Nimbatus – The Space Drone Constructor is a remarkably self-explanatory title, being attached to a game that consists of building ships of both the self-piloting and manually controlled variety (with Kerbal Space Program levels of trial and error as you figure out how everything works and optimize for better results). Perhaps most strikingly, this is a game where you can carve your way through planets like a knife through butter using lasers, and there are numerous videos and animated gifs of this that make it obvious that we all need Nimbatus in our lives. That’s certainly what initially drew me in, though its underlying physics have also proven to be surprisingly enjoyable. Nimbatus – The Space Drone Constructor releases into Early Access via Steam on October 3rd, and this is definitely a game you’ll want to keep your eye on.
I was initially worried that learning how to put together ships would be incredibly time-consuming, but there’s a tutorial that does a fantastic job of easing you into Nimbatus‘ gameplay while ensuring that you can’t blindly fumble your way through without understanding the basics. For example, you’re bound to spread parts too thin at one point, at which point your ship will go nuts thanks to a lack of stability. At one point I didn’t realize that you could attach new parts to previously-placed parts in order to avoid attaching everything to the core—all it takes is to click the part you want to be the new anchor. Since parts can only be placed a certain distance from the object anchoring them, that meant getting stuck for awhile on a tutorial that required building something large enough to hit several switches at once. This is the kind of tutorial that I appreciate, as it limits your available parts to shepherd you toward a new discovery while avoiding bogging you down with verbose tutorial text.
As for the gameplay itself, it’s also excellent. A galaxy is procedurally generated for you once you choose a save slot, and from there you’re left to move from planet to planet, creating drones that can accomplish some goal. Early on, the only goal I’ve encountered is “destroy X number of Y thing,” but there are complications; while the first level I finished had some relatively harmless enemy drones that had to be dealt with, this second level included a planet-sized invincible snake who didn’t take kindly to me destroying her eggs in the name of conservationism. Needless to say, I didn’t expect Snake God to appear, and my shields were woefully inadequate against her attacks. It was only when I went back and designed a new, more agile ship designed to destroy snake eggs and then get out of Snake God’s range that I managed to succeed, and that seems to be the name of the game here; from what I’ve played of it, Nimbatus – The Space Drone Constructor is a game about building something you’re overconfident about, watching it fail horribly, and then iterating on it until you’ve learned a little and found a solution that actually suits your current goal.
(There’s also an arena at the end where I had the option of going up against a Twitch streamer’s drone in one-on-one combat, but I decided to avoid doing so until I’ve learned a bit more about how to use sensors to automate drone operations.)
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