14 DAY TRIAL // 
The first game signed by The Wandering Band proves to be a relaxing and endearing experience thanks to its concept and art style. The unusual city builder literally takes you to the clouds in order to build a flying marvel and discover the secret behind an ancient prophecy. But can it soar on consoles after conquering the PC kingdom or will it crash land in the desert of forgotten memories?
The first thing that makes Airborne Kingdom stand out is the exotic art style that not only makes you feel like the architect of a story straight from the Arabian Nights, but makes you feel excited about the wonders hidden in the world. Building a floating kingdom that brings harmony and prosperity may sound like a tall order but keeping the citizens happy is the real trial.
Airborne Kingdom can be best described as a city builder with a twist, that requires a careful management of the resources scattered around the land. Since you cannot land, you will have to move around to harvest the various resources that regenerate over time not just to keep the city in the clouds, but to also satisfy the increasingly more complex needs of your people.
In order to evolve you need more and more resources, that you can gather by recruiting new citizens. But the bigger the population, the harder it is to keep them happy, and it all turns in a constant balancing act while you mov from place to place in search of woof, clay, water or food. The game although has an original look, gameplay wise it does not strain from the base formula you might have seen in other city builder games.
The major twist is the need to constantly move around chasing the regenerable resources. For example, depleting a forest or a water pool is just a temporary setback since in time they will regenerate. Thus, you will be pushed to explore, discover new territories, civilizations and forgotten technologies. Everything comes full circle and results in a relaxing, yet engaging gameplay.
Although you will not have to worry with the maintenance of the buildings, you will still have to keep an eye on the overall kingdom. You need enough thrust to keep you airborne, you need to balance the buildings so your kingdom does not tilt to a dangerous angle, and you still need to put some space between the housing area and the industrial complexes in order to keep your citizens happy.
The last aspect influences not just your recruiting efforts, but also your already existing population. Unhappy inhabitants will leave your kingdom, making it rather difficult to have enough manpower to gather resources, research technologies and produce food or goods. In order to prosper and grow harmoniously you will need to keep an eye on several indicators, that makes progressing through the game a welcome challenge.
Because flying around is just the means, not the end. Your main goal is to reunite the once great civilization that split into 12 isolated kingdoms. Reuniting them not only uncovers the story, but also grants you access to blueprints that once researched, open the way to new advanced and less polluting or resource consuming buildings and technologies. By tying together, the management and exploration part, Airborne Kingdom proves to be a rather complex game that will need your full attention, and where one mistake can cost you dearly in the long run.
After the introductory sequence the game grants you total freedom and access to a more than generous world, full of surprises. You cannot know what to expect in the new corners that you uncover, so you will need to be prudent, especially when crossing over the three areas of the game. While the first has plenty of resources that act as a safety net, the other two present challenges that will keep you on your toes. The best example is the area with shallow waters, where coal is rather scarce, a real problem for a kingdom that is kept afloat based on this resource.
You can trade of course with the civilizations you discovered, but you will find that prices can be rather steep. Airborne Kingdom may seem like a simple fetch quest type of game, where the hero is replaced by a living city in the clouds, but it actually is a game that requires you to think ahead at least a couple of moves, not unlike chess. This game manages to b more than just the sum of its parts, thanks to the ingenious way the developers tied together all the gameplay and story elements.
Yet, Airborne Kingdom is not a flawless experience. It can feel unfair, due to some balancing issues, and due to the unpredictability of the resources you will find. This will often push you to backtracking just to stock up on resources, thus breaking the charm of exploring. When you master the management aspect though, you can finish in Airborne Kingdom in around 5-6 hours. After that you don’t have anything to come back to or no reason to revisit, since nothing new is waiting for you.
Technically the game does not present any major challenges on consoles, and it runs pretty smooth. The control scheme could have been better, but it works in general. The navigation is a tad tedious due to the lack of zoom. Also, it would ease things if you could see information about places, you already visited, without having to fly back over them.
The Good
- The way the game mechanics are tied together
- Exotic artistic style
- Challenging management system
The Bad
- It can become very repetitive quite fast
- Way too short
- The story is quite bland
Conclusion
The outstanding art style is complemented by an audio part, building an atmosphere that invites you to explore and get lost in the game world. The apparently simple gameplay can be misleading and even a small mistake can cost you dearly. If you are not put off by the lack of action or combat, you will enjoy this game for an afternoon or two.
Review code provided by the publisher.
