The Case

Ever since the day I first booted up A Valley Without Wind 2, Arcen Games has been my embodiment of the indie gaming ideals. Professional enough to produce full-scale, complex games, but also innovative enough to leave little doubt about the indieness of their creations. This said, ladies and gentlemen, I introduce Skyward Collapse, the most recent release of the studio!

The Trial

One thing needs to be made clear before the reviewing begins – not everyone will feel the way described above. Indie games are something you have to understand, a philosophy of the content being superior to the form. If you do understand this, please read on. If you don’t, you are missing out, but please stay and try to grasp the idea.

Skyward Collapse is a God sim game, in which we are assigned the role of the Creator. Our goal is to simultaneously supervise two different civilizations, namely the Greek and the Norse. Unfortunately, they have free will and make use of it in the most human of ways – trying to annihilate each other. In order to win the game, you will have to stop them from doing so. Sounds easy? Well, it is not.

Your first thought most probably was – “let’s give them no weapons, this way they will not be able to hurt one another!”. No can do, as there is a third party present– the Bandits, who will relentlessly attempt to destroy our little worshipers. They keep getting stronger and stronger throughout the game, enforcing military development of the civilizations. Everything comes down to balance here – it is fine if units die, buildings get destroyed and so on, as long as it happens to both sides. If one of them gets too strong and manages to wipe the other out – it is game over.

Skyward Collapse is a score-based game, points being awarded for pretty much everything we do. But those who want to go for the highscore will need to take a risk and provoke a lot of fighting, as this is the best source for points. There are three basic types of units to deploy – human soldiers spawning at barracks, mythological beings put directly onto the battlefield and tokens - usually empowering the first few humans to reach them. Also, in the later stages Gods will appear with their powerful passives drastically changing the situation on the continent. Each of them has three god tokens, which can be distributed throughout the map, thus gaining limited control over these beings and earning increasing the score.

While the main idea of the gameplay seems complex enough, the devs went further, introducing lots of randomness. The troops move on their own, changing objectives on the go and if you try loading one save data a few times, they will keep acting differently! The gods are also random, leaving the player unaware which ones will spawn until they actually do. And last but not least, there are Woes, - random events happening every few turns, capable of changing everything in a matter of seconds – killing all the units or modifying the landscape. Every playthrough is a new experience, making it hard to become a ready-for-everything God.

In the graphics department, Skyward Collapse is the quintessence of Arcen’s style. The detailed sprites, beautiful, fluent animations and the contrast between the continent and the background – all these create something unique, a game which looks great both on screenshots and in action. The devs conducted a detailed research, especially on the Norse side of the conflict, creating vivid, eye-catching illustrations of many lesser known motifs. And the music...the music is even better than in Valley Without Wind 2. It is so great that even after I stopped playing and got to writing, I still had the game minimized, just to preserve the atmosphere! Big kudos for Pablo, Arcen’s compositor!

The Verdict

I honestly tried to find even one element that could be seen as a flaw on Skyward Collapse. The problem is – it was nearly impossible, as everything the developers did here, they did great, giving us an astonishingly complex game which plays differently every time. The only weak spot would be the time required to actually understand what you are doing. Not everyone will have the patience, but then again, they shouldn’t have picked a strategy game if they don’t. Apart from that, Skyward Collapse is flawless and could be easily recommended to every gamer seeking some innovative, slow-paced, complex gameplay which will take ages to become boring!

Case Review