Ambrosia Sky is a deceptively simple, relaxing fungus-washing game. The music makes it so that you never really tire of listening to it. The upgrade tree gives you extra abilities that make progression faster and more efficient, rather than making progression possible at all. It never really gatekeeps anything from you.
The levels all felt unique enough that they stood out, but similar enough that I could tell this was a single, cohesive colony. Each level had spaces that felt lived in, from the chairs to the desks to even the boxes laid out in the corners so they were slightly out of the way. I always felt a little joy in finding more notes to read, to learn more about the colony. It always felt like I was a part of it, not an outsider to a foreign place, but someone coming home after home had changed. Finding bodies never got easier, but not in a horror kind of way. Each one hit with the same emotion Delia seemed to feel when she commented. I'm sorry I was late. I'm sorry I couldn't help. I'll do what I can now.
The three, later four, types of fungi each require a slightly different approach. In the first act, learning which fungus was worth the advanced sprayer, which ones weren't, which burned quickly so you could use the fire efficiently, which burned slowly so you could burn it and explore another room, and which was too brittle to burn was rewarding. And then, in Act 2, learning how they interacted with the later fungus turned it into its own kind of puzzle, which kept the second act from feeling like a repeat of the first.
While some of the sprays were underutilized, each was unique enough that I could find a reason to use it. That being said, alternating between vertical, horizontal, and narrow spray patterns was mostly useless. The vertical and horizontal sprayers had so little pressure that they were usually pointless, and even using them with the fire spray or advanced spray was mostly moot, because it was almost always more efficient to use the narrow setting. Later upgrades were simply quality-of-life improvements, not groundbreaking enough that I even really noticed having them, but that is how good quality-of-life upgrades should work.
But the fungus washing is only part of why Ambrosia Sky worked for me.
There's something strange about cleaning the spaces where people once lived, when you can still see where life was in them. Plants still alive. Beds still made. Dishes left out. Despite every inch of the place feeling like a spaceship, it never stopped feeling like a workplace. A living space. A home. And cleaning someone's home, one that was once your home but isn't anymore, while still being able to feel when it was, makes this sort of game feel different.
Ambrosia Sky is a story about grief and loss, but not sadness. And it never leaves you alone with this grief. It holds your hand, acknowledges that this hurts, tells you that you can keep going anyway, and guides you forward while showing you how grief is what love looks like from the other side of loss.
Through notes left behind by the people, you learn their lives, their personalities, and how they were with each other. Mundane habits, complaining about work, bad humour, petty and snide comments, relationships between people I never met but still somehow felt like I knew; each note took this massive space colony and filled it in, not expanded it. The writers knew what to say, but, more importantly, what not to say, and what to leave me wondering, because people don't explain everything in messages. It felt human.
The first time I added someone to the Ambrosia Project, I put my controller down and just... sat there. I spent the first few levels learning about these people and thinking I could save them. But I couldn't. And I never could have. And when I found him, and realized this, I was actually sad. But then, watching the memory, watching the memories turn to petals and float away... it felt like someone putting a blanket on your shoulders when you're cold. And I just felt the moment until I could let it pass.
And it didn't.
But there was a job to do. And I still had to do it.
I've seen reviews saying the voice acting is flat. Morose. Angsty. I didn't find that was the case. Delia sounded like someone who was talking to herself, and it worked. She sounded like someone saying out loud what she's been thinking about for hours, for days, for years. She sounded like someone who's used to speaking out loud to herself, to the recording, to space, just so something hears her. Like someone who communicates in emails more than speaking. Isolated and alone, but not really ever alone. Because she's always with the memories of the people she's helping.
This is not a game that makes you cry because you're sad, but one that makes you aware of grief and love you didn't realize you still held. Like going through an old photo album and seeing people you don't have in your life anymore, but still feeling them beside you even when their hand can't hold yours anymore. To remember people you still have and people you have lost. To mourn them, and miss them, and love them, and honour them.
The world is still there. They are still gone. Things still matter. You still have to keep moving.
