed since Kennedy's departure.

On 8 June 2023 Failbetter released a romantic visual novel set in the Fallen London universe called Mask of the Rose, which is a prequel to the other games in the franchise.