TOWERS OF AGHASBA

Watch Towers Of Aghasba in action and it feels vast. Given your activities range from deepwater dives to climbing up cliffs or lumbering beasts, and from nurturing plants or building settlements to pinging arrows at the undead, it’s hard to get a bead on the game’s limits.

Perhaps that’s because the concept was fermenting for years before it was made. Game director Khang Le had it in mind even before his first game, 2012’s Hawken, imagining something like Minecraft in a world drawn by Studio Ghibli. “It was way too ambitious at the time,” Le says, “but the idea kept brewing.” Later, Zelda and Animal Crossing would influence its evolution, the latter softening the edges of the survival experience. “I realised how much I love to build in games,” Le says, “and how much I hate to see my stuff get destroyed by other players.”

As for Zelda, the clearest influence is that of Breath Of The Wild, felt in the skyborne serenity of gliding and a freedom to climb everything, reinforcing the sense that Aghasba’s world is extremely wide and spacious and vertical. Yet, to begin with, that expansive setting is also quite empty. “Imagine playing Zelda,” Le says, “but the town and the forest is not there, and you build the world from scratch.” You start by surveying a wasteland and then plant a ‘colossal seed’ that sprouts into a great tree that rejuvenates nature. As the tree grows, flora emerges nearby, in turn attracting fauna.