Stone Age Sport Evaluate: Skies Above

The oldsters at Flynn’s Arcade have been publishing a lot of cool indie video games that resemble the arcade hits of outdated. So once they approached me with a evaluate code for Skies Above, I assumed I knew what to anticipate. However I used to be incorrect. Whereas the sport does certainly have the soul of an arcade traditional, there’s an entire lot extra trendy stuff occurring. Right here’s our evaluate. 

Skies Above could not happen in a easy arcade sport enviornment, nevertheless it’s not precisely set in an enormous, sprawling open world both. Reasonably, it’s set above one. The majority of the sport takes place on the again of an enormous flying whale. Sure, the sport calls it a leviathan, however come on. That stunning beast is a sky whale, and I like him. Anyway, it’s your mission to guard him from an countless wave of flying orbs that continuously shoot at him. You do that with a reasonably unconventional assault scheme. Your character has the power to lock on to numerous targets, and also you destroy them if you bounce off one onto the following. As soon as. you have focused one thing, you dart straight to it, and you are able to do the identical together with your whale to re-center your self. Principally, the gameplay loop is all about discovering probably the most environment friendly solution to create chains the place you bounce between a dozen or so enemies at a time with the intention to cease their fireplace from harming your whale good friend. It took me some time to get the cling of the controls, and I’m nonetheless not 100% certain I’ve them down if I’m being completely sincere, however as soon as you discover your groove, it’s an especially rewarding expertise. 

Fortunately, as soon as your whale runs out of well being, it doesn’t die. As a substitute, it lands in a pleasant little hub space to relaxation whilst you top off in your subsequent try and get him so far as you possibly can. Right here, you’ve tons of choices to improve your weapons, your whale, study the sport’s lore, and extra. The gameplay itself isn’t filled with monumental surprises, and issues don’t actually evolve too far past the fundamentals you study initially, nevertheless it nonetheless looks like the sport is nicely fleshed out sufficient to be well worth the worth of admission. It is received an simple stage of cool to it, with some lively music to tie all of it in a neat bow. That whale is tremendous lovable, too. 

That stated, there are a number of drawbacks. The sport’s efficiency is not spectacular on the Swap, which is a bummer. It’s not doing something the system can’t deal with, nevertheless it nonetheless manages to chug fairly badly when your whale takes off. There are additionally some wacky grammar errors all through the sport’s textual content. Nothing unforgivable, however the script definitely may have used one other spherical of modifying earlier than launch. 

I additionally must admit, I’ve not overwhelmed this sport but as a result of I’m simply not ok. Not but, anyway. I’ve made it to the third cloud layer, however I haven’t been capable of correctly grasp it to get any additional. Nonetheless, I intend to maintain enjoying it once in a while as a result of it’s only a actually enjoyable sport! I like to recommend it. 

Skies Above is accessible now on Nintendo Swap and Steam.