Airborne Empire Early Access Review – I Can Fly Twice As High

Airborne Kingdom remains, to this day, one of my favorite city builders of all time. And I know city builders! I’m an urban planner as my day job. While there are so many competent games in this genre out there floating around on Steam, Airborne Kingdom floats miles above the crowd.

While a huge swatch of games in this subgenre are competent, the hardest thing possible to do in this genre is to distinguish yourself from the herd. A floating kingdom in the sky where you must manage lift, propulsion, and tilt in addition to your resources does just that. I’m happy to report that Airborne Empire improves in every way on its predecessor, even if it doesn’t yet do enough to distinguish itself as a proper sequel. But hold on to your balloons – Early Access is just the first step.

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From humble beginnings, we set sail for bluer pastures.

In Airborne Empire, you’ll begin many years after the events of Airborne Kingdom. I also must stress it is not a requirement in any way to play the first game – it already was pretty story-light, but whatever elements of it are need-to-know are presented quickly upfront in this sequel. In a horrifying turn, residents of the far future now live entirely… on the ground? To reverse this madness, you’ll take to the skies once again, assisted by your handy new friend Advisor Quill, a sort of crow-human hybrid. Another fun turn from the first game is that all the sentient beings are animal-human hybrids now, but you’ll really only see that in dialogue.

Much like the first game, this is first and foremost a survival simulator. You must have enough housing to shelter your citizens, food and water to feed them, and coal to keep the empire afloat at all times. Moving past the regular city builder stuff, you’ll also need to be tracking your lift to keep you airborne, your propulsion to keep you moving, and your tilt to make sure your city doesn’t just flip over. Being smart about building means factoring in all these elements when placing and upgrading buildings. You can also of course speed up time, and you’ll want to keep the game on top speed the entire time for the best experience. I’d actually ask the developers add another level of game speed from what we have already if possible!

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The cities, though minimalist, are beautiful.

You’ll travel across the land, searching far and wide for these materials and discover disgustingly earth-bound cities along the way. As you roam, you’ll need to send down scouts to harvest resources like wood, quartz, iron ore, and the aforementioned necessities. Stopping at small towns and outposts may provide a quest, or perhaps potential new sky citizens that you’ll need to pay to join your new civilization. Larger cities have main quests, new blueprints, markets to buy and sell materials, and a Skydock at which you can move around the buildings on your ship freely. You’ll also fly by ruins on your adventures, which you can loot for cash or perhaps rare items!

The gameplay loop is very simple. You begin following a quest, mark it on your map, begin pushing your empire towards it, and pick up whatever resources you need along the way. Perhaps you need to kill a pirate king, or help an outpost whose crops were destroyed find food, or blow open a collapsed mine to save the workers. You’ll encounter all kinds of side quests, which are just begging to take you off your main quest critical path, and often succeed. The story itself is kind of boring, but it’s really the last important thing in a game like this. The gameplay is legitimately addicting.

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Combat is tricky at first, but place your cannons smartly! Friendly fire is a killer.

Other than an improved UI and some quality of life changes, the only real difference in Airborne Empire that was missing from its predecessor is combat. And don’t let me sell it short, it’s a big change, and for the better. Sky pirates have set up camps dotted around the map, consisting of cannons, fighter jets, and heavy artillery. They’ve even taken some cities hostage! You’ll build cannons, fighter jets, defense towers and more to put them in their place, but be warned they do a LOT of damage. You’ll also need to juggle sending your free workers to use wood to repair your battlements as you fight, and tend to the wounded in your clinic lest they die.

While I ran into a good number of frame drops when turning the camera, I encountered no bugs and no glitches during my time with Airborne Empire. It seems to be smartly designed, although some optimization is in order during the Early Access development. I have to commend the developers – this is one of the best running Early Access games I’ve ever seen. The game feels finished, short of a few QOL improvements, which most developers save till weeks after their launch date. Not The Wandering Band, though!

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Everything the light touches is our kingdom…

There isn’t too much else to say about Airborne Empire right now. My seven hours with the game in Early Access confirmed that it is essentially just a better way to play the first game, with the addition of combat that does bring an exciting new layer. I’m hoping for a few more QOL changes and frame stabilization, but overall I’m very happy with the game. It feels like one of those sequels where rather than reinventing the wheel, the developers decided to perfect their existing wheel. In that regard, fans of the first game should absolutely check in when the game is done, but those new to the franchise who are even a tad interested in city builders will find one of the most unique and addicting ones out there and should grab it right away.

Nirav reviewed Airborne Empire on PC with a review code.

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