Sphere - Flying Cities

by Aethyna Oct 18, 2021 | 1 Votes | 77 Played | 0 Reviews

5 rate

Genres:

Simulation

Graphics:

Labels:

Survival , City Building , Post Apocalyptic

Platforms:

Publishers:

Assemble Entertainment Set in a world devastated by an asteroid, the remnants of humanity has managed to invent an anti-gravity machine which allows them to levitate a chunk of earth’s surface and move that piece of floating island around. Help humanity rebuild and survive in this sci-fi-themed city-builder! Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Community Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Sphere – Flying Cities is a city-building game that’s somewhat similar to Frostpunk except that it has a sci-fi theme, and allows for more exploration. Set in a world devastated by an asteroid, the remnants of humanity has managed to invent an anti-gravity machine which allows them to levitate a chunk of earth’s surface and move that piece of floating island around a world enveloped by debris and dusts.

Plotline

An asteroid hit the moon, shattering it into pieces and its debris got pulled into the Earth’s atmosphere, enveloping it in darkness. Humanity thought their end was nigh and chaos ensued.

However, a group of scientists toiled for a solution to the crisis and they discovered anti-gravity. This new technology allows them to levitate a chunk of Earth’s surface, essentially creating a floating island, so that the people can see the sun again. It gave the people hope.

The building housing the anti-gravity device was rapidly built in the middle of a city with the idea that it’ll bring the entire city with it up into the skies. Unfortunately, there was a malfunction when the device was activated. It created a blast wave that decimated all the buildings and people within a radius around the building. The only structures intact were the power station that were built within the huge dome shield generated around the anti-gravity building, which is a blessing in disguise considering that without power, the device would fail.

After a heart-pounding moment, the scientists’ vision of a floating city materialized, and now, it is up to you, the next highest-ranking officer that survived the blast wave, to assume the position of commander. Your goal is to rebuild the last bastion of mankind and to rescue as many survivors as you can.

Gameplay

Sphere – Flying Cities is a city-builder so you can expect a lot of resource management here. The resources you’ll need to keep an eye on ranges from food and water, to materials for building stuff, to manpower to operate the buildings you’ve built.

However, when it comes to construction or mining chunks of floating asteroid for materials, you’ll need to rely on a different kind of “manpower” – drones! There are buildings in the game that you can build to increase the number of drones you have carrying out any specific action, whether it is mining or building. Similarly, you can increase the manpower you have by rescuing people from escape pods.

Your city comes with a force shield at the very beginning as well and it’s supposed to protect the buildings that are built within from forces of nature like particle storms. However, for some reason, my buildings that are within my level 1 dome shield still got damaged by a level 1 particle storm. It just doesn’t make sense, don’t you think?

That being said, it’s not really a huge issue if your buildings are damaged though since repairs take up fewer materials than having to rebuild the entire thing, plus the construction drone works really fast so you can get back to expanding your city fairly quickly.

The anti-gravity machine doesn’t only let you levitate your city; it also lets you move your floating city about, allowing you to travel to locations on a grid-based map where there are resources to be had, or away from dangers like toxic clouds and particle storms. As the world has been enveloped by a thick cloud of debris, you can’t really rely on the sense of sight to scout out your surrounding area. This is where the radar comes in!

You can use it to scan the grids around your city for the presence of resources or danger before moving into said area. For grids that are further away from your city, you’ll then need to use a scout drone. You only have one of those however, and unlike your radar, the scanning capability on your drone is much weaker, allowing it to only scan the grid it was deployed to.

Like any city-builder, you’ll also get to unlock new technologies that will allow you to develop your city. However, before you can do so, you’ll need to build a technology center first. Unlocking an upgrade on the tech tree in this game requires very specific elements and you can mine for these elements if they are present on the grid you’re on. You can usually find elements on grids that contain materials.

Now, as fun as this game can be, it is marred by bugs and questionable design choices that makes it a rather frustrating game to play. For instance, despite being able to mine for materials during the tutorial, I can’t seem to do so even as I’m doing everything right. This is rather game-breaking for me since I’ll eventually run out of ruined buildings to dismantle for materials around my city.

Another issue around the game is the fact that you can only assign workers to your facilities using a woefully inadequate “priority system”, especially when it comes to facilities that are in the middle of the priority queue. Despite having a minimum and maximum number of workers needed for each facility outlined, the game’s AI seems to think that they have to fill up every worker slot for a building with a level 7 priority and depriving other level 7 priority buildings of any workers. Why not let the player decide exactly how many workers they want for a facility? The priority system would still work but it’ll be more “in the background”.

In terms of controls, the game seems to have bound both “rotate building” function (click) and “rotate city/map” (click and hold) function to the same middle mouse button, making placing buildings a bit annoying.

Consider this, you want to place a building and would like to rotate the city around to find the best spot for it. However, every rotate you make around your city will rotate the building you want to place. As a result, you may end up accidentally rotating your building and placing them incorrectly – as in their entrance isn’t connected to the street. It would have been better to keep the middle mouse button for the “rotate city” function and bind the “rotate building” function to only the “R” key as the default.

Despite being inspired by Frostpunk, the game lacks its appeal. You see, in Frostpunk, you, as the leader, is forced to make some very difficult choices in order to safeguard your people as a whole and make sure they could survive the cold, and that there aren’t any “right” ones. Sphere, on the other hand, just feels “flat” and aren’t as story-driven once active play begins. Maybe it would be better to have more encounters that puts players in that kind of tough spot?

Community

Like most city-builders, Sphere – Flying Cities is a single-player game. However, if you encounter a bug or would like to offer a suggestion or a feedback, the game’s Steam discussion page is likely the best place to do so.

Graphics/ Sound

The visuals here are superb! You can also easily adjust the zoom and the camera angles so you can take the best screenshots of your floating city. That said, I was a little bit disappointed that there’s no Photo Mode available. For a game with such gorgeous graphics, you’d think that the game would want to let its players take screenshots that don’t have the UI in them. The soundtrack here is pretty fitting for the game, but it’s not exactly memorable. It’s functional, that’s all I’m saying.

Conclusion

The game is obviously inspired by one of my favorite post-apocalyptic city-builders ever, Frostpunk, but Sphere – Flying Cities falls short of what it aspires to be. The bugs and glitches aside, the gameplay here feels slow – very unlike the kind of urgency that Frostpunk offers, and the amount of player control over how many workers to assign to a facility is oddly restrictive for a city-builder. Personally, I would recommend keeping this game on your wishlist first and let the devs work on improving their game.