Ambrosia Sky

If Steam had the option to give it a better score than just thumbs up or down, I'd give it a 7 / 10 or similar because there's lots of strong foundations within its lore, atmosphere, pacing, music and unique art direction, and I love to see a developer who's very passionate about the world they are building. However, after finishing the second part, I have to note some criticism and most of it is how such strong foundation is being constrained by clunky and unrefined gameplay mechanics, a story held back by some general episodical pacing and lack of stronger voices outside of the main character, Dalia. For starter, this is a narrative focused game before being a cleaning simulator, so if you expected Powerwash Simulator in space, you'll only get part of it. The tether/grapple hook is kind of wonky at first, but once you get the hang of it you can get around it fine (sometimes even speedrunnig the entire level, as the mechanic IMO would only work best, and you get a decent amount of sprays variations between basic, fertilizer, fire and electric, to which only the latter three are rechargeable, and to obtain those recharges you gain fruits and samples from the plants you collect by either removing their fruits with the tether or finding samples scattered around the environment, and such updates are provided by a very simple crafting system with a upgrade skill tree. The negative side of this skill tree is how little it matters to the overall game, as the gameplay focus is kind of trivial to the overall game but at the same time it grants the player the ability to skip certain portion of the game faster. Ambrosia Sky's method of storytelling reminded me of Tacoma, in which a lonley protagonist has to uncover what happened in a space station interacting with the environment and rewinding or fast fowarding, with the crew remnants being fully voice acted, You, as Dalia, are part of an organization called the Scarabs whose main project is to obtain the recipe to immortality through samples of DNA by willing partecipants for the Ambrosia Project, working as space gardner and mortician at the same time. In general, the story is at its best when it lets the environment breathe and give us (quite literally) space to float around and explore the various locations freely, seeing all the damaged done by the alien fungus and [spoiler] the remnants of this ancient space creature corpse called the Leviathan, to which the fungus originate, with the Cluster built on top of it. [/spoiler], with the music and artstlye really capturing the attention into this beautiful but dead world. At it worst however, the narration is 90% of the time Dalia's monologues about events that act as a "tell don't show" method and storytelling, and beyond the scattered written logs we never get any other voiced interaction until the very end of the game, which to me feel like a missed opportunity given the themes of memory and finality the game explores as a theme. I couldn't think of a similar example than Tacoma, another game in which a lonley female protagonist has to uncover what happened in a space station interacting with the environment and discovering the previous inhabitants backtories, but that was mitigated by most of the crew remnants not being just logs, but also voice acted presences that interacted in person beyond mail logs. Seems like their original intention was to have Ambrosia Sky be relased in early access and have its first part be one of three, but had to cut down on those plans and just relase an Act 2 as a free update conclusion, probably due to the game being having very little sales to justify a larger development. And while in one angle this decision helps some of the latter levels have a much better puzzle focus, it cost of streamlining the overall narrative and while leaving other things open ended. Overall, I think Soft Rains has great talent and care for the world they built within this project as evidence by the various development blogs and concept they relased during the wait between the two parts and over, and in spite of this game probably not being an hit, I can't say this is a terrible debut for an inexperienced studio trying to build a very unique story and atmosphere, so I hope the people behind take all the criticism and feedback from Ambrosia Sky as a chance to improve for future games.