Towers of Aghasba Has the Potential to Be a Smash Hit Open World

The games industry is home to constantly shifting trends, which results in certain genres gaining huge amounts of popularity in a short span of time. Battle royales used to be all the rage a couple of years ago, and now a new style of games that reward creativity or just provide a laid-back relaxing experience has been gaining momentum for some time now. Stardew Valley and Stray are great examples of games of this ilk, and there are a ton of similar experiences looming right over the horizon.

In this feature, we will be looking at Towers of Aghasba, a new open-world settlement building game from developer Dreamlit Games. The game was showcased at the recent PlayStation Showcase event, and most fans would have likely brushed it aside in favour of highly anticipated titles like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. And that’s a shame because Towers of Aghasba not only impresses with its distinct visuals but also features some interesting gameplay ideas that should make for an experience that’s worth your time.

Dreamlit Games is a small studio that has been working on this project since a long time. The very first concept art for this project were produced all the way back in 2009, and after multiple short periods of pre-production – the game is finally in full production for both console and PC. The team seems highly passionate about the project, and fans are kept in the loop through constant updates on the developer’s social media handles.

Coming back to the game itself, Towers of Aghasba is set against the backdrop of a fantasy island where promises of a beautiful paradise have brought settlements from far away to this rubble overflowing with rough terrain and leafless trees. As the protagonist, it’s your job to take the mantle of the leader and transform this mess into the paradise that was once promised. It’s a pretty simple narrative setup, but it seems to work well within the context of the game itself.

Dreamlit Games seems to have done a wonderful job of creating a fantasy universe complete with a rich history and unique creatures. Throughout the trailer we can see glimpses of the island’s rich culture in the form of masks and their native language. These are small touches, but they certainly help in creating a universe that’s rich with detail – which is all the more surprising considering that this is all coming from a small team. What we don’t know yet is whether we will get to experience a narrative for the critical path where we get to meet new characters, and witness conflict and character development as you slowly and steadily build the civilization.

But there’s little contention that gameplay is definitely the king in the case of Towers of Aghasba – and suffice it to say, it doesn’t fail to impress. The moment to moment gameplay revolves around exploring the vast island and scouring for resources to build new stuff. You will have to collect different materials of varying rarity and use them to build structures that will help in advancing the growth of civilization on this island.

The island is filled to the brim with natural resources, and you utilize those resources to build the many structures that will eventually pepper the entire landscape. And much like how an ecosystem requires an abundance of natural resources to function, you will have to pay attention to not deplete these resources which will have a fatal impact on the population of the island. As such, players will have to play a careful balancing act and find new and creative ways to proceed with building out the world without hurting the natural flow of things.

As for the buildings themselves, you get to choose from a wide variety of options ranging from granaries to temples and thick-walled villages among a host of others. Each of these buildings will most likely serve a distinct purpose, and you’ll have to create all types of structures to keep your Shimu tribe happy and content at all times. That said, not all parts of the island are going to be habitable at first.

As you can observe in the trailers, certain parts will be overflowing with toxic plants and venomous traps that will create a major hindrance to exploration. There doesn’t seem to be any combat mechanics in the game, so we don’t know whether you can fight back against these imposing threats or not. In a similar vein, we don’t know whether structures can be built in these areas or if they exist as pools for certain materials.

The fantastical island is not only vast in square footage but also seems to have plenty of verticality to it which should keep things interesting. The glider serves an important role in exploration, as can be deduced from the trailer itself. You can obviously use it to glide from a high vantage spot, which looks supremely cool but you can also use it to land on the back of an aerial creature and hitch a quick ride to wherever you want to go.

And on that note, we should talk about the flora and fauna that populate this fantastical island. Bizarre creatures that float majestically through the skyline, towering plants that loop around themselves, and horse like mounts are just a few of the many wildlife that you will get to see in Towers of Aghasba. You can also dive and explore the surrounding seas, which has its own share of unique wildlife that’s worth looking at and appreciating on its own terms.

Of course, the gorgeous visuals do a lot of heavy lifting in bringing the vivid imagination of these artists to life. Towers of Aghasba is using Unreal Engine 5 as the basis for this project, and it looks nothing short of breathtaking. We get to see some great usage of dense smoke for distant areas, which helps in accentuating the scale of this world. The texture work is also pretty good for the most part, and the bright colour palette mixes well with the surrounding clear blue waters to make for an instantly pleasing image. The animations do look somewhat crooked in comparison, so that might have to be worked on for the final release.

Coming over to the release side of things, Towers of Aghasba is slated to release sometime in 2024 for PlayStation 5 and PC via Steam. While the team does seem confident in hitting its release date, it’s best to keep expectations in check since delays and pushbacks are commonplace in such projects.

In conclusion, Towers of Aghasba is looking like a really promising project that has the potential to turn into something special. Dreamlit Games has made the right choices with its world design and gameplay elements, and if the team is able to coalesce these elements into something that’s constantly engaging – we don’t see why Towers of Aghasba will end up being one of the biggest surprise hits of the near future. Fingers crossed, until then.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.