City builders have come a long way since the genre burst into popularity with the Sim City series. While the realistic side of this kind of simulation has been refined by titles such as Cities Skylines, players have been able to switch up the setting, such as with space colony sim Surviving Mars. Sphere - Flying Cities from developer Hexagon Sphere Games UG introduces a science fiction floating city to the mix.
Sphere - Flying Cities takes place on a future Earth following the near-destruction of humanity. An asteroid has hit the moon, raining debris on the planet and making the Earth uninhabitable. Thankfully, an experimental anti-gravity device has allowed a city to rise from the surface, floating above the planet trying to keep the human race alive, and it's up to the player to ensure things keep ticking.
This floating city setting isn't just there as a bit of fluff, however, as the fact that the city floats becomes an integral part of the game mechanics. Sphere - Flying Cities adds a bit of exploration and survival gameplay to the mix, as the player can move their city from zone to zone, picking up either groups of survivors or vital materials to help grow their floating island. However, the player needs to balance exploration with protecting their city from dangerous meteor showers and particle storms.
As well as managing the growth of the city, the player will also need to keep an eye on how the human population is doing. Food and water need to be found to keep the denizens of the city alive, while morale is also an issue that could cause problems. It's relatively basic at the moment, lacking a little bit of humanity when it comes to the human needs, but there is potential for this to grow into a bigger beast.
Something in Sphere - Flying Cities that works rather well is that city structure is extremely important. The map is small, and made doubly so when the player needs to ensure that their city falls within the safe confines of the anti-gravity shield. This means that compact, well-structured cities are very much required, and the player's understanding of space management from other city builders is key.
Because of this, the early build of Sphere - Flying Cities does show a decent understanding of gameplay balance, and does so in a way that could be interesting for fans of survival and simulation games. A successful player will be able to navigate the requirements of available jobs, energy usage, food, morale, and space, all the while pushing forward with a tech tree to keep improvements coming. If a player oversteps their limits, they may well need to make tough decisions, such as reducing the shield in the outermost parts of the city to protect the inner section during a particle storm.
As such strengthening anti gravity shield is of upmost importance. Players will want to jump into their skill tree immediately and work out what they want to do, as at the moment the way that the tech tree works is not particularly well explained. Indeed, Sphere - Flying Cities could likely do with a little more guidance for newbies in general, although long term city builder fans will likely get to grips with it quickly.
This preview build does showcase a couple of areas where improvement could be found, and one is that the game could do with a little more personality and character. The idea of a city builder set in the midst of a global crisis has been expertly done in Frostpunk, which included difficult moral and ideological questions for the player to think about. As it stands, Sphere - Flying Cities doesn't really touch on this, and it's things like this that separate the good from the great.
It's still early days for Sphere - Flying Cities, though, and this early build of the game definitely shows off something quite intriguing. Its blend of survival and city building mechanics, particularly the ability to move your city around the map, shows that the game has an awful lot of potential, and it will will be interesting to keep an eye on the game it builds further through its Early Access period.
Sphere - Flying Cities launches in Early Access on 14 October 2021. Screen Rant was provided with a PC download code for the purposes of this preview.