I’ll be honest: I was completely unaware of the Towers of Aghasba. Based on the name alone, I assumed it was going to be some kind of fantasy RPG or turn-based strategy. It’s part of the reason I enjoy jumping into these preview events; so often, my expectations are completely shattered, and I get tuned into interesting new experiences.
I was just mentioning in a previous article that recently, we’ve been getting a lot of interesting new building sim games, and Towers of Aghasba might be one of the most incredible entries into the genre I’ve seen in a while. Even though CGM was only able to sit in on a hands-off preview, what we got to see of Towers of Aghasba was incredibly promising.
We got to sit down with CEO and Director Khang Le, who gave us a pretty extensive demonstration of Towers of Aghasba. He explained how the game had initially started development as far back as 2009—primarily inspired by Minecraft. Le said, “I thought the gameplay was just so fresh. That was before all the survival games that came out, it just felt like the idea of just utilizing resources in the world, to build and have a sandbox experience was so cool to me.”
“Even though CGM was only able to sit in on a hands-off preview, what we got to see of Towers of Aghasba was incredibly promising.”
But, as a concept artist and illustrator, the one thing Le wasn’t keen on was the blocky shapes and intentionally rough graphics of the game. He wanted to find a way to create something with that kind of gameplay but with art more inspired by the films of Studio Ghibli like Princess Mononoke or Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
And Le wasn’t kidding about this. During the preview, he told us how he became friends with an artist from Studio Ghibli—whose desk was right in front of Miyazaki’s—who became their background painter. Almost all the background textures in Towers of Aghasba are hand painted, as Le explained, “We’ll take that painting, literal painting, scan it in and then convert to a pipeline and turn into a texture for the game.”
And the world he showed us was truly remarkable. The story of Towers of Aghasba puts players in the role of one of the last children of the forgotten Shimu people. After a shipwreck leaves you stranded on this strange land, you find it has been left completely barren. Players need to plant “Colossal Seeds” in order to grow colossal trees that will not only terraform the land but also sustain life.
“Towers of Aghasba is REALLY leaning into the Animal Crossing: New Horizons style and giving players a massive island to bring to life. “
Players are given the freedom to plant their Colossal Seeds wherever they choose, so the biomes they create can be completely unique. But it conceptually adds to the visual design Le and the team at Dreamlit were hoping to achieve—the world is incredibly alien but also whimsically fantastical as well. As Le said, the world of Aghasba is essentially a blank canvas for players, who can potentially fill up 30 to 40 percent of this island with environments they created.
As Le says, “Even though the landscape is handcrafted, the player’s choice sort of shapes what type of forest, where they are, and what animals sort of live there.” He continues, “Depending on your choices, the plant life, the animal life are different from your island to your friend’s islands.” This, to me, is what makes Towers of Aghasba such a promising concept as a game. In fact, Le said some of the major influences when they were developing the game were The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Animal Crossing New Horizons.
And you can certainly see how combining those two games into a seamless experience would make for something truly special. A lot of other games that have been inspired by those two, like Palia or Fae Farm, often give players a world to explore but only a small section of personal property to customize. Towers of Aghasba is REALLY leaning into the Animal Crossing: New Horizons style and giving players a massive island to bring to life.
But bringing life back to the island means needing to sustain it. This is where some of Towers of Aghasba’s deeper gameplay comes in and really creates an exciting prospect for how to play. Because the land was left barren once, it’s up to players not to make those same mistakes, and how you choose to grow your community can have consequences—though not too drastic.
As Le explained, “There’s a bit of a balancing act of how much you should be growing versus hunting because we don’t really necessarily punish you. Like, the game is similar to Animal Crossing, where you don’t regress, but you do progress slower if you overhunt. So it’s best to sort of hunt and harvest in moderation.” It creates a certain amount of stakes that I’ve never seen in a farming/building sim before, and it’s incredibly exciting.
Furthermore, Le elaborated on how Towers of Aghasba has a bit more varied and naturalistic gameplay. Where you plant your Colossal Tree will determine what animals and plant life grow there. Almost every surface or colossal creature can be climbed on—and some even provide unique resources—or helping wounded fauna and having it lead you to resources. There’s a deep undercurrent of caring for the land and working in tandem with nature.
But it’s not just farming and building. Towers of Aghasba will feature some combat as players venture into the Withered Land. Players can either fight alone or work together to defeat Withered creatures and restore the land in order to plant a Colossal Seed in that region. There’s an incredible sense of danger and bleakness in these areas that really adds to the dichotomy of living and fighting that Towers of Aghasba seems to be attempting to capture.
However, Le was aware that players would need something to do in between the downtime of farming and building, so even after a Withered Region is cleared, there will still be small pockets that will stay withered in order for players to continuously engage in combat and collect unique resources from that land. It was incredibly interesting to me to see just how smooth the onboarding is—Withered Regions are utilized as part of the narrative as well as providing extra gameplay.
For something that wasn’t even on my radar, I can’t believe how much I’ve been intrigued by Towers of Aghasba. I probably would’ve been sold enough by a farming/building sim that combined Breath of the Wild and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but to see how truly interesting, strange and beautiful Towers of Aghasba is shaping up to be has my anticipation piqued.
Towers of Aghasba will launch in Early Access for Steam and PlayStation 5 on November 19th, 2024.
