At this point, we all know the drill for survival/crafting games. You wake up alone on the shores of an island with nothing and promptly strip mine the lush jungle, exploiting every resources you lay eyes on in order to build your primitive mansion. Well, Towers of Aghasba from Dreamlit Inc. promises a different take on the genre, one where you bring life back to barren land, cleanse deep-rooted corruption and work towards rebuilding a community for your fellow survivors. With ‘Towers’ out now in early access, I’ve had a chance to explore the lands of Aghasba, and while I mostly enjoyed myself and I can sense a banger growing just below the surface, it will take some time and updates before I can fully recommend you jumping into this ambitious open world.
Yeah, not a lot to work with at the start…
Towers opens in a fairly different way to most of these types of games, there is no character creation and upon waking up from a shipwreck you are immediately introduced to some of your fellow survivors. These NPCs will give you lore and backstory, quests and sometimes just people to talk to as you embark on your journey of returning life to Aghasba. This was a really nice change of pace to the usual ‘lone survivor’ schtick found in most survival/crafting games and it was great to encounter other people who didn’t want to kill me, steal my clothes and raid my base for what meagre supplies I’d acquired since the last meeting. Instead of the setting being something recognisable or rote, the tone of the game also felt a bit like a whimsical with primitive dark fantasy leanings, with some very fun and interesting designs for monsters, animals, plants and buildings that were a wonder to discover as I explored.
As I mentioned before, while you will still need to harvest items to build your tools, complete your quests or keep yourself alive, the main goal of Towers is to grow alongside the environment instead of exploiting it. Early on you’ll be tasked with finding a new home for your companions, not an easy prospect when faced with nothing but a wasteland. Instead of scraping together a miserable existence, you will instead be able to plant a mysterious seed. Filled with latent power, the seed immediately takes root, and an explosion of nature ensues, bringing all sorts of plants and animals along with it. This is where another interesting mechanic is introduced, that of the resource Amity. In order to grow said natural oases, you’ll need to use Amity, which you will collect by planting trees, feeding animals and generally being a good citizen of nature. Conversely, killing animals (for things like meat and hides) and felling trees for wood will cause you to lose Amity, therefore you must build your community and care for the environment in balance. There are also different biomes or environments you can establish by planting different kinds of seeds, which in turn draw all kinds of different plants and creatures for you to discover. I don’t know about you, but for me there is something really satisfying and rewarding to see the barren lands change and grow as you progress, not just the fact that you can make bigger and better buildings and tools.
From lacklustre to lush!
Of course, not all is peachy in the lands of Aghasba and you’ll swiftly find yourself facing down the cause of the calamity that befell the lands, the Withered. This corrupting force has taken over large swathes of the land and it hurts just to enter it, not to mention the grotesque monsters it creates by perverting the natural flora and fauna. Fear not though, as you can call upon your friends to join your adventure, but you must progress through the early stages of the game before you can do so. Sadly though, there are no dedicated servers or options to host a game publicly, so you must provide a code to your friends in order to join, which I was unable to do. While I was unable to test the multiplayer elements of the game, I can see how it would be incredibly fun (and maybe easier) to have your friends alongside you as you fight the Withered and bring life back to Aghasba.
This is what weeding my garden feels like
If you’ve been keeping your eye on Towers and have been waiting to jump in, I can tell you that while it IS mostly a good time and there is huge potential, there are still quite a few bugs and missing or underbaked features in this early access build. What’s on offer at the moment is pretty generous, easily granting quite a few hours of enjoyment. However, you will need to overlook niggling things that are present in most early access games, like missing assets, incorrect UI elements, plus graphical and audio glitches. That being said, since launching there have already been five patches rolled out to squash some of this stuff (some patches more successful than others) so it’s clear that the team are active and working hard on making this the fantastic game I know it will be. If you prefer a more polished experience, my recommendation would be to wait a few months when the most egregious kinks are likely to have been worked out, or maybe even wait for the 1.0 release.
Previewed on PC // Review code supplied by publisher
