Airborne Kingdom | Chilled Out Game review
Welcome to Chilled Out Game Reviews.
If you’re looking to find a relaxing game
to play to de-stress, you’ve come to the
right place.
Airborne Kingdom is a city builder game with
a bit of a twist.
Similarly to Flotsam, a game I reviewed back
in 2018, this city moves around, though this
time we’re flying rather than floating over
a flooded world.
All the mechanics you would expect for a game
like this are here, manage resources, build
up your city and research new structures to
further expand your city.
However, there are a few more things to consider
than you would normally see in other city
builders; you also need to consider your lift,
propulsion and most crucially, tilt.
Build too much on one side of your city and
you’ll run into some problems.
The art style is beautiful.
You can get some amazingly cinematic views
with the changing lighting throughout the
day.
In a way it reminds me a little of Epistory’s
visual style.
I love how the map stretches out below you
with these beautiful tile designs, and how
the clouds, and later on fog, disappear from
under your cursor as you move around.
I really enjoy listening to the music too.
It’s really relaxing and adds to
eastern aesthetic of the game’s art direction.
It’s the sort of soundtrack I’d like to
have on in the background when I’m writing
these scripts.
Balancing your resources is a rather fun challenge.
You need to keep moving for quests and to
find new resources after depleting others
but you don’t know where the next source
of food or water or coal might be.
This can add a little tension but it’s not
too stressful as long as you are cautious.
This starts to become more of a concern as
the game progresses as if you’re not careful
you may need more people than you have to
run your city, and new areas of the map have
very little of certain resources to add a
little challenge.
The story isn’t particularly deep, it’s
mainly a framework to give you a reason to
keep moving on and finding new places.
I haven’t completed the game at the point
of writing this review so I can’t say if
that changes towards the end, but that’s
something we can all look forward to discovering together.
There are a lot of new buildings and structures
to unlock as the game progresses.
You need to purchase blueprints from each
new kingdom you find to unlock the ability
to research them, which gives a second motivation
for exploring the world if the vague story
isn’t enough for you.
This also slowly introduces new concepts even
after several hours of gameplay which is definitely
appreciated.
Airborne Kingdom is an incredibly well made
game that puts a new spin on the city builder
genre.
It effectively balances increasing challenge
of gameplay with maintaining a relaxed, low
pressure atmosphere and really leans into
its beautiful visuals.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed playing it and happily
award Airborne Kingdom the Chill Out Seal
of Approval.
[Music]
Thank you so much for watching.
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