Stone Age Sport Evaluation: Skies Above

The oldsters at Flynn’s Arcade have been publishing various cool indie video games that resemble the arcade hits of previous. So once they approached me with a evaluate code for Skies Above, I believed I knew what to anticipate. However I used to be mistaken. Whereas the sport does certainly have the soul of an arcade traditional, there’s an entire lot extra fashionable stuff happening. 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. Slightly, 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 lovely beast is a sky whale, and I really like him. Anyway, it’s your mission to guard him from an limitless wave of flying orbs that continuously shoot at him. You do that with a slightly unconventional assault scheme. Your character has the flexibility to lock on to varied targets, and also you destroy them if you bounce off one onto the subsequent. As soon as. you have focused one thing, you dart straight to it, and you are able to do the identical along with your whale to re-center your self. Principally, the gameplay loop is all about discovering probably the most environment friendly strategy to create chains the place you bounce between a dozen or so enemies at a time so as to cease their fireplace from harming your whale pal. It took me some time to get the hold 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 when you top off on your subsequent try and get him so far as you’ll be able to. Right here, you could have tons of choices to improve your weapons, your whale, study the sport’s lore, and extra. The gameplay itself isn’t stuffed with monumental surprises, and issues don’t actually evolve too far past the fundamentals you study at the start, nevertheless it nonetheless appears like the sport is properly fleshed out sufficient to be definitely worth the worth of admission. It is obtained an plain degree of cool to it, with some energetic music to tie all of it in a neat bow. That whale is tremendous lovable, too. 

That mentioned, there are just a few drawbacks. The sport’s efficiency is not spectacular on the Change, 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 enhancing earlier than launch. 

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

Skies Above is on the market now on Nintendo Change and Steam.