Airborne Empire Takes Flight through Steam Early Access

[T0@st]

Today Airborne Empire finally takes flight and is live on Steam! We—at the Wandering Band—are super excited for players to get their hands on the game, to celebrate there will be a 10% discount on the game for a limited time. While we celebrate this milestone today we know there is much more to come. We plan on working on the game for at least a year (most likely a little longer) and we've posted a very early + rough roadmap below.

Right now it's just a list of things we plan on doing. The idea is to expand on this roadmap with your input. We have a big game with a lot of cool features, we're happy with what we have, but our goal is to make something great. We need your help; we need to know what you like, what you don't like and what types of additional content you want to see. If you would like to provide feedback, or discuss the game with the team directly, please join us on our Discord. If you find a bug while playing the game please report it with the in-game bug reporting tool (in the pause screen).




Airborne Empire is a skyward city builder that uniquely blends role-playing, city-building, and open-world exploration from high in the clouds. Players manage scarce resources and travel through distant lands, all while constructing their flying city to become both a fortress and a home to many. But this won't always be easy, as threats are imminent: players must make meaningful alliances and decisions to keep dangers like sky pirates at bay. Only the most daring leaders can reforge a harmonious world between the land and the skies.

Early Access Roadmap

Features:

• Creative Mode
• Survival Mode
• Weather System
• Difficulty Levels
• New Game +
• Additional Language Support
• Steam Trading Cards

Content:

• New Biome
• New Pirate Faction/Boss Fight
• New Enemy Types
• New Buildings
• New Building Themes
• New Starting Town Centers
• New Weapons
• New Relics
• New Side Quests

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Vayra86]

Huh... wasn't this released ages ago already?!

Well... PSA... totally skippable. You'll be done within a day. Its fun for a short while, once your discoveries are done, you're done. There's no real city builder here, the concept's just lacking. There are a lot of similarities to Bulwark, but Bulwark does all of them much better... and is developed faster... by a single person What IS there though, does work and click okay. Its just far too little.

The first playthrough is fun though, because you discover how a city that needs to be balanced all the time works. Its not rocket science of course; symmetry matters and you have to counteract weight with lift to keep things straight. And that's about all it writes, getting any more creative with that, is just busywork and a recipe for failure. This makes the game a cheap trick very fast, because beyond that, its just a floating city and instead of building routes to trade resources, you just fly to them.

 

[TheLostSwede]

Huh... wasn't this released ages ago already?!

Well... PSA... totally skippable. You'll be done within a day. Its fun for a short while, once your discoveries are done, you're done. There's no real city builder here, the concept's just lacking. There are a lot of similarities to Bulwark, but Bulwark does all of them much better... and is developed faster... by a single person What IS there though, does work and click okay. Its just far too little.

The first playthrough is fun though, because you discover how a city that needs to be balanced all the time works. Its not rocket science of course; symmetry matters and you have to counteract weight with lift to keep things straight. And that's about all it writes, getting any more creative with that, is just busywork and a recipe for failure. This makes the game a cheap trick very fast, because beyond that, its just a floating city and instead of building routes to trade resources, you just fly to them.

No, that was Airborne Kingdoms, same devs, different game.

 

[Vayra86]

No, that was Airborne Kingdoms, same devs, different game.

LOL. So they're just respinning the same thing then, because this looks literally identical.

Wow.

 

[TheLostSwede]

LOL. So they're just respinning the same thing then, because this looks literally identical.

Wow.

I wouldn't say identical, but yes, based on largely the same idea. I hadn't heard of their first one though, as I included this in this week's game release update.

 

[Vayra86]

I wouldn't say identical, but yes, based on largely the same idea. I hadn't heard of their first one though, as I included this in this week's game release update.

Yeah I've learned its a 'real sequel' at this point... well... going by the end state of Kingdoms, I'm not holding my breath over this one.

 

[TechLurker]

LOL. So they're just respinning the same thing then, because this looks literally identical.

Wow.

To be fair, they straight-up stated it in their Dev posts to Airborne Kingdom. This would be a new game that takes everything they've done and learned, and expand on it so that now there's more tangible agency beyond just flying to various resource clusters and exploring. For one, they'd like to include some actual enemy kingdoms and threats that the reborn kingdom from the first game now has to contend with.

As you mentioned in another post, the first game got boring late game and becomes more of just a basic resource manager with parking your flying city close to the relevant resource sites. They're taking feedback like that to build the sequel, with more trade and more alliances and enemies to deal with. Heck, even the press release states they'll still be taking feedback to make the game better than the first one. Whether it will truly be better than the first remains to be seen, but given the increase in actual threats and more political options, it already has more than what the first game offered.

 

[thestryker6]

I played a bit today and so far it really does feel like an expanded Airborne Kingdom which is fine by me. I really enjoyed the design and mechanics, but it really was just a one and done that started to get tedious towards the end. I think there's plenty of room to balance out the overall experience and they seem to have a solid foundation of a roadmap.

 

[_roman_]

That reminds me of some anime.

there were several different ones with a floating house / castle / building in the air