PREVIEW : Sphere – Flying Cities (PC)
Since the Sim City series popularised the genre, city builders have come a long way. While programs like Cities Skylines have honed the realistic aspect of this type of simulation, others, like the space colony simulator Surviving Mars, have allowed players to change the scenario. Developer Hexagon Sphere Games UG adds a science fiction floating metropolis to the mix with Sphere – Flying Cities.
Following humanity’s near-destruction, Sphere-Flying Cities takes place on a future Earth. An asteroid has collided with the moon, showering debris on the earth and rendering it uninhabitable. Thankfully, an experimental anti-gravity device has allowed a metropolis to rising from the surface, float above the planet, and it’s up to the player to keep things humming.
The fact that the city floats becomes a fundamental component of the game mechanics, so this floating city setting isn’t just there as a bit of fluff.
The user can move their city from zone to zone, picking up either group of survivors or crucial commodities to help build their floating island in Sphere-Flying Cities. First, however, the player must strike a balance between exploring and safeguarding their city from dangerous meteor showers and particle storms.
In addition to managing the city’s expansion, the player will need to watch the human population. Food and water must be found to keep the city’s inhabitants alive, and morale is another issue that could cause issues.
It’s rather simple right now, lacking a little of humanity when it comes to human needs, but it can grow into a larger beast.
Something that works very well in Sphere-Flying Cities is the importance of city structure. The map is limited, which is made much more so when the player must ensure that their city stays within the anti-gravity shield’s safe boundaries. This necessitates compact, well-structured cities, and the player’s knowledge of space management from other city builders is crucial.
As a result, the early build of Sphere-Flying Cities demonstrates a good grasp of gameplay balance in a way that may be appealing to lovers of survival and simulation games. A competent player will balance the demands of available employment, energy consumption, food, morale, and space while still pushing forward with a tech tree to keep progressing. However, if players push their bounds too far, they may be forced to make difficult choices, such as lowering the shield in the city’s outer reaches to defend the inside reaches during a particle storm.
As a result, it is critical to enhancing the anti-gravity shield. Players will want to get right into their skill tree and figure out what they want to do, as the tech tree’s functionality is currently not adequately explained. Indeed, Sphere-Flying Cities may probably use a little more help for newcomers in general, though veteran city-builder fans will likely pick it up quickly.
This preview build does highlight a few areas where the game might be improved, one of which is the lack of personality and character in the game.
Frostpunk effectively executed the concept of a city builder set amid a global crisis, with serious moral and ideological dilemmas for the player to consider. As it stands, Sphere-Flying Cities ignores this, and it’s details like these that distinguish the good from the great.
However, Sphere-Flying Cities is still in its early stages, and this early edition of the game shows off something rather intriguing. Its combination of survival and city-building aspects, particularly the ability to move your city about the map, demonstrates that the game has a lot of potentials, and it will be intriguing to see how it develops during its Early Access term.
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