Preview – Black Skylands [Early Access] PC

I only had a few days to play Black Skylands in order to get this Preview out in time to coincide with the lift of the embargo but it was nowhere near enough. This is totally unprecedented. The last few I’ve done only had around an hour of playtime – just enough to show off the ideas behind the title – but that is not the case here. Black Skylands is already playable in a real way. A decent portion of the narrative seems to be carved out. The ability to free-roam around the world, accept and complete side-missions, brawl for occupied territories (in both the air and on land), and then defend them when they’re inevitably attacked, is fully functional. There’s a full upgrade system that relies on the player exploring and gathering resources to build structures at the home base, allowing for the crafting of new ships, ship parts, armour, and weaponry. New major skills are unlocked through story beats and there’s even combat and utility abilities that can be equipped depending on the amount of people you’ve freed across the world. It’s quite incredible really.

This isn’t your average Early Access game. The only reason it seems to need to go into EA at all is to stomp out some of the more critical bugs that currently haunt it. I encountered several that entirely halted my progress but I still managed to push through by simply triggering certain events again, forcing the whole thing back on track. Other than that, the title is built on solid gameplay foundations and is just as addicting as one might expect from what, on the surface, could be described as a sort of Stardew Valley meets Enter the Gungeon with airship battles. It’s a top-down action/adventure game at heart, with some base-building and management systems sprinkled on top. Set in a world where everybody lives on floating islands and airships, there seems to be a peaceful fog that has settled across the land. That is, until your father discovers an aggressive creature from beyond a stormy barrier, previously unreachable, and sets off a string of events that would see factions form and wars begin, as everyone scrambles to shelter themselves from the now unleashed monsters known as The Swarm.

Taking the role of Eva, a young heroine fueled by curiosity and courage, the player must see to it that her people are freed and the forces of the opposing faction are forced back, all the while helping her younger brother enact his plan for finally putting a stop to the fiends that plague them before all is lost. In essence this boils down to a simple, effective loop. Investigate and take over regions you can handle, considering the power levels of Eva and her current ship, use those resources to grow stronger, and repeat. Within that are boss fights, puzzles, platforming with an awesome grappling hook that can be used to cross large gaps or drag items and adversaries towards yourself, and, of course, combat. Pulling a sweet drift with your airship to swing around and blast fools out of the sky with your latest auto-cannons is pretty cool but it’s not always practical. Most of the time Eva’s boots will need to be on the ground to confront troops directly and take down anti-air ordnance. This means dodge-rolling through enemy fire, making shots yourself, and taking advantage of the terrain and capabilities you may have equipped. Constantly jumping between these two means of navigation and action is mandatory for all aspects of the game, and, just like how Eva’s health needs to be maintained, so does the ship’s condition and fuel.

Whilst a lot of that more fiddly administrative stuff, such as refueling, can get at you, it never becomes annoying. It’s more like satisfaction surrounded by the distress that you have so much more to do but it’s already 2am! It’s akin to the feeling you get when playing something like Steamworld Dig – the ambivalent notion of needing to continue on crashing against the wisdom that it’s better to stop and drop off what has been amassed, stock up, and head back out fresh later. In general that is actually the perfect metaphor for this entire game as I kept wanting to play more and more, even after calling it off due to being blocked by bugs. I couldn’t help myself from booting it back up in vain, hoping I could somehow get it to work, which, luckily, I did, and was rewarded with more story and an even deeper view of how the experience continues to expand. Even right now I want to play more, but I also want to back off whilst it goes through its time in Early Access. I’ve no doubt Black Skylands is going to be a hit and I want to make sure I get to play the best version of it whenever it releases. I’ll probably have to book a few days off of work…