Black Skylands Playtest Gameplay Preview – Promising Prospects

Black Skylands returns with a brand new playtest. It has significant changes compared to the Origins demo released almost a year ago.

For those new to the demo, Black Skylands is an action adventure game set in a land with, well no land. The world is made up of floating islands and air ships that people inhabit. The game starts off with the notorious Kain making unnecessary demands on the people of your Fathership. Your idiot brother makes a mess of the entire situation by trying to rebel, throwing a bomb at Kain, which doesn’t even go off. In retaliation Kain razes the entire Fathership and almost everyone dies in the process, including your own father. You set off on an adventure to recover, rebuild, and get your revenge.

The core game play remains pretty much the same as in Origins but with some rather large additions. You go exploring the surrounding areas in your air ship to recover resources so you can slowly rebuild the Fathership. Something entirely new though is the ability to free surrounding sky islands from Kain’s grasp by defeating all of his troops stationed there. Doing so well usually give you a reward and possibly a new side quest from an npc.

Another new addition is the ability to purchase furniture to customize your own house as well as the Fathership. I stole a pool table from Kain’s Falcons and brought it back to use in my own base, it was fantastic. Nothing says revenge better than stealing everything that person owns.

Overall, the Black Skylands playtest is pretty solid and the game is definitely shaping up to look very appealing. The combination of just enough narrative to color the world without getting in the way of the action, the solid ground and air combat, and finally the exploration driven base building has enough of everything to appeal to a wide audience. I am personally looking forward to farming everything and stealing anything that isn’t nailed down to the ground.