Developer: Floating Island Games
Publisher: Floating Island Games
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Cloudbase Prime – Preview
The clouds are a beautiful place to go, or so it would seem. Usually when you are up in the sky, there’s only the soft cotton candy like terrain for you to traverse. If you were hoping to get the same in Cloudbase Prime, you’re rather mistaken. The skies you walk in are filled with grey tiled platforms. It’s unclear whether it’s heaven or purgatory, as the game is currently unfinished and in Alpha form, but that doesn’t stop the developers from changing things up and making it seem less dull and repetitive.
You are a robot on a gas mining operation, but things go haywire. It’s up to you to go out and explore how to fix what’s broken. Maybe shoot some enemies along the way, collect some recovery bots if you can be assed to do so. When thinking about the sound of the game, it can only be hoped that there will be more to it than there currently is. The fixbots are blatant rip-offs from Cl4p-TP from Borderlands, even using the same beatboxing sounds and having very, very similar voices. It’s not something that the developer should be proud of. It breaks the fourth wall and reminds you of a game which you might be enjoying more than the one you currently playing and that’s not something any developer worth his or her salt should test. Don’t test a player by reminding them of other media, pull them into the world you created and hold them there.
The controls are simple and thus accessible. As per usual, there’s the w,a,s,d configuration for movement, with the spacebar as your means of jumping. Alongside this control scheme, there are also the mouse buttons which have two funtions, there’s the left button which is used for firing projectiles at your enemies and the right button to manipulate the battlefield. You can either make hexagonal bars -that of which the field exists- shoot up, launching an enemy in the air, or make it sink in the ground, making it so enemies can’t get to you. In this build of the game, there’s no real use for sinking the bars into the ground yet.
Right now there are four levels to play around with. Every level has two objectives and first of all there’s the survival mode. Here, you murder everything going against you, be it flying or more ground based. It moves? You shoot it, or it shoots you or uses you as a crash test wall. The second mode makes it so you have to traverse the level and search for fixbots. If a bot is on another island and it’s too far to jump, you can launch yourself up by manipulating the hexagon under you and this will shoot upward with you along on top of it. It’s then up to you to press and hold the spacebar to float to your destination. It’s cool how you can chain these together. Like a game of ‘the floor is lava’. It does this well, and if this makes it to the full game then this might be the main cornerstone of the game.
Apart from launching yourself, you can also launch enemies. Next to doing it for shits and giggles, if you manage to kill them when they are airborne you are given fuel which lets you do special things like floating. With a simple control scheme you’d think doing this would be easy, but the shooting feels very non responsive and the projectiles feel very slow.
Graphically the game has a very cool vibe to it, it’s clean and clear and the objectives are very visible. What has to be said about the levels in this build: they feel very copy pasted. If the trailer is anything to go by however, Cloudbase Prime certainly is something to look forward to because there are some really interesting moments.
Conclusion
Cloudbase Prime could become a fun game, which you can play for a single level or binge play. The rather uncanny resemblance to Cl4p-TP is not really a good thing and we once heard someone mention: ‘intentionally annoying is still annoying’, which is rather true in this scenario. The graphical style is unique enough to pique some interest. With just the right mix between platforming and puzzling elements, Cloudbase Prime does just enough things without feeling overburdened with gameplay mechanics. The levels in this build are short and sweet so they don’t drag on. Keep this in your sight if you are looking for a decent action/adventure platformer.
Cloudbase Prime - Preview,
Related Items
1 Comment
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
[…] first-person terrain manipulation game Cloudbase Prime has seen the daylight on the Switch. For those who own the game on the PC will be happy to hear, […]