black skylands

Screenshot Survey: Gettin' High

Published: April 18, 2020 4:28 PM /

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It’s Saturday, and that means it’s time for another Screenshot Survey. Every week, we take a look at a few cool new games in the works by game developers tweeting with #ScreenshotSaturday. For even more games you might be interested in, check out the Screenshot Saturday hashtag on Twitter.

While it may be close to April 20th, the title of this week's Screenshot Survey isn't a pun. We've got two games featuring airships to look at, which are typically very high... in the air. We also look at a a trading simulator with a sweet hand-drawn aesthetic, as well as a title that takes inspiration from Pokemon—a Pokemon-like, if you will.

Black Skylands

To begin, we look at our first game featuring airships. While this particular GIF submission doesn't include said airships, it is a game with them. Nonetheless, I wanted to highlight this awesome weapon customization UI. I am a fan of developers creating UI that doesn't break the immersion. For example, in Dead Space, all of Isaac's UI elements, from ammo count to inventory, were brought up by a holographic HUD within the game itself. Black Skylands is operating on that principle that UI is something tangible within the game's universe. As you can see, the character's hand is scrolling through and customizing weapons on this rusty tablet-like device.

Black Skylands is, of course, not just about weapon customization. No, it's an RPG where you captain your very own airship and explore a perilous, floating world fraught with peril and adventure. Developed by Hungry Couch Games and published by tinyBuild, this floating world has players tackle the skies in airship combat as well as on the ground with customizable guns. You can get your hands on this title in Q4 2020.

Merchant of the Skies

Let's say you dislike violence, but want to play a game with airships. Well, Merchant of the Skies might be for you. This is a trading simulator where you can fly your own floating boat—and it literally looks like a boat or ship here. The floating world of Merchant of the Skies is definitely interesting, because it appears as though it should have water, but instead it's just an open, vast sky with floating islands. Look, there's even a sea turtle with a building on its back! Or I guess, it's a sky turtle. Whatever.

Merchant of the Skies is developed and published by Coldwild Games, and it's actually out as of yesterday. In this title, you are a trader and only that. This game features no combat, but it does have exploration, tons of money to earn, and even your own customizable mansion. When Merchant of the Skies' campaign is over, you can come back for more with its sandbox mode. And with that, there's two new games featuring airships that someone is bound to enjoy. If you're looking for something more grounded but enjoy trading sims, though...

Might of Merchants

We come to Might of Merchants, which is another game with the goal of gettin' rich no matter what. This one does not feature airships, and that's the last you'll hear me say it in this article, I swear. With that said, trading is great, but the graphics of Might of Merchants is what makes it a standout.  I remember playing flash games years and years ago, and with the limited budget and technology, some developers opted to literally draw and animate images from paper. Might of Merchants is like that on steroids. What happens when you have fantastic sketching abilities and you have the proper tools to make it into a full, immersive experience? Here's the pretty striking result.

Might of Merchants sounds like its hitting all the right chords. We have a medieval trading simulator, but the stuff that makes your trading escapades exciting is what has me intrigued. Apparently, the world of Might of Merchants features, according to the website: "different seasons with a day and night cycle and changing weather," and even "random events and disasters." Knowing my luck, I'm sure I'll end up bankrupt and homeless—possibly even dead—if I get my hands on Might of Merchants in the future.

Monster Crown

It's not always that our Screenshot Surveys flow together this well. But, here we are with another game that features trading. In Pokemon, trading is so ingrained in its gameplay that it wouldn't be the same without this mechanic. Monster Crown is an upcoming game that is definitely inspired by Pokemon, and what do you know! It features monster trading. The context of this Tweet, however, is not about trading. To that end, I expect these thugs to get a right proper thrashing by your character and whatever monsters they've captured in Monster Crown. I wonder if these folks are like Team Rocket?

Monster Crown is the product of a successful Kickstarter almost exactly two years back. While the game is still in development, it's definitely coming along. In this title, there are hundreds of monsters but also a crossbreeding system. With tons and tons of monsters, I am really curious to see how developer Studio Aurum can mix up the traditional Pokemon-like gameplay with crossbreeding. I hope this new idea doesn't turn out to be just a gimmick. I want to see bred abominations that destroy opponents like nothing, or even crossbreeds that are so pitifully useless that they shouldn't have existed in the first place. There's a lot of potential, so we'll see if it pays off in the future.