Black Skylands (PC) review

Black Skylands, the debut title from Hungry Couch Games, brims with charm and fluidity.

The debut studio, founded in 2019 and based in Moscow, has been preparing its first title since its foundation: Black Skylands. This twin-stick shooter sandbox and aerial naval battle simulator (phew!) shows off a rich Pixel Art look without being held hostage by any limitation, adopting the 16-bit style only as a skin and art style.

Graphics

The game is made in a retro style and displays very beautiful art that follows a good harmony of shape, number of tones and color palette, always staying quite comfortable on the eyes.

Despite appearances, the game is rendered in 3D with different layers of Pixel Art textures, giving the illusion of depth from the top-down point of view, which makes the action and movement more dynamic, especially when the main character, Eva, is on land.

The sprites are simple but charming and the character art is quite detailed, showing various lighting, shadow and texture techniques in its painting and in the particles of weapons and scenery objects.

Plot

Eva, her parents and her brother live on a kind of floating island, as do the civilizations in this world where, compared with ours, the distance between lands is made of endless abysses instead of oceans.

A political disagreement among the sky factions begins when Eva’s father brings in a specimen from what they call the Storm. During the presentation, an incident kicks off the tyranny of the Falcons, who claim to be protecting those winged islands, but seven years later the young protagonist’s family has seen nothing but slaughter.

Eva, now a young adult, is the captain of her own ship and has the mission of rebuilding her homeland, sailing the skies to defeat the Falcons’ rule while stocking her warehouse with resources to develop new buildings and bring prosperity back to the sky civilization.

Gameplay

Eva can walk, attack at close range, shoot one of her weapons, roll to dodge attacks or projectiles, pick up items, reload or swap her weapon, fire a grappling hook to latch onto solid ground and interact with other characters or objects on the map. While piloting her airship it is possible to accelerate, slow down, turn, fire the cannons or go in reverse.

The gameplay is very familiar to anyone who has played twin-stick shooters such as Enter the Gungeon or any of their predecessors going back to the 8-bit era. Some well-applied mechanics make the action quite fast and dynamic, and you can run into big difficulty spikes when enemies crowd the screen.

Vehicle battles are slower and depend heavily on understanding aspects such as dimensions, room to move, inertia and the conflict between movement forces and cannon fire in order to position yourself correctly.

The game offers dozens of customization options for weapons, the airship and buildings, unlocking new possibilities and improvements with every trip.

Conclusion

Black Skylands is excellent work by Hungry Couch Games.

It is fun and dense, a would-be Stardew Valley of the genre. Beautiful visuals, several mechanics that are unexpected for the style, exploration available from the start, and plenty of places to visit and challenges to face.

The game is in Early Access but already offers plenty of content for those who want to challenge the sky factions or the wild creatures of the Storm.

Black Skylands is recommended, especially for fans of shooters and bullet hell.

The game is available and can be obtained on Steam!

Played on a PC (Ryzen 7 3800X, RX 480) with an Xbox One controller.