Black Skylands is a top-down 2D action-adventure game developed by Hungry Couch Games (great name) and published by tinyBuild that’s releasing into early access tomorrow, July 9th. It plays like a cross between the top-down combat madness of Streets of Rogue and the ship-positioning naval battles in Sid Meier’s Pirates!, but it also tells a story and emphasizes resource management. Black Skylands has a lot of balls in the air. That can make it a bit overwhelming at times, and there are your standard early access bugs and issues to contend with throughout, but I keep finding myself wanting to play a little more.
I’ve only played Black Skylands for a little over two hours at this point, and while that would be enough time to figure out most games, there are all kinds of mechanics that I haven’t engaged with meaningfully yet. There are rows of buildings you can construct at the home base, for example. I’ve only built a couple of buildings when the story demanded it. There are a lot of mechanics here—you can construct and upgrade different weapons, construct buildings, scavenge resources from abandoned/destroyed airships and floating islands, defeat enemies by using your hook to pull them close and then punch them forward into the abyss, and so much more. You have to manage your airship’s fuel and ammo, its health, main character Eva’s health, and any islands you reclaim from baddies can be stolen back. There’s a lot here.
As fun as defeating enemies by knocking them off of an island is, the most fun I’ve had with Black Skylands has been drifting aimlessly in the sky as the day turns to night. That, and collecting/managing resources. I can already tell that the more zen parts of the game are going to be its highlight. Black Skylands reminds me of Spiritfarer in that way, because the only thing I remember about that game is sailing and fishing.
Of course, Black Skylands is an early access game, and that means that some elements are still unpolished. Case in point: during the very first boss fight, I continually had my dodge and shoot buttons stop working. This happened multiple times while playing, and I can’t make heads or tails of why that might be. Another thing I noticed is that you can’t drop boxes on your ship. If you grab a box that’s floating in the sky and don’t have enough space in your ship’s hold to store it, you’re stuck holding it, unable to resume flying. The only solution I found was to walk off of the ledge and take damage to drop it back in the sky.
I’ve also seen some weird camera shaking. This can make it difficult to maneuver your ship without taking damage by slamming into something, and the airship is hard enough to control as-is. Imagine trying to steer a Cheerio in a bowl of milk by blowing on it and you’ll get the general picture. The biggest problem with camera shaking is that it’s disorienting, though. At one point, enemies started to retake an island I liberated from them, so I headed in that direction. When a bunch of ships started attacking and the camera started to shake, I just assumed that I was there. It turns out that I was at a different island and ended up losing control of the one that was actually being attacked. It had to be cleared all over again.
Enemies retaking islands isn’t my favorite mechanic, to be honest, and I hope that this is something that changes over Black Skylands‘ time in early access; as soon as I retook the island I lost, I started to clear another one, only for enemies to attack that same island I just cleared before I could liberate another. It’s Sisyphean to have enemies continually arriving to undo your progress, and it’ll be hard to sit back and enjoy the atmosphere when every area I clear is going to be constantly under attack. If there’s a way of bolstering island defenses so that you don’t need to rush back across the map, I haven’t discovered it yet.
For the most part, though, Black Skylands is enjoyable. Building and upgrading things is a lot of fun, and the gameplay has that slight bit of randomness to it that leads to enjoyable moments. For example, the video embedded above ends with an enemy accidentally blowing himself up by shooting an explosive barrel in front of him. That’s great. Rolling off of ledges for the extra distance needed to hookshot to nearby islands? Straight out of Donkey Kong Country. And while I haven’t played far enough to get a sense of where the story is headed (beyond the inevitable appearance of giant monsters), its prevalence is refreshing in a game like this and helps to give you additional reasons to push forward.
Black Skylands (early access) impressions first appeared on Killa Penguin
