Aska Ambitiously Blends Survival and Colony Sims

The world is ending and the gods have forsaken your people, but you are one of the few who has been given a second chance. Aska puts you in the shoes of a Viking who must rebuild a tribe from nothing while fending off eldritch horrors lurking in the shadows.

Aska is a game that meshes survival RPG elements with a colony sim. I spent about an hour in a presentation with the developers, and then I got to go hands-on with the latest closed beta. It's certainly an ambitious blend of genres, and I was excited to see how it all worked together.

Surviving the World of Aska

After setting up your character, you'll experience a short cutscene where a massive golem smashes your ship to bits. You'll then land on the shore of a procedurally generated island with that same golem standing breathtakingly close to you and your broken husk of a boat. Fortunately, it turns back into the ocean and walks away.

Aska otherwise begins like many of the survival games out there — you have no tools or meaningful supplies other than the clothes on your back. You'll have to head further inland to find what you need to stay alive.

Your core survival needs are hunger, thirst, temperature, and health. Failing to properly meet any of these needs will result in your death and you'll respawn back at the boat. I decided it would be a good idea to set up a small camp a short distance away, just to be safe — I didn't want to burn additional resources running back to my camp if I died.

You'll certainly spend the early hours of the game focusing on building — and defending — your village in its infancy. It's going to take time to make it self-sustaining in a meaningful way.

I collected some basics resources and got to work on setting up a camp. Much like Medieval Dynasty, buildings are constructed in multiple stages and you'll need different resources for each stage. Most structures can't be built until you've built a prerequisite structure first; for example, you'll need a campfire before you can build your first house.

Resources in Aska are divided into small, medium, and large categories. Small resources can be stuffed into your backpack, but larger resources have a physical model like in Green Hell and they will have to be carried by hand. Any excess items must be dropped on the ground since there isn't much in the way of early-game storage options.

In just a few short hours, you'll have a basic camp with a campfire, shelter, and a simple water collection system. It takes a fair amount of work to build something basic, but you won't be alone for long — you'll soon be joined by some new friends.

It Takes a Village

Aska is not just about surviving on your own — you're meant to form a tribe and turn the wilderness into a bustling village filled with NPCs. In the presentation, one of the developers said that it's like walking around a town in Age of Empires and managing it from a third-person perspective.

NPCs are not all that different from you. In fact, they have the same hunger, thirst, and temperature needs that you do. Every NPC will need to be provided a home, clean water, and food to eat. You'll need to keep them happy, too. Fortunately, they'll also contribute to the village by leveraging their own unique skills.

No two NPCs are the same. Some will be great workers and others are more suited for fighting and defending your village. NPCs can be trained in specific skills, and they will become more proficient at their jobs and pick up new skills as time goes on. The longer they live, the more valuable they are to you and your village as a whole.

I enjoy survival games and I enjoy colony sims; Aska has a little bit of both.

You'll certainly spend the early hours of the game focusing on building — and defending — your village in its infancy. It's going to take time to make it self-sustaining in a meaningful way. It is necessary, too — it'd take forever to get the items you need without your villagers helping you gather and refine resources.

Most villages have around 30 to 40 villagers according to comments from the developers in the pre-beta presentation I attended. However, there's a lot of wiggle room here — I was told that they've seen players with as many as 80 villagers working in a single town.

Critically, villagers have one crucial difference to players: once they die, they're gone for good. Defending your village with fortifications, manned towers, and skilled NPC fighters is key to its survival — and there are plenty of terrible things ready to come after your people.

Protecting Your New Home

Building and managing a village is fun in its own right, but Aska has plenty of combat. You'll surely encounter hostile monsters out in the wilderness, but sometimes, they'll come right up to your front door.

Aska has invasion events much like Valheim. I fended off a small herd of wild beasts and a small raiding party of skeletons in the first few hours. I'm told that these attacks will get more severe as time goes on and as your village gets larger. Buildings can be damaged by enemies, too, and you certainly wouldn't want to lose all of your hard work.

That's the important part to understand about Aska — building, managing, and defending your village is an integral part of the game. I don't think you'd have much success fighting off an enemy invasion with some wooden walls alone. Though some of your villagers will need to be defended, other villagers can be specced into combat and help you fight.

Thankfully, you can bring along some friends. There's multiplayer support for a total of 4 players, so I'm sure that you could divide the labor between managing the village and exploring the world. Either way, I think that you'd be able to get your village to a good spot where you won't have to worry too much about protecting it if you're out exploring the island.

I enjoy survival games and I enjoy colony sims; this game has a little bit of both. I'm excited to see what this game will be like once it actually launches. If you're a fan of either genre like I am, then Aska is definitely something that you'll want to keep on your radar.

We saw Aska in a hands-off virtual presentation with the developers, and we previewed the game with a key provided by Thunderful Publishing over the course of 4.8 hours of gameplay in a closed beta. All screenshots were provided by the publisher.