Sky Walkin’
Cities roaming through the clouds cast great shadows on the land below. Floating islands traverse the air currents far above the ground as the sun and moon shine directly onto them. Civilization has always had a fascination with airborne societies and structures, and Driftland: The Magic Revival combines that fascination of the sky above and a resource management game. This creates a fantasy-derived game that taps into a sense of exploration, multitasking, and deep lore. Boasting depth to the mechanics of the game and story with characters that bring flair to the world, Driftland combines magic and pioneering in such a way that makes this game stand out.
Mysticism and Metrics
Both developed and published by Star Drifters, Driftland scratches different itches. Story wise, Driftland comes at an angle of utilizing characters to add depth to the game. As the player explores the floating islands surrounding the starting point, the entire time, NPC’s are interacting with the protagonist. It’s these interactions that clue the player in to not only information about the state of magic, but also clues the player in on the personalities of the characters and their quirks and such. Verbal conversations overlay the completion of each individual task on a quest, acting as lore drops disguised as banter between the protagonist and his brother for example.
Driftland’s take on magic is curious and interesting. Having once been lost after a cataclysmic event, magic is finally reappearing unexpectedly in the blood of mages. Now that magic has once again returned to this world that is quite literally floating away into space, now that great power can be harnessed and honed. It can be focused on repairing the damage done the land, and begin to rebuild people’s lives to the way that they were before. The game does an incredible job of letting the player witness conversations between characters as they wrestle with the consequences of utilizing magic as they go about completing the tasks for their mission.
Transitioning into the tasks for the mission, gameplay centers around the creative use and implementation of magic and utilizing the arcane to mend the wounds left after the apocalypse that the world witnessed. Moving entire floating islands and forming bridges across these islands in an effort to establish more civilization on them while managing to not overload available resource counts is at the core of this game. It’s a numbers game, balancing expanding the kingdom that the protagonist is expected to build while bringing in more resources, through a variety of methods, treasure hunting or… more aggressive methods otherwise.
Castle(s) in the Sky
After interacting with other characters besides the protagonist and learning more about how the world eventually came to be torn apart and condemned to float through empty space, it leaves a real sense of wanting more. There are other campaigns currently under development, which include storylines with dark and wild elves as well as dwarves. All of these other paths will be fantastic to explore and play through, as they are opportunities to see the events from a different angle, through the lens of a different race of creatures. The resource management aspect of the game is mildly overwhelming by nature as there are dozens of statistics, actions, and things that a player needs to keep track of. However, the game does a fine job of slowly introducing all the mechanics of the game in a way that makes sense in the lore as well as not overload the capacity of the player’s mind.
Take a Look at the DRIFTLAND: The Magic Revival Steam Early Access Trailer:
Driftland: The Magic Revival is available for PC via Steam Early Access.
Having spent my entire life gaming, my interests have expanded over to how the gaming industry has grown and developed into a globalized market over the course of my life time, as well as how games can build community and create a sense of belonging for people. I'm also trying to climb ranked in Overwatch so if you want to queue together, let me know
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