This is probably the first Arcen game that didn't hit the mark. All of their games so far have been fresh and quite fun, but have also always been flawed. None of them have been perfect, but they were innovative, and always try a different formula of game and were ultimately fun to mess around.

Skyward Collapse is another really cool idea, but the game doesn't come together. Resource management is tedious, the idea is really cool, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Turns keep taking longer, and every turn becomes a bit more boring than the last. I really want to like this game, but the longer it drags on, the more you see the game's flaws come together and create this game where there's a lot of different parts of the game that either don't feel fun, or feel out of place.

If you're interested, make sure you watch some gameplay, or try out some demo's. This game just isn't for me.

My biggest problem with this game is that the ai does not do anything. both sides will stagnate and not do anything if left alone, and you are tasked with growing them to defend against bandits while stoping them from killing eachother, this is not entertaining. you end up having to grow both sides while defending against bandits, and it fails to feel like these are 2 civilizations, they are more like blocks you throw down, compleately inanimate.

This can be fun, but you end up having to build the entire game and create everything becuse they won't build a single hut on thier own. I would enjoy the game alot more, if they showed a little bit of autonomy.

Skyward Collapse is an odd little turn-based strategy game where the player controls the building but not the movements of both sides of an ongoing war.The core idea of a balancing a strategy game with limited player control is intriguing, but I found the execution of that idea, and the representations it used, unsatisfying. Arcen has made an ongoing and admirable effort to keep tweaking the game (although some patches have rolled out insufficiently tested), but I'm just not sure that anything they can do will address the essential dullness of its opening and closing phases.Skyward Collapse is a game with simple mechanics, good interface and is visually pleasing, it's just not a lot of fun to play. Overall 5/10.

If being a God is like this game, it's pretty lame. Let's be honest: it's not the worst game ever, it's a game that is just average in everything. The graphics are pretty simple, and I understand that top notch graphics aren't required to a game be any good, but the lack of things like character animation make this title looks worst than most of f2p cell phone games.

The objective is very inovative and distinctive from other God games: you should keep the balance between the factions. But it's simple boring, sometimes I just skip to the next turn waiting for something to happen, sometimes you need to make your "civs" ready to wage war, because there are an amount of points required to win the match in each difficult. And... that's it.

The interface is kinda messy, the game doesn't do a very good job in order to show to you what is needed to be built and what are the requirements for each unit... I'm not saying that this info isn't available, it's just so much pain to get to it.

So, let's wrap up: the concept is great, the interface is messy and clunk, the graphics are sub par and the music is quite good. Thats it, I can't recommend this game, but I would like to see this concept in a more polished and diversified game.

I really like this game for it's somehow chaotic gameplay which makes it unique in the strategy genre. It is turn based and best comparable to a very complex board game. This is also how it is presented.
You as a player have limited and mostly indirect control over what happens. There are many random variables. But the offered possibility space of what to do to react on the events is strikingly huge. Every time I start a new round I find something new to try out.
It has its lengthy parts and I think the 60 rounds variant is much more enjoyable than the standard of 90 rounds per match.
I think the suspense in this game is great. For the first 90% of the game you have to do careful adjustments to keep your civilizations alive. But when it becomes obvious that you are about to win it's up to you to wreak as much havoc as possible. As you only get points for destroyed buildings and units. This is immensely satisfying.

Look there are a lot of nice details to this game. However between akward controls and poor graphics, it just is totally not worth the effort you have to put into it, just to play. I'd like to se the designers future efforts though. They had the right idea, just a bad execution of it.

3/10

The description for this game makes it sound like populous meets an old civ game or something... It plays more like an old version of civ made for people who like to hotseat to play against themselves AND use cheats. Over half of the 'god-like' powers you have do nothing but add resources. This might be a 5 or even 6/10 for the rigth person..... but not me....
Might be more of a 4/10 than 3 considering my expectations of the game were SO wrong. lol. Still, despite the good coding/lack of bugs, (making me want to give some good score/recommend) I just couldn't get any fun out of this. :\ and can't recommend.

Pros:
- No Bugs (not that I came across)
- Has working options/settings
- Has proper tooltips
- Limited Tutorial

Cons:
- No Campaign
- No real-time elements
- No Editor
- Different races have same buildings to make, so that the whole point of 'balancing' in the game FOR MOST OF THE GAME becomes not so much a case of balancing between rival factions as balancing between 2 of the same faction. You can 'deliberately' do things bad/different and not play to your best, but it just makes it even more like a boring simulation/replay than any kind of actual game.

Points of Interest: (Could be pros or cons really)
- Unique Menu Interface (IMO looks messy and don't like it)
- Graphics are 'Dated'

Skyward Collapse is a turn based game, where you try to build and balance both the red and blue empire.
It's areally fun game, but you have to make sure not to unbalance one of both sides. (an item that gives a unit a 100x attack & health bonus is kinda overpowered, especially when combined with other bonuses. But the item that makes minotaurs invulnerable, and gives both sides a couple of them is a real city-wrecker too)

You do not control the units in this game, they have a "free will". Thus you can only guide the empires, but not fully control them. You build their cities and landscapes. But the actual moving and fighting is up to them. Once you get to the Age of Gods, and each side has over a hundred units, you realise free will is quite handy ;)

Overall, this game is relly worth buying. It's great fun to see how it plays out between Red and Blue.

In Starcraft Broodwar, I use to like to make custom maps with two AIs fighting each other, and a swarm of player controlled battle cruisers to try and balance the two. This game is kind of like that, but a bit more complex. Don't be decieved by the sprite graphics and simple animations, this game gets deep.

It is really hard to get into complex game like this for me. The tutorialisation was done in a light way maybe too light... There is a lot happening even in the simple tutorial and I feel like the tutorial did not do it's job proprely to explain how deep and complex this game is. I gave up a bit less than 2 hours in because I didn't quite fully understood what I was doing(and that is really frustrating in a strategy game) Imagine playing monopoly and the only thing your friend (the tutorial) taught you about this game is the dice rolling system and that you move according to the space on that said die. You would miss out on the game and the chances are you won't like your experience.

I was a bit torn if I should recommend or not recommend this game. It has a "one-more-turn" gameplay that kinda pulls you in, and an very interesting concept.

It's a intriguing challenge building up the two factions while trying to avoid one becoming too strong. But as the game progresses, it just starts to feel more like a chore. You keep nudging here and there, on a game-bord that becomes more and more chaotic as woes and god-actions come in to play. Combined with the basic graphics, it's just kinda hard to tell what's going on at times.

In the end, when I feel like I'm finishing the last turns not because it's fun, but rather to just finish the game, it's not really a game I'd recommend. A shame really.

I am super sad to see all these negative reveiws. I can understand why some may not enjoy this, and I'll try to cover those through my groggy head. So, forgive my miss spells and other nonesense. But I speak from my heart and mind none the less!

So, I love this game for many reasons. Maybe some small, stupidly funny text from the developers as you try to leave the game and such. But that's just me I guess. Or could be? I'm easy to entertain.
I think that this game is an amazing strategy game to some degree at least. It's in depth, has plenty of content, and can, if you actually know what to do, move on pretty fast. It just takes time to learn. And like everything, you need to hit it with a good attitude. If you go into this, expecting the worse, or allowing yourself to be overwhelmed, of course you'll hate it. But if you go in with optimism, and allow yourself to lose a few games for the sake of science and experimentation, you may just learn a few things and start winning.

A basic game starts with 2 cities in which you build up. Starting out with both of them equally is what I do. Maybe, give each town a basic ranged and melee unit to start out. And then to maximize the death and destruction without total annihilation, I'll try to build a mountain range to block the path into a choke point, covering key locations with outposts and cerberus' as to prevent enemy advance whilest building up a bigger force. But sadly, you may find yourself running out of time and needing more points. So one could perhaps... Spawn a labyrinth. And maybe... Spawn minotaurs for each faction each turn? That are... Temporarily invulnerable? and... Randomly spawned! Sure! That'll cause chaos. And now you find, after 25 sturggling turns, you've destroyed some cities and find yourself with one overpowered nation. So in a panic, you close off the last red city and spam mythological units, but wait, you don't have the resources! Oh no!! So you start to expand, but find the other side to powerful and find that you're too late to try and go for a less... Murder filled victory. What now? Well, that's for you to decide. Perhaps you let all hell loose and spawn an armageddon if you can. Or just ♥♥♥♥ around till you learn a few things, who knows. Maybe the bandits will save you.

I personally don't know if that made sense, but I felt it showed the craziness of this game. The idea that so much can happen in one game, how fast it can progress and that only those who don't know what to do have long, grooling games. I for one like to play this game fast passed, and therefor, don't get so far all the time. But it can be fun to play god over two races bent on destroying each other, watching their attack plans unfold and fail as you secretly aid their enemy while just as well giving the attacker a new seige factory while yet again at the same time unleashing a great mythological beast against their newest town. All for you to rack up points in a hilariously devilsh game.
Maybe you don't want to kill your followers so fast and violently... You can go for a culture victory. Build peaceful towns on the ruins of others and amass culture to build great arcs which symbolize your world's success and beauty. All of this and so, so much more can be found in this game. Each game feels knew and each game has a new story to be told.

On to multiplayer. Download Evolve and you can easily project a LAN server across the states or provinces or which ever! That's Evolvehq.com (The motto is "Stop playing with yourself!")
While I have yet to try multiplayer, I can imagine it's great. Don't quote me there though.

Sorry to be rambling so much, but please try this game or watch some videos and imagine a great god strategty game in which you try to control two raging armies in which want nothing more than death for the other and glory under you. It's a perfect strategy game and isn't so much chess against yourself as it is altering another 2 players' chess game. As if you were choosing where the tiles were (because you do) and what units are available and how often they are (because you do!!) and what player gets what benefits. Because you do.

Lastly, thank you for reading, and if you have any questions at all, or want to play this with me, please please contact me at any time! Take a look, and rate this for yourself. Every game deserves a glimpse for yourself. And then, criticize this yourself.

Have a good one,
Waka

takes time to learn the game, but it's more complex than at first glance, and super fun.

i don't think anyone who has put in under 2 hours has actually given the game a proper chance. i'm guessing most of the negative reviews are from people who don't want to invest the time and are expecting quick learning curves.

My left hand is fighting my right hand, and I have to prevent each of them from winning. There is a divine committee giving my hands marks for effort - so slacking is not an option. Interesting, complicated, tedious, repetitive. Like playing chess against yourself.

God game with a twist: the objective is not to destroy the other race, but to ensure both survive! Quite original, will probably appeal even to non-strategy fans.

Perhaps I had too high of expectations for this game, but unfortunately, it didn't live up to them.

In more ways than one, Skyward Collapse feels more like a mobile game than one which, it seems to me, was developed for desktop computing. Its simple graphical sprites would feel right at home on a tablet, but seem out-of-place on a PC. Making matters worse, the clunky user interface manages to simultaneously overwhelm the player with information, while not giving her enough data with which to learn the game.

Though the tutorial helps by walking the player through the early steps of gameplay, it seems very fond of telling her about things you'll have to worry about later on in gameplay, without telling her any appropriate steps to take when she does encounter them.

By and large, however, the major strike against this game is, well, it's boring. After the initial setup period, gameplay becomes unbearably slow, a pain which is only mitigated by the shortness of the games themselves. The position the game puts the player in changes throughout the game, leading to what are arguably contradictions: she has both the power to summon wild beasts and unquestioningly place down buildings to aid the mortals, but is subject to the resources they have on hand. Resources the game is fond of telling the player she's missing, but not how to acquire without a scavenger hunt through the long-winded information prompts scattered throughout the game.

While Skyward Collapse shows great potential through its promotional screenshots and videos, it fails to live up to it in execution, leading me as a player to be very disappointed in the overall game.

Skyward Collapse is a turn based god/strategy game. The goal of the game is to balance two opposing factions by supplying them with resources and buildings. You must cause enough chaos between the two factions to get your score high enough to pass through three rounds until you reach the end of the game to achieve a victory.

Skyward Collapse features one of the best tutorials I've seen in awhile. The game can be overwhelming at first, but the tutorial does a great job of holding your hand through your first game. The tutorial will teach you the basics of the game while giving you the freedom to play around and experiment as you see fit. You won't know 100% of everything after your first play-through, but you should understand the basic concepts and be ready to play a better game on your 2nd time around.

Skyward Collapse features very basic animation and graphics, it's best to think of it like a board game. Units move around the game like pieces on a board, and when they fight, they just bump into each other until one falls off the board.

I would say if you are interested by this review at all, you should go ahead and pick the game up. It is only five bucks, and even if you end up hating it, you've only wasted a few dollars. If you do not like turn based strategy, or if a lack of graphics or animation is a big turn off, stay clear of this one.

For more info, you can find my full review here: http://hashron.com/display.php?id=18

I really like the idea of playing two factions against each other and having to make sure that neither one of them wipes the other one out, but something about it didn't completely click with me. As with most Arcen games, I'm glad I tried it and played through an entire session of it from start to finish, because it's interesting and not the kind of thing you usually see, but I don't think this will be one of the ones I'll end up going back to repeatedly for weeks/months/years. I'm happy they keep trying out whatever crazy ideas they come up with though.

Have you known a Grandparent or Aunt/Uncle who's house you've been to so many times you can't count. When you're forced to visit them you end up playing board games alone in their cluttered back room. You always find yourself bored. Even though the room is cluttered your relative never takes the time to show you anything they have. When you ask they just shrug you off. Then one day, they pass on, and the family jumps in and starts dividing all the stuff they had in their house and you learn they had a lot of cool stuff. Actually there was a lot to learn and explore, but the place was so cluttered, and your relative never explained much of what they collected.

That's the best way I can describe Skyward Collapse. The single tutorial level gives you a limited/basic understanding of what it's trying to accomplish then sets you out into the world to play god. You find yourself with 2 civilizations, with slightly varied dependencies, different unit types with their own pros and cons, a cluttered interface, and you have to play them both at the same time and keep them from killing each other while they attempt to kill each other.

IMO a tutorial that perhaps took a few levels to complete would have helped this game out a lot. There's no hand holding here and usually I don't like that type of design, but in Skyward Collapse it could have been a refreshing boost in understanding the complex systems in place here.

Also, the building icons are cluttered. Yes, they are divided up into categories, but I still found myself lost a lot of the time. The dependencies between buildings aren't very well explained and I kept backtracking to understand what I did wrong. I played the tutorial level about 5 times. There's just not enough clean design or helpful tutorials to get the average player involved.

I'm also, not a fan of playing against myself. Well, balancing against myself really. You have to build civilizations that will ultimately destroy each other, but you need to build them in ways they complement their destructive potentials into an almost deadlock.

That does sound like a great idea, but honestly it's just a bad execution. I really think this game would have benefited from a little TLC on the GUI and a few extra tutorial levels that would walk you through certain aspects one at a time. The way Skyward Collapse is presented you end up feeling like you're playing a board game, alone, in your Grandmothers' clutter back room.

Probably one of the more strict-definition "God" games out there, in that you're the kind of deity who a) exists and b) does what he can for his people but c) can't order them to do jack-♥♥♥♥ because Free Will.

That said? This is a fantastic concept and I actually love it. You manage a pair of nations (and I believe a third with the recent DLC?) turn by turn, with equal moves apiece, reshaping the world and controlling the resources of each side. Afterwards, every living player from those factions makes their moves, and you hope you've done enough to keep them both safe (from roaming bandits, one another, and horrible curses known as Woes). The game's not so easily solved, though, due to the random factors that'll shake things up. Tiles appear after every turn to fill in gaps in the floating world you manage, and again, bandits/Woes.

I don't know how long I'll stick with this after finishing a few games? But it's totally a fantastic title and the recent overhaul patch makes me wonder if more tweaks like that might hook me further. I would love for this to be the birth of a new strategy niche.