Dreamlit Inc are a new indie game development team that works fully remotely and has team members spread all over the world. For their first project Towers of Aghasba they have decided to enter the dauntingly oversaturated open world survival/action RPG genre, a genre that needs something special for a game to stand out, are Dreamlit Inc up to the task at hand?

Set in a mystical, almost otherworldly landscape, Towers of Aghasba immerses players in a world teeming with life, possibility, and a palpable sense of responsibility for the balance of nature. You are one of the ‘Shimu’, a tribe returning back to their homeland of Aghasba and you enter the game after your journey was marred by an unknown disaster that sees you washing up on the shores of your homeland only to discover that it has been taken over by The Withered, a malicious energy that is corrupting the landscape and the creatures that inhabit it.

The first few hours of the game will see you meeting various surviving tribe members and through this you will learn some of the history of the tribe itself as you help them with basic hunting and gathering tasks in order to build a new settlement for your fellow tribespeople to live in. It is through this prologue/tutorial stage that you find out about the mysterious power of “Amity” and how you are one of the lucky tribespeople with the ability to harness this power, and in turn this introduces one of the games more interesting mechanics, Towers of Aghasba is not a game about just blindly killing everything you come across, it forces you to think about the impact blindly killing everything has on the world as killing innocent creatures to gather resources will reduce your pool of Amity, while killing evil creatures will increase it. This is an interesting system had me thinking about the environmental impact I was having on the world I was trying to rebuild, .for those who do like combat though rest assured there is enough combat in the game for you to froth over and by no means is Towers of Aghasba a game totally about peace, no progress comes without destruction!

The game is played from a third person perspective and unlike most other games in this genre you don’t need to worry about hunger and food meters as these are non-existent, graphically the game is a mixture of Breath of The Wild and Animal Crossing, with the game world looking like a slightly less cartoonish version of Hyrule and the games interface being very influenced by Animal Crossing, the world is whimsical and beautiful and Dreamlit Inc have done a great job in crafting a mysterious world that implores you to get out and explore . Gameplay wise Towers of Aghasba reminded me a lot of the excellent open world RPG Enshrouded. As with most of the games in the same genre the gameplay loop consists of you gathering items in order to further develop your settlement and to overcome enemies in the game by crafting more powerful weapons, it’s a tried-and-true formula and it works well here, and exploring the world feels great especially once you unlock the glider. It is worth mentioning that Towers of Aghasba takes a modular approach to building rather than a free form one meaning that you won’t have full control of how buildings get put together and be able to alter their architecture, you only have control of where they are placed.

Towers of Aghasba has a lot of depth and challenges even in its early access state and if you are a fan of some of the other games in the same genre that I mentioned earlier in this review or are a fan of survival action RPGs in general then I have no qualms representing this game to you. Just be aware that the game is in early access and prepare accordingly as you will definitely encounter bugs on your journey and the multi-player experience isn’t one I would currently recommend, though the developers have addressed this and prioritised this on the early access road map. There is a lot to like about Towers of Aghasba and Dreamlit Inc have created a very solid base here that could turn into a great game for its full release.

The game is available now in early access and you can get it on Steam or PlayStation 5.