I believed I knew the survival game manual backwards and forwards: arriving in an environment with one hand in front and the other behind, exhaustively extracting resources, building an empire and achieving security. initially it may seem like a new example of this genre, but it uses its mechanics to present us with something that goes in the opposite direction. You are not the conqueror. You are not the invader that the environment tries to destroy. You are the one who will restore not only the glory of your people, but also nature itself.
Developer Dreamlit brings to the table a game that is solid in many aspects and promising in many others. Furthermore, it’s evident that the studio is listening to its community. Much of the friction I felt on my first day of testing was resolved with fixes on the second day. What’s left is extremely fun and Dreamlit still promises a whole year of development ahead, to polish its little gem.
In this land, when planting, everything gives
In Towers of Aghasba, we control a protagonist with no name, no face and no very defined age or gender. He is just a masked avatar for our agency and soon becomes a kind of handyman for his tribe. We arrived on this island, after a long exile. An entire generation was born and never knew their homelands. The reason for this exodus is lost in memory, but here we are again, for a fresh start where our ancestors lived. After a shipwreck, there is no going back. This is where the tribe will stay until the end of their days. The ship left with the promise of a new world and we found an arid, dead, hopeless land.
Or maybe not? Unlike so many other survival games, in which we cut down trees, break rocks and extract what the ground offers us with forceps, in the creation of Dreamlit we are guided to do the opposite path. We will plant, we will cultivate, we will restore. In many ways, Towers of Aghasba is to survival games what it is to strategy games. We will take this land to heart and restore the exuberance of entire ecosystems.
This is also where we are introduced to the most magical aspects of the game. What guides us is not Man’s technology, but the Magic of Nature. We encounter exotic entities and creatures that explain to us how everything works. It is at these times that Towers of Aghasba reaches its peak of enchantment. It’s impossible not to fall in love with the fauna that appears, the beings that talk to you and the cutscenes generated within its graphics engine.
Towers of Aghasba is not about survival of the fittest
This way, Nature is not here to be an obstacle. There is no hunger or thirst, as there are in other games. There is no need to sleep (although this is possible). All desired resources can be extracted in non-aggressive ways, to the point where some mechanics break logic. The player can make an ax and can chop down trees, but the process is slow and can generate a maximum of two units of wood, even from the tallest trees, while a simple stick picked from the ground already generates one unit of wood.
Another different mechanic is the accumulation of Amity, a vital energy that only the protagonist can manipulate. Each destructive act, whether cutting down a tree or killing an animal, has a negative impact on the amount of Amity accumulated by the protagonist. Each positive act, whether planting a seed, pulling a weed or feeding an animal, generates more Amity, which will then be used to fulfill objectives that will restore even more biomes and even human structures.
The almost exhibitionist need to build an empire under the Sun also falls to the wayside. Unlike other survival games, Towers of Aghasba is story-driven. You build what you need when you need it and the shape of that construction is already defined at the factory. There is even the possibility of setting up your individual closet wall by wall, but there is nothing in the game that encourages this process. There is no accumulation of countertops that you feel the need to organize under one roof.
This construction passion that I carry with me from several other titles of the genre was satisfied in an unexpected way: seeing my biomes flourishing, spreading over the previously dead ground and attracting new types of creatures. Or reconstruct the civilizational landmarks of my people, forgotten in remote corners of the vast open map, while uncovering everyone’s past.
There’s something wrong in paradise
Towers of Aghasba is a game that takes a few hours to learn and requires a bit of hard work to advance. And what survival game isn’t like that? Not even this one, which just camouflages itself as a survival game. Its slower, more on-rails cadence can alienate those seeking immediate action or absolute freedom.
What can also be frustrating is the extremely simplistic fighting system. There are enemies in this new world, who are part of a desiccated and corrupt force that generates monstrosities. These beings roam the map and attack anything that moves. Facing them is not difficult, but it is not pleasant either. Killing the creatures doesn’t affect Amity’s balance at all, so it’s just an inconvenience along the way, resolved by combat mechanics that can be summarized as attacking and dodging.
None of these problems really bothered me. What came close to sinking my immersion were the characters’ facial animations. Dreamlit made the wise decision not to dub the NPCs in a language I know. There is something Polynesian about its dialect, but I’m not an expert, I just feel like it fit wonderfully with the cultural atmosphere of the game. On the other hand, when the characters try to smile or express satisfaction, the result obtained is darkly the opposite. It’s genuinely disturbing.
Graphically, Towers of Aghasba looks ugly in its first moments. There’s kind of a haze, a dirty filter above everything and things look quite blurry in the distance. I believe it is an aesthetic decision. A wrong decision, but one that works when we open the first biome: there is a strong contrast between the normal terrain, where even the air seems filthy, and the lush ecosystem that emerges, where even the air seems bright. Still, most of the continent is a wasteland. I wonder if, at the end of the game, it will be possible to transform everything into a verdant landscape, from end to end…
Towers of Aghasba is a breath of fresh air in a genre that already seemed exhausted in its formulas. I can’t wait to see this reforestation completed.
