Game 2: Black Skylands

Plays All The Things
2 days ago
14 min read

The game opens with a bearded man stealing a clearly evil egg from a cave on a floating island, which triggers some sort of technological sky forcefield.

I'm playing as Eva, a 12-year old kid with an eyepatch.

The nearest adult just handed me a firearm, I hope you don't need depth perception to use these.

And now I've found the guy who took the evil egg - it's Dad!

Dad admonishes me while being an egg thief. Hypocrite.

Dad wants to book it out of town, the tutorial ends, and 8 years later it turns out I was wearing that eyepatch just to look cool.

The eyepatch DID look cool and I'm sad to have given it up.

--- Well we're off to an exciting start. My "Fathership" is under attack from pirates!

This game features both airship combat and then getting out of your airship to run around and shoot enemies on foot - clearing the pirates is the latter form.

After clearing the pirates out, someone rudely blasts the Fathership with a massive rocket barrage. The ship itself is ok, but sadly the Captain is mortally wounded - he hands command over to me.

The pirates that attacked us were a group called the Falcons and the remaining crew are gung-ho about hurting them. It looks like the Fathership is going to be my main 'base of operations' - I can build buildings like an Armory and a Bar on it for resources, and for adventuring I get in smaller skyships and drive them around the world.

I'm not sure what that enormous thing way down below is, but someone did mention 'whales'.

I flew to a nearby island and cleared it of bad guys and it's been 'liberated' - suck it Falcons!

I spoke too soon, the Falcons just showed up with this chonker of a ship.

Instead of just blasting me, likely killing our hero, preserving the long term future of the Falcons and generally winning the day for Villiany, this 'Kain' fellow wants to use the moment to offer me a deal.

--- Ship combat is pretty fun! Even on this starter ship you get a shield that can reflect bullets, a side-mounted cannon broadside and a front-mounted rapid-fire turret. Damage is somewhat location-based, I was stripping armor off of different sections of this not-at-all-compensating gunboat.

Various characters are showing up at the Fathership. Elsie, (from my childhood tutorial) is here offering to help build small arms and what passes for a 'science team' has also arrived.

'I accidently switched bodies with my pet' does not look good on the resume.

At the point the game is getting more open-ended and I need resources to build more buildings on the Fathership, so I'm heading around to the nearby islands, clearing them of Falcons and harvesting resources.

Exploring the nearby islands I find Harold, the self proclaimed 'Best gunsmith' in the area.

Some pirates show up to ruin the meeting but my Man In Gorilla Body scientist has whipped up a lovely flame turret and a personal shield for me, the Pirates come off worse in the encounter. There are explosive barrels lying around and they are powerful, one of them wipes out 5-6 of the enemies.

Even in the midst of intense combat our hero's portrait on the lower left is unruffled.

After a third wave of bandits falls, Harold thanks me for the help and heads to the Fathership. Harold rewarded me with 'The best thing he ever made' which is this 'Twisted assault rifle'. It's damage is better than anything I have, but unfortunately the 'Twisted' part apparently means that the bullets curve left, as seen by my attempt to shoot directly to the right here.

This was an unpleasant surprise when I first used it in battle.

--- The Main Quest so far appears to start with my immediate subordinate Peter disobeying orders and running off to 'go save hostages'. Since he disobeyed orders I assume he got captured doing it, so I left him there to think about what he did while I liberated the nearest island. After that I sighed and went off to get him and ran into my first boss fight with 'Crash'.

Crash simply crashed his own ship into the ground to force me to fight him.

That's right Peter. Never disobey orders again.

Oooh, looks like Crash's ship has new ship weapons for me!

---

Back on the Fathership, I get a message saying the Falcons are now attacking the island I was raised on, so I head off to stop them there. I've figured out that I can liberate ships as well as islands! I attacked this chonker of a pirate vessel, and was able to board and clear it out. When you liberate an island it gets populated with friendly NPCs and you get one that gives you a reward - this ship ended up with a friendly crew once I cleared it.

Sadly the additional crew / NPCs don't seem to do much other than be cosmetic but it feels good.

---

Combat in Black Skylands is fun but not particularly challenging. I have yet to die, though I've come close a couple times against larger groups, any group of four or fewer enemies (at least at this point in the game) isn't much of a threat. Enemies fire a lot of bullets but they are slow and don't do very much damage to you. There's a 'backstab' mechanic where you can sneak up behind unaware foes and knife them for huge damage, stealth-killing lesser foes. And I've been finding giant flowers on various islands that are permanently increasing my max health.

The explosive barrels that are just lying around are my best weapon.

Thankfully you can set your difficulty anytime, so I'm going to turn it up to 'Very Hard'.

Also I liberated a very large island and after doing so two of the NPCs there wanted to give me quests to help restore the island's vineyards, I was pleased to see a more tangible result from island liberation other than changing color from red to green on the map.

In clearing the skies of some of the larger enemy ships I've unlocked waypoints that I can move the Fathership to now that I have a pilot, so my home base is now mobile.

--- I arrive back at Moth Island (the original island from the Tutorial) to defeat the pirates there when I find that someone has beaten me to it - lots of dead pirates here already. But the enemy of my enemy turns out to not be my friend.

The culprits, some sort of horrible creatures, attack me.

Eva decides she needs to free the moths trapped around the island to clear the debris in front of the gate and enter the main village (I've had a trained moth Luna with me who's been carrying resources back to my airship for me). No sooner had I cleared the gate and learned that the village inside is still safe when this Mother shows up.

The grateful residents reward me with a new Skyship!

After that I returned to the Fathership, immediately fell asleep, and had a totally normal dream.

---

Random airships like these are docked all over pirate-controlled islands.

I should quit being a hero and just go into the business of hotwiring and selling these things, but unfortunately the game won't let me fly them.

Some ancient civilization left behind puzzles which unlock crystals that I give to my scientist-ape guy to upgrade my special abilities. The puzzles so far are fun, the downside is that they've started to repeat the puzzles.

This was fun the first time but it's not particularly interesting to solve after that.

There are some Metroidvania aspects to this game - I've run across 'X marks the spot' holes that I can't dig yet, dynamite-able rocks that I lack explosives for, swarms of 'air fish' that I cannot yet fish...

Add 'the ability to call giant bids' to the list.

--- Continuing the story I went to help with an issue with the Mines. We're back to fighting Falcon Pirates here - I find Ewing, the first NPC apparently able to stand up for himself. He's held a chokepoint with a couple of turrets and appears pretty much invincible, so I kite enemies on the island to him. The enemies here have ramped up in terms of difficulty - one of the elite sniper guys hit me and it took about 80% of my health. After a minute or two of endless foes I figured out they've also changed the way spawns work - before there'd be an enemy spawning tent that would spawn a flat number of enemies and die. Now there are spawn tents that appear to spawn infinite enemies and I have to actively destroy the structure.

WHAT EXACTLY ARE YOU ALL DOING TOGETHER IN THAT TENT?

After defending Ewing he asks me to attack the Falcon camp on the island. One of the Falcons, Mort, apparently just likes to shoot artillery at any and all intruders, potentially killing his allies in the process.

In that artillery chaos I suffer my first death. When you die your moth takes you to wherever your ship is and you lose a heart. If you're out of hearts you'll be taken back to the nearest fuel station, which are also fast travel points.

--- The pirates have chained up this absolute unit, this 'definitely evolved in the sky' beauty.

Now I have to break through a ship blockade that's stopping 'Stoneater', one of the major transport ships, from getting through. We're planning to use Stoneater to assault Kain's fortress.

Ewing gives me a great weapon for my ship - it's highly effective.

--- Blockade broken, we reach Turtletown, one of the larger islands I've seen.

Also one of the very few islands not overrun by Pirates when I show up.

The shops here have some real fancy stuff! Including weapons that can do full damage to the 'swarm' creatures I was fighting earlier.

Shopkeepers here will be having a profitable day!

--- I ran into Harold the blind engineer again and he proceeded to build a flying turret which he accidentally programmed to kill all humans. After I killed the turret I was rewarded with a rocket launcher which.... fires directly backwards.

I don't understand why my character can't simply hold it the other way around.

Time for another boss fight, this time it's Blast. You'll be shocked to learn that he employs explosives.

Kain seems to be a good boss at least, well liked by his employees.

We need a engineer to fix up the Stoneater to be a warship, so I go off and defeat Blast to obtain the services of Four Arm Frank.

Coulda been Four Foot Frank if you stuck those on lower.

--- The plan now is to get a second massive transport ship, the Sawduster, refit that, and use the pair of large ships together to attack the main pirate base. The pirates took Sawduster and made it inaccessible, but thankfully a huge bird called the Mother of Falcons decides that now is a great time to 'rescue' me from the pirates. She has a human helper that tells me her egg was taken (why she doesn't rescue the egg herself is unknown) but that's my job now, I suppose.

Also my Moth can carry me back to my own skyship whenever I want, so I'm not sure why IT can't just fly me to the Sawduster.

Enemies at this point in the game are bullet sponges and take awhile to kill with normal bullets. One of the abilities I unlocked is a 'time slow' which lets me run around and backstab foes during a fight and it helps, but combat is taking longer than it used to and it's not an improvement. --- Having saved the eggs, Mama bird is willing to carry me from birds nests to predetermined spots. Off I go!

More glowing employer reviews for Kain, I bet the Falcons look great on Glassdoor.

This boss is actually pretty tough, I've died several times. I have to grapple between three floating platforms while dodging shots and homing missiles.

I have captured Sawduster from the Falcons, and found a note that implicates the local governor, Shantal, as working with the Falcons!

Kain's plan unveiled! Who could have guessed that 'swarmlit' comes from the Swarm?

--- I've made a terrible mistake, I was holding off on these upgrades until I had my 'ideal' skyship - turns out that they carry over to whichever skyship you pick.

Oops. I've been pointlessly underpowering myself in the name of being overpowered later.

I head off to find Sawduster at a wood processing island, but something has gone terribly wrong here - the Falcons here are already dead, except this guy who is transforming into a Swarm creature!

These enemies are actually easier than the last island, they're not as tough and while their bullets are homing, they're also slower than I can run.

I also find a barrier that prevents the Swarm from crossing, but I can cross.

Oh, I think this is probably the skyshield from the intro.

Even though nobody wants to live here because it's got 'turn you into swarm' disease, I still get fireworks when liberating the island.

Hooray for being an uninhabitable wasteland!

The only living person left happens to be Jim, Elsa's engineer Dad. He suggests that we armor up our massive transport ships to attack Kain's fort and recommends killing a monster to get it.

--- Ok, the hunter I'm supposed to find for this armor is deep within the 'Swarm Region' - off I go to uncharted skies.

Uncharted aside from getting a precise waypoint to head for.

Found him, thank you waypoint.

I suspect he's not a particularly good hunter.

The Swarm Region is teeming with nasties, devoid of human life...

Except for THIS dude who thinks it's a great place to run a store. Location, location, location!

And he won't even make a sale today because I'm 9 copper short. Cut a girl a break!

All right, we've found the Devourer and we get to fight a boss in ship-battle mode.

Sadly the Devourer doesn't get stuff blown off him like ships do, he's a bucket of hitpoints.

---

On returning to my home village - and Ewing - with this armor I find that we spent so much time making me - and only me - run around to try to get two massive ships converted into war rigs that the Falcons finally decided to lay waste to the village they hadn't conquered while I was out.

Maybe one other person could help out with some of these problems? Must I do everything myself?

I head back to the Fathership and meet... this...

The extraplanar polyglot wants me to go kill a Swarm that invaded the mines, but I just found out what happens when Kain is left alone, so screw the side quests - time to assault Kain's fort.

I'm sorry, I thought this was the goddamn sky

Sawduster is flinging logs and Stoneater is, contrary to its namesake, vomiting rocks.

The pirates have a chonky defense turret to fight back with.

They also send out this thing, which I dispatch quickly.

Following the sky battle, we assault with ground forces! That force consists of... me. I am all the ground forces.

I chew through a few dozen pirates and audaciously demand Kain's surrender.

Kain responds with a sales pitch, and you know, it's actually pretty tempting.

The reviews from his former employees were pretty great!

But alas, there's no real option to switch sides and we must fight! Peter shows up and I actually get some assistance from other characters for the final battle.

Someone is finally helping me, credit where it's due.

Boss Phase 2 is another 'move between the platforms' deal which is challenging, but with some judicious equipment choices he goes down on my third attempt.

The platform battles are the most challenging in the game.

After Kain falls, Peter convinces me not of to shoot Kain on the spot.

We're all about law and justice on these here sky islands.

Kain owns up to his various machinations and misdeeds, but claims he doesn't know about any 'experiments'... and says I should ask my father about them.... --- Back on the Fathership, Ruth has injected Peter with something and run off.

Who the hell was Ruth? I've completely forgotten.

Kain tells me where he thinks Ruth is and I'm off to stop Ruth from letting the Swarm out of the shield. And also figure out who Ruth is.

The island has people in science containers and humans-turned-into-swarm. Ruth, you monster! Oh, Ruth is THIS lady! She's appeared in like two scenes as a doctor occasionally helping me. I never even screenshotted her prior to this, she felt like a very minor character.

Unlike the actual Dr. Ruth who's life's work culminated in another video game (Dr. Ruth's Computer Game of Good Sex), which is a real thing that I did not make up, this Ruth is much more evil.

She goes on about being a servant of some entity named Horos and then does a little transformation number.

She goes down after a long-drawn out fight - thankfully she would occasionally drop canisters that would spawn medkits.

Then her freak of a son comes out to see his Mom's dead body.

I rescue my father!

I find the antidote for Peter... and then DAD PULLS A GUN ON ME?

I just rescued you! And you're my father! Double plus uncool!

Ok, Dad says I'm actually a Swarm-thing. I was inside the egg he stole at the start.

This is one hell of a way to find out you're adopted.

I think I'm somewhere in the 400's in terms of people killed at this point? Seemed weird to me too, but it's mainly because nobody else wanted to help!

Dad decides not to kill me because he can't bring himself to. I do like this plot twist, it's pretty good and I like that there's an explanation for why I'm able to take on dozens of foes at a time, lots of games just shrug and let it be. --- Time to go back to the Fathership to save Peter from pirates, again. Once that's done, folks here want to throw a party - we beat Kain and we're waiting on backup from the Capital to take on the Swarm, and they're still mostly trapped in the skyshield anyway. Everything's looking good. When you start the party, you get a warning screen - much appreciated, it's nice to know when you can't go back to the open world in a game.

I'm good, I've seen what the game has to offer. Let's end this.

Fireworks and a buffet - a righteous reward for saving the local island chain!

Sadly the festivities are interrupted.

God damnit Dad could it wait until after the party?

Apparently the Dome has been destroyed and the Swarm is free to do it's thing. I suppose that qualifies as urgent.

A bunch of these things latch onto the Fathership and start disgorging Swarm boarders.

I have to hold out until reinforcements arrive.

Hold on long enough and reinforcements show up!

The Unzayans finally show up with some actual goddamn warships.

The Swarm heads over to smash them and seems to be doing great. A military debacle, considering my civilian ship is still floating after facing the swarm alone.

With the fleet destroyed and the Swarm temporarily distracted destroying the fleet, I guess it's up to me to head in by myself and find and defeat the big boss of the Swarm, Horos.

Peter actually offers to help but I gallantly tell him to stay behind and guard the Fathership. Guard it from the Swarm that just smashed an entire battle fleet. Good luck Peter!