Sky Break

I desparately wanted to like this game. I am sad to say that it has returned my attention with bugs, awful UI, deeply flawed combat, and a generally unfinished experience. While it's great that this game left early access, I really think it should go back. I have unfortunately sunk three of my evenings into this and I don't see any returns coming. I can live with bugs. But the UI is an eyesore, and the combat just doesn't work. The way the enemies attack feels like it ought to be hand-to-hand; the typical feline canon fodder attack in masses, so fighting them with a gun causes all kinds of disorienting camera shifts. The mechanic of switching guns to hack the mechas and changing ammo completely throws off any kind of combat rhythm that might have existed. The crafting system is very shallow, as is the story. When I saw the gorgeous graphics and initial positive reviews, I was hooked and impulse bought it. But be warned, this is not a finished product and is still full of crippling issues.

Sky Break by Farsky Interactive is a farcry from an openworld survival game. I have to admit, I loved the artwork, and the idea behind it. Man against machine. against nature; now that would have been a survial game! Unfortunately what was seen in early development was completely scraped for the sake of simplicity. I understand the K.I.S.S. motto; however Farsky oversimplified so much that they lost their driving theme. This was supposed to be a hostile world, where the storms raged, the oxygen was thin, and every mecha was out for blood. Before launch you had to fight the gatherer mecha for precious resources to upgrade your sky base. All of that natural conflict, and personal customization gone! Now it's more like a romp in the wilderness to pick flowers with your wee woodland friends. That said we move on to the story, or lack thereof. The overarching storyline, if one could call it that was reaching at best. It wanted so badly to be a compelling and epic tale of heroism. Save the entire human race. Unfortunately here again Farsky took K.I.S.S. literally. The story was so simple, so unengaging that your left running around this new world wondering why should you bother to save humanity anyway? You have food, the storms aren't that much of a pain thanks to the plethora of ionizing rods littered around the map; and hey if you ever get lonely just go out and hack yourself a new friend. The coup de gras for this game came in the form of the hover mech. In prelauch this was your only friend, and salvation on a completly hostile and unforgiving planet. It has now become the game's achilles heel. Before the oversimplification you needed that mech to scan and tell you where to find the next station before your oxygen ran out. Now it serves as a laser pointer marking a straight line from point A to B, making game play nearly linear with only the random spawn of mobs and the limited inventory system to skew the challenge curve. Overall Sky Break is a beautiful world full of wonderfully rendered and imaginitive creatures; but there is where the positives end. Nearly linear gameplay, mixed with an oversimplification of previous mechanics, and a completely underwhelming story line leaves this player scratching his head. Farsky, you made Alchemy work! You had survival gold, and amazingly turned it into lead. Marks: Artwork 10 out of 10, Gameplay 5 out of 10, Story 2 out of 10

Sky Break does so many things right, it's easy to be tricked into thinking there's depth to the game. The graphics are great, the story sounds interesting, there's shooting and pets and crafting and skills to level up and exploration and a sky fortress... but none of these things really extend beyond their superficial appearance. To elaborate on each of those points: [list] [*][b]Story:[/b] There's 8 journals, 2 screenshot & text-based cutscenes, and a few lines of monologue from the character. That's approximately 20 paragraphs of story total. [*][b]Shooting:[/b] The shooting is alright to begin with, but you only get the one weapon & several advanced ammo types that have to be crafted. It starts to feel repetitive after 10 minutes. [*][b]Pets:[/b] You can hack downed enemies and keep them as pets. You can even spend points to increase their stats! (though it doesn't feel like the stats do much) The AI pathfinding is awful though, and most of the time the pets will be stuck on something and unable to fight for you, or just unwilling to fight because they can't see the enemy. [*][b]Crafting:[/b] All but one crafted item is a boring old consumable - ammo, health, etc. The one non-boring item lets you [spoiler]mine crystals to increase the size of your pet army up to 4 slots[/spoiler]. I was hoping for a tech tree like Subnautica, but what I got was just several variations on "Plant + Mucus = Ammo" [*][b]Skills:[/b] More inventory space is nice in the beginning, but about half way through the game there was nothing else worth spending points on [*][b]Exploration:[/b] Scan environment, identify nearest unknown waypoint, run in that direction for 5 minutes, activate the waypoint, repeat for 5 hours. [*][b]Sky Fortress:[/b] This really feels like a missed opportunity - it could convey story through distress calls or emails, itcould have a zoo of all the Mechas and plant species you collected, but there's hardly any of that. It's mostly just a chest to dump items in, a free healing station and a station to take you between islands. [*][b]Graphics:[/b] The graphics are actually quite nice. The environmental detail gets quite repetitive, but that wouldn't be as obvious if there was enough substance to the gameplay to distract from it. [/list] Overall, it was 1 hour of fun, 4 hours of grind, and an unsatisfying ending. I'm not unhappy with the game, just disappointed that it didn't live up to its potential.

If you look at the time i played, you can probably count a few hours less (for all the AFK time) but other than that that's how much time i really spent in the game - i really enjoyed exploring the map. You can probably finish it much more quickly if you just go from point A to B, doing only things required for you to progress further in main quest. The main plot consist of finding a cure, repairing your ship and coming back home. To do that you have to explore the map, look for things for your ship and gather plants to make the cure. The world here is 4 islands (but 1st one is small and just a tutorial island) - all of them are different (e.g. one is a desert and on the other it's snowing) and on each you can find different mecha-animals, more or less - 2 types for each island (+2 subtypes each)+ some can be found on more than one island + mini-bosses (a harder to beat, non-hackable mechas) To help you on your quest you can hack up to 4 mecha-animals to be your allies, and further upgrade them to be stronger, with fragments you find on other killed mecha-animals. You can upgrade their health/attack/special ability/shield, it depends on the type how much each of these can be upgraded and what abillity it has. As for your character, you can also 'evolve' it with chips found in some places. On all islands there is a non-stop threat of a storm that is deadly, you need to constantly look at it's level and either go back to a place safe from it, or use an ionizer if there is one close and once you make a battery for it to run. There are many of them on the island so you can explore but if you forget about the storm you may find yourself dying when you notice you are in place with none nearby and a full storm. AI of the mecha-animals may be buggy sometimes, as they tend to get stuck in things, but it was nothing to ruin the fun for me, if it was my hacked mecha i was just going further and calling them later, and if it was enemy they were just easier to kill that way. I bought this game in a bundle, and that's how i recommend it - on a sale, or in a bundle - the full price may be a little too much for the content it has but other than that it's a very enjoyable game i recommend.

for a survival game, Sky Break is pretty bland, you get out, kill mechas, collect plants and mucus, craft health, bullet, upgrade your mecha pet,then go out again and fight some more mecha. beware of the storm since it'll broke your navigation and make your radar drone useless. i actually pretty much enjoying this game, no stravation or thirst system, make this game more casual, and more action oriented. one thing i didn't like is that you only have one save slot on this game, it ruin everything like mecha that you grind for hours, or when you die because you got gangbanged by dog mechas. my final verdict, this game is quite fun, it's not your slow paced survival game, instead, it's a little action-oriented. BUT, while the still have lot of bugs it's have to fix, i suggest the dev would put aditional save slot, so that the player can have more pleasant experince. hope this thumb up would make the dev keep improving the quality of this game.

When I started playing, I really enjoyed this exploration game. The scifi-themed graphics were quite nice, with enough backstory to catch my interest. The gameplay had exploration, gathering, and crafting, and some simple combat with pets. Unfortunately, there was a bug introduced from the 1.0 version update, that was never resolved. Activating a savepoint "ionizer" causes pets to repeatedly push into the player. There is no fix for it, although some workarounds include dying, returning to base, or getting attacked. The developer left this and other bugs unresolved. I emailed the developer, though I was not satisfied with their [i]virtual shrug[/i]. I played on ubuntu linux with radeon mesa drivers and an xbox-style gamepad. The game uses the unity game engine. At the highest graphic settings, there were some noticable fps drops on occasion, but otherwise the rich graphical environments displayed quite nicely. As I got further along in this slow-paced adventure, I saw the many of the elements were not too deeply designed. The crafting elements are two types of plants and two types of enemy drops, for example. It was a real grind getting through the second half of the game. In the end, the randomly placed icebergs left me no path for getting the last component and finishing the game. So, in total, I do not recommend this game, because of the problems, even when it is available at 75% discount, unless money is really tight. A game that I enjoyed very much, similar to this one, is called A Signal From Tolva. That exploration game is just a much deeper experience, in many ways.

This is a fun game, but it feels unfinished. Like there should be lots of little extras that make it a more complete experience. Pros +Polished graphics. +Smooth gameplay. +Fun to explore varied landscapes. +Ever present threat of the storm adds a feeling of anxiety about ranging too far from your latest base. Cons (or possible improvements) -Shallow difficulty curve: once you have a couple of medium buff mechas the challenge is pretty much gone. -Only one difficulty setting. -No Achievements: once you have completed the game there is no impetus to go back and max out stats, tame one of every mecha or just find everything. -Story and voice acting: you could easily expand and deepen the story that is revealed through logbooks. Some voice acting would give this an extra dimension and make us feel more connected to the player character too. -Add some secret areas (e.g. that can only be accessed by riding a particular mecha). -Add some more (unique?) boss mechas to be defeated for special items. -Make the 'find the cure' quest harder. I managed to get the cure without even realising I was doing it. -Make it possible to obtain the ship booster engine sooner. You get it right near the end, but as there is nothing driving you to go back and find other things you do not end up using the land anywhere ability it provides. I know that is a lot of "Cons", but I would still recommend this game for what you do get, I just think it could be a whole lot more than it is.

I like Sky Break, but I hesitate to recommend it. It's a pretty game with nice graphics and sound, and it has the trappings of a science fiction survival game that people who like those types of game will like. But based on what I've read about the game I'm close to 70% of the way through and I don't think I'll finish it. The game pits your character as a lone person on a planet where prevously science teams from your home planet have started projects to research and use the planet's resources, but were then beset by a catastrophe and disappeared. En route to investigate, your ship crashes on the planet and you have to put enough resources together to repair your ship and get away, while perhaps also unraveling the mystery of what happened. You start with very little and begin collecting resources and crafting to improve your strength and repair ships that you can use. You can also hack the local "animals" which are really mechs in animal form and turn them into your allies. It's all engineered pretty well and the game's mechanics do work. You and your allies work your way through fixing devices on the planet; some of them can help control the planet's dangerous storms and others can reveal other parts of the planet. Eventually you'll uncover four total islands that essentially comprise the game's "levels". But while the start is novel, by the time you get to where I am (the start of the fourth island) you'll find the gameplay quite rote. Each level should be providing new intrigue but instead only offers bigger hitpoint slogs. Look, I'm getting to be an old fart and so I've decided not to finish the game. If you're young and have more time than money, perhaps you can fulfill that OCD tendency in most of us gamers and finish this thing. It's hardly a bad game, and actually I think it's pretty good for the first half. But there are too many other games to play in the time I have left, so I'll leave it to you young guys to handle it from here.