Sky Nations [Preview]

Posted by: Sam Tree | 30 December 2013

“Sky Nations is a multiplayer sandbox game set in a world of floating islands and air ships. Players can construct air ships as they adventure across procedural maps full of different islands and structures. Each island type containing different materials and loot which can be crafted into useful items for your ship and character. Players can band together to form Nations in order create bases and fleets of ships cooperatively and fight in large scale battles with other Nations and lone pirates.”

Here at Glacier Gaming, we have gotten hold of an Alpha in the form of Sky Nations. A Minecraft-esque building game with a twist: Airships. Yes, you read that right, in Sky Nations you build your own flying airship out of blocks. Your goal? We can only assume to become the most feared sky pirate of them all!

You start with a limited amount of materials in your inventory, but enough to start your very own ship… well, floating platform, but that’s all you need to begin with. There isn’t much around the spawn, so it encourages you to go explore, which is exactly what you must do! Out in the vastness of the abyss, you’ll come across floating islands, full of exciting materials which you can use to better your air-faring vessel. Once you have gathered enough resources, you can craft new items, by pressing the “i” key on your keyboard, you’ll open your inventory, on your left, you’ll be shown what you have on your person, if you have the needed items, you will be able to craft a workbench, which, once you right click on this, will act very much like your inventory, in that it again shows what items you currently hold on the left, but also, on the right, it shows you what you can craft with said items.

Placing blocks is pretty straight forward, just select your block with the middle mouse scroller or a number key and press the left mouse button. To break one again, you need to use the mallet tool. You can also repair blocks with either the hammer tool or the blow torch (depending on the material that needs to be repaired).

To create the start of an airship is relatively simple, so easy in fact that you need little instruction to do so: Place an energy well down in front of you, right click, and poof! You’re in the air on a small wooden platform. Attach some engines, and a control block and away you go. Of course, you need to be weary of other sky pirates, your little dingy is easy prey for the larger vessels. But with a little work and imagination, you’ll be feared throughout the server in no time.

At this stage, the game has no music, nothing playing in the background whilst you build away, making the adventure a little quiet, and sometimes a little lonely, and the graphics are not quite as refined as we would like them, but, we have to remember that it is still only in it’s alpha stage, and we expect that in time, these will be addressed, but from the updates that have been coming out, it is clear that the games developer is working on the usability of the game, which is great to see.

As mentioned above, Sky Nations is still in it’s Alpha stage, so naturally, there are bound to be a few issues. The controls are initially a little clunky, and some of the sounds are a little samey, and there seems to be a few clipping issues here and there, but overall, the game has massive potential. We love the fact you are able to build an airship, exactly how you want, and that you can be friendly, or feared in the skies of the server. We can’t wait for it to be rolling out bigger, and more in depth updates, especially Linux files for the dedicated server. Sky Nations is on the way to becoming the next big hit, and we really think it could give Minecraft a run for it’s money!

If you want to find out more about the game, or maybe buy your self a copy, why not visit the official site here

And if you have the game, why not join our dedicated server at: skynations.glaciergaming.co.uk