One of the good issues about video games is that you just actually can simply take two disparate ideas, mash them collectively and are available away with one thing genuinely good. Volantia: Kingdom In The Sky from Tangled Mess Games (that includes a number of the expertise behind the beautiful micro-roguelike Desktop Dungeons) is a mix of city-building administration and block-tessellation puzzle, and it launched at the moment.
While I strenuously object to the style descriptor ‘Greenpunk’ (the place’s the punk half?), there’s positively lots of lush and verdant grass to be seen in Volantia. The recreation guarantees a comparatively low-pressure expertise, giving gamers the time and assets they should construct, develop and refine their floating island kingdom.
While the guts of the sport does appear to be in managing the minutia of your kingdom, you’ve additionally bought to repeatedly develop your territory and reinforce land in order that it doesn’t go falling into the ocean of clouds under. You do that by attaching extra chunks of land in block-rotating puzzle type as neatly as you possibly can. Ideally, you desire a landmass wealthy in assets, with out big gaps and ravines that’ll make it troublesome to construct on.
For those that instantly considered early on-line RTS Netstorm, I had precisely the identical thought. While there’s positively some similarity with Volantia’s land-expanding mechanics, followers of that may be higher served by Stratus: Battle For The Sky, an unofficial remake at the moment in early entry.
While Volantia’s recreation classes could also be longer than Netstorm’s frenzied puzzle-strategising, it does sound like a comparatively slight recreation, with not a lot in the way in which of story and a given session completable in beneath two hours. Good for a day chill-out session, however unlikely to devour total nights the way in which a very good recreation of Civilization can. Whether that’s one thing to be held for or in opposition to the sport is down to non-public desire.
Volantia is out now on Steam for £10.29/10.79€/$13.
