A long time ago a city flew through the clouds, the greatest achievement of its age. Whether it was an achievement of knowledge and learning or military might depends on the historian, but there’s no denying its existence defined the power structure Aeyrie until one day it was gone. Bits and pieces still pop up now and then, and even act as the centerpiece of standard grounded cities, but up until now the skies have returned to being the domain of sky pirates and birds. The standard bird-sized birds, that is, rather than the bird-people living on the ground in fear of the next sky pirate attack.
A Highly Literal Take on “The Sky’s The Limit”
The old ambitions are never gone, though, and a new flying city is headed to the skies from a humble beginning of being little more than a town center. As its commander you’ll need to recruit new workers and expand into an actual town, floating across the islands and continents in search of new tech and the resources to build it.Airborne Empireis a combination city builder/adventure game, putting you at the unseen helm of what will eventually be a massive airship seeking to restore the aeronautical glory of times long past.
The Wandering Village Ambles Into Early Access
First up, though, is turning the current single structure into something capable of its ambitions. Buildings can’t just be crammed together but need at least one side exposed to a path, but those are cheap and easy to build. Unhoused workers are unhappy workers so the next step is to spend wood on building some living quarters, each one initially holding five citizens but soon upgradeable to house more. The only resources the sky holds are air and clouds, neither of which are going to provide food, so a hangar is needed to let the workers fly down (in tiny airplanes rather than their own bird-people wings) and get scavenging, and finally the academy lets you research upgrades for existing buildings plus brand-new tech when blueprints become available. It’s got a long way to go to become an aerial metropolis, but is still a solid foundation to expand from.
If there’s one thing a city does well it’s consume, so staying aloft is a semi-constant flow of searching for the next resource to scavenge. Food is found in berry bushes and fishing spots while water comes from fresh-water lakes, and wood, iron, coal, and cotton all have their own easily-recognized resource nodes on the map. Each node is limited and can be strip-mined down to bare earth, but there are enough of them that there’s no reason to go allBug’s Lifeon the world with a cycle of “They come, they eat, they leave”. The city’s storage only holds so much so it’s better for both the world below and resource management to leave something behind. Except for iron, which is relatively plentiful in the number of deposits but a little small on the yield per each. Even if you do go full-on locust, though, resources slowly regenerate so there’s no reason not to worry that drifting back and forth across the map clearing out side-quests will leave you stuck without fuel or food.
Airborne Empireis a combination city builder/adventure game, putting you at the unseen helm of what will eventually be a massive airship seeking to restore the aeronautical glory of times long past.
The floating village starts out in the boonies, with only a settlement or two available to recruit a few new workers from, but the first major city isn’t too far along and it’s got the first of many requests that’s only practical for someone with skyborne mobility. Cities also have marketplaces, where you can pick up or sell resources, plus academies that may have ancient technological blueprints for sale. Blueprints are both expensive and necessary, providing basics like the iron forge to turn ore into ingots, or defense cannons to ward off sky pirate attacks. Just having a blueprint isn’t much use without researching it, though, but the base level of building is only a couple of in-game hours (two minutes give or take, depending on whether the in-game clock is set to single, double, or triple-time) while the upgrades to its effectiveness take a bit longer for the academy to unlock.
Aerial Cities Face Their Own Types Of Building Challenges
Once you’ve got a building researched and ready to construct, the last thing to take into account is that a city in the air has no foundation to speak of, so will need to be balanced in order to maintain a comfortable surface for its inhabitants. Putting too many buildings on one side or another will cause it to lean, and while a couple of degrees either way is no big deal, once there’s a noticeable tilt it leads to unhappy workers. Additionally, the town center can only carry so many buildings by itself, so fan buildings provide extra lift but also contribute to raising the side they’re placed on up a bit and eat into fuel consumption. It’s honestly not that hard to balance everything so long as the town center stays in the town’s actual physical center with an even number of fans placed on either side, but it’s another wrinkle in town planning to keep in mind. Air cities have their own unique challenges and it’s easy to screw up the design, but fortunately many of Aeyrie’s land-based towns have air docks where they helpfully pause the in-game clock so you can rearrange everything a little better.
Aside from the city-building, though,Airborne Empireis also an adventure game, with exploration at its heart and a fair amount of combat to keep you on your toes. While it’s mostly a peaceful, chill game of exploration and management, sudden sky pirate attacks can happen at any time and progressing through the world requires clearing out more than a few bases with an aerial bombardment. The pirates attack with aircraft and ground cannon, which are taken out with defense towers and a cannon of your own respectively, and eventually there are even larger enemy airships needing an attack squadron to handle. It can be a tricky job keeping the city safe and, when that’s not possible, repaired after the damage is done.
WhileAirborne Empirehas just released into Early Access, it’s already a highly-polished adventure in an irresistible setting. The bird-people of Aeyrie are a likable bunch in an interesting world, and the sky-city viewpoint is a great vantage-point to play from. Scanning Aeyrie for points of interest, zooming out for the widest view or in to watch citizens wander the city, searching the oceans for sea-beasts or the skies for incoming pirates, watching the planes drop out of the bottom of the hangar and do a little loop on the approach to the landing strip, or even looking up at night to see the constellations in the sky adds a great touch of atmosphere to the adventure. Managing the city and its resources isn’t all that difficult, thanks to the in-game economy being rewards from quests or sending a worker down to check out a ruin, and so long as you keep an eye on the fuel, water and food gauges, everything else is just a matter of basic planning. There are enough elements among city-building, questing and combat that there’s always something different to do, and no real rush to do it if you’re not feeling in a hurry.Airborne Empireis a laid-back, accessible open-world adventure where the main “character” is a growing city, and somehow manages to be as playable as it is unique.
