Black Skylands is a solid game, but it's missing the extra spark to make it truly memorable. I found myself skipping most of the story because it felt like boilerplate. The weapon variety was nice, but it would have been more interesting if there were less weapon mods with larger visual impact. It probably also would have helped if there was a more gradual procession with upgrades as I often felt like I was doing mostly the same thing over and over again with upgrades making me very powerful for a while before eventually upscaling enemies (this process happens in most upgrade-based games, but is more noticeable in this case). By far the best part of this game is the level design, level art, and base mechanics. Soaring around in a custom skyship while grappling across stages is really fun, but the shooting gameplay dragged the experience down and the tier-locked upgrade materials became useless rather quickly. I'm still giving this a positive review because I liked it, but I probably wouldn't have gotten this if it wasn't part of a Humble Bundle. It has the core of something great with clear effort, so I could easily see the developers improving on the flaws of Black Skylands in their next project.

Black Skylands is a solid game, but it's missing the extra spark to make it truly memorable. I found myself skipping most of the story because it felt like boilerplate. The weapon variety was nice, but it would have been more interesting if there were less weapon mods with larger visual impact. It probably also would have helped if there was a more gradual procession with upgrades as I often felt like I was doing mostly the same thing over and over again with upgrades making me very powerful for a while before eventually upscaling enemies (this process happens in most upgrade-based games, but is more noticeable in this case). By far the best part of this game is the level design, level art, and base mechanics. Soaring around in a custom skyship while grappling across stages is really fun, but the shooting gameplay dragged the experience down and the tier-locked upgrade materials became useless rather quickly. I'm still giving this a positive review because I liked it, but I probably wouldn't have gotten this if it wasn't part of a Humble Bundle. It has the core of something great with clear effort, so I could easily see the developers improving on the flaws of Black Skylands in their next project.