Airborne Kingdom is a uniquely wonderful dive into the city builder/ resource management genre. It's flying city design brings a new, fresh look at the genre. Though similar to many other games of the genre, Airborne Kingdom brings a fantastic style and story to the table.
From Laputa in Gulliver’s Travels to Columbia in Bioshock: Infinite, flying cities have captured the imagination of many for generations. The ability for a human to take flight has been part of stories for millennia. Having a city soar above the Earth is a unique myth all in itself. One that Airborne Kingdom explores wondrously.
In Airborne Kingdom, you are tasked with the revival of a legendary flying city. In rebuilding the city, you must also rebuild alliances with kingdoms on the ground. Airborne Kingdom is a city-builder like no other. Resource management and alliances are crucial in succeeding in this game. However, it is not as stressful as games of this type can be.
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Airborne Kingdom is a wonderfully relaxing city builder with a twist. Instead of bringing resources to the city, you can bring the city to the resources. It is an incredibly unique concept that makes the city builder genre a little more enjoyable. Once you deplete a natural resource vein, you can move on to the next. While you are away, the resource you just harvested will replenish. This makes it easier to travel back and forth across the map as needed.
Overall, Airborne Kingdom is a pretty standard city builder/ resource management game. However, since you in charge of a flying city, you must also be aware of things like upwards thrust and tilt, lest your city gets too heavy and begins to sink.
These considerations make the construction of the city an interesting challenge in itself. As you progress through the game, you can upgrade your buildings so they begin to stack on one another. Doing this greatly helps keep the city organized and balanced. You have to be incredibly diligent about where you place everything. People don’t like to be around loud engines and work-sites, but you also have to watch where you put the weight or your city will tilt.
The overall feel of Airborne Kingdom is quite calming. The map is a mosaic tile board with resources and cities built atop them. These tiles are really unique to the landscape, and their shape reminds me of some TTRPG games or a game like Catan.
Even though the style of the resources is quite polygonal, it brings a certain charm to the game. The style, though simple, makes it easier to watch as your crew works on a resource deposit and you can see it deplete. It is a simple, yet elegantly styled game.
A major contributor to that elegance is the music. As soon as you load the game, you are greeted with a relaxing melody that is instantly calming. City builder/ resource management games have a tendency to stress me out, but that was never the case with Airborne Kingdom. Things did increase in difficulty as I progressed, but I never felt like I was losing control of the situation. And I believe the music had a part to play in that.
As you build your city in Airborne Kingdom, you are also trying to restore relations with other kingdoms on the ground. It was told in legend that the flying kingdom was a unifying force between them all. This is your main goal in the game: reunify the kingdoms with the flying city of legend.
As you approach each kingdom, you are given a few tasks to aid the kingdom before they agree to be in an alliance. These can range from finding parts to fixing the main water source. Once you help the kingdom, which is never too difficult, they will join your alliance.
Kingdoms are also important because you can buy blueprints in each one. These blueprints allow you to upgrade your kingdom. These upgrades can greatly improve the efficiency of your kingdom and are crucial in keeping your kingdom afloat.
Airborne Kingdom is a great city builder/ resource management game that I believe everyone can get behind. Being able to move your whole kingdoms to the resources and other kingdoms is such a cool concept. Since I found the whole experience quite relaxing, I think this would be a great game for those who want to explore the genre. Even fans of the genre will find something to love.
The uniqueness of the flying city is fun to play with, even though it can be difficult to optimize the city stylistically sometimes. I found myself building for efficiency over aesthetic more often than not. But cleverer players will find a way to do both I am sure.
I thoroughly enjoyed Airborne Kingdom and it is certainly one of my favorite city builder/ resource management games. From style to gameplay, the game is relaxing and easy to play.
