One of the best titles we had the chance to play at this year’s Summer Game Fest wasAmbrosia Sky, the gorgeous and satisfying first-person clean ‘em up from indie newcomers (and industry veterans) Soft Rains. With a captivating and emotional story, as well as intriguing puzzle and physics mechanics, this is a title we’re especially looking forward to.
Cleaning the Outer Rings of Saturn
Equipped with a chemical sprayer, our hero Dalia must make her way through her old home on the rings of Saturn, cleaning out the infestation of an alien fungus that has decimated the settlement and its population. Along her way, she’ll find the remains of the places and people that decorated her past, laying them to rest and discovering more about the crisis with each soul released.
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Gameplay consists of exploring the various areas and locations across Saturn’s rings, making your way through the facilities and buildings that are filled with thick, sprawling ecosystems of various fungi. Dalia’s sprayer can wipe out these fungi, which form into thick three-dimensional blobs and spawn hostile enemies and hazards along the way (which can also be neutralized with the sprayer).
With a captivating and emotional story, as well as intriguing puzzle and physics mechanics, this is a title we’re especially looking forward to.
Destroying the mountains of fungus is incredibly satisfying, with the sprayer capable of slicing through layers of gunk with ease. We were immediately drawn to carve out chunks of the fungus by sectioning off large volumes of the infestation, causing them to fall off of the larger pile and quickly wither away. This is a valid strategy, but also a risky one, as some fungal infestations contain explosive flora that may set off a chain reaction of blasts if you get too close or are dropped with too much force.
Exploring A New (or Old) World
Dalia eventually equips her sprayer with electricity and fire settings, giving her more options when approaching an objective that is trapped behind a puzzle or barrier of some kind. The electricity sprayer is capable of spraying a conducive gel onto surfaces, which can be used to unlock a door containing extra loot by drawing a line from a nearby power box to the door’s energy converter. Ever the intrusive villain, you have to first ensure that no fungus touchs the handmade circuit, as infestation can cause electricity to become contaminated as well.
While it may seem more obvious to compare it to other cleaning titles likePowerwash SimulatororViscera Cleanup Detailat first glance, we found that there were deeper connections to be found to immersive action sims likePreyorDishonored. Optional areas and side objectives are found throughout, sometimes containing crucial pieces of lore or high-value items that could be used to upgrade the sprayer and gear. One such area allowed the gravity to be completely turned off, allowing you to fly around and get a better angle on hard-to-reach fungi.
All the while, the game continues to stun with its world-building and dynamic art style. Laying an old neighbor of Dalia’s to rest didn’t trigger an expected audio log or cutscene, but rather a gorgeous series of comic panels with poetic text, reflecting on the life and death of the old friend of our protagonist. The entire experience holds up this level of sophisticated artistic design, with three-dimensional environments bearing colorful brushstrokes in the finer details of the walls and objects.
Our time withAmbrosia Skywas full of exploration, discovery and creativity, and the game clearly intends to reward players for carving out their own path through the colorful and dense locales on the rings of Saturn. While we only got a few glimpses into the writing and world-building, what we saw brought a level of poetic density that left us eager for more when our time was up. Keep an eye out forAmbrosia Skyas more information surfaces from its release, as well as check out the full democurrently available on Steam.
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