| Airborne Empire | |||
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| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Airborne Empire is a strategy city-builder with an open-world twist where you build your own floating city above the clouds. Read our review of its early-access build to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Everything We Know About Airborne Empire
Airborne Empire Story Plot
The story of Airborne Empire places you in the role of the mayor and developer of a floating city, tasked with reviving the long-lost airborne kingdoms and turning your humble flying settlement into a thriving airborne empire. Starting with nothing more than a modest town hall and no housing or expectation to your city’s name, you must rely on ingenuity, resource gathering, and forging alliances to rebuild a legacy amidst skies teeming with danger.
As sky pirates threaten your ambitions with relentless raids from both land and sky, your challenge is not just to grow your flying hamlet but to ensure its survival. Whether your city will rise to reclaim the glory of ages past or succumb to the perils of the skies is in your hands.
Airborne Empire Gameplay
Airborne Empire incorporates staple mechanics of the city-building genre while blending open-world exploration, RPG progression, and strategy-based defense elements. Players begin with a small, modest settlement floating in the sky, tasked with avoiding sky pirate attacks and exploring new areas to gather resources essential for the city’s growth.
The game features a tech tree that unlocks new buildings, technologies, and methods to expand the city. Among these are the Lift, Propulsion, and Morale buildings, though their specific functions have not yet been fully detailed.
The ever-present threat of sky pirates adds a layer of urgency to gameplay. Players must construct defensive structures such as turrets, defense arrays, walls, and systems to enhance mobility. These defenses are critical for withstanding continuous bombardments from sky pirates’ anti-air batteries and thwarting their boarding parties, which could jeopardize the city’s long-term survival.
As players expand their territory within the game’s grid-based city-building system, new opportunities for development emerge. However, a larger city comes with greater challenges, as it becomes harder to defend. Meanwhile, the sky pirates adapt, finding new strategies to cause destruction with each failed attack.
Airborne Empire Release Date
Released January 13, 2025
Airborne Empire was released exclusively for the PC via Steam early-access on January 13, 2025.
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| Price | $29.99 | ||
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Airborne Empire Review [Early Access]
Exceeds Sky-High Expectations
If you’ve dabbled in as many city-builders as I have, you know they can blur into a homogenous haze of grid layouts, tech-tree drudgery, and rinse-and-repeat mechanics. Sure, every so often, a gem like Against the Storm or Frostpunk claws its way out of the monotony to demand attention. But let’s be honest—after years of tinkering with resource ratios and managing pixelated populations, even these shining exceptions are fighting an uphill battle.
To truly grab the attention of someone who’s been in this genre for the greater part of their life, you’ll need more than just another “Builders of Wherever” or “Whatever-city”. You’ll need something extraordinary, something that doesn’t just step out of the crowd but kicks the crowd over entirely.
As much as I’d love to crown Airborne Empire as exactly that, it’s not quite cruising at that altitude yet, despite the puffed-up preamble I gave it. That’s not to say it’s a letdown—not by a long shot. In fact, I’m genuinely impressed by its innovative mechanics and the elegant way it marries disparate genres. But let’s be clear: it’s in early access for a reason, and there are turbulence patches to navigate before it can earn its wings.
Enough with the pre-flight pleasantries, though. Strap in, stow those parachutes, and secure your oxygen masks—it’s time to climb to the skies of Airborne Empire and explore how it managed to outpace even my most lofty expectations at such an early stage.
A Simple Concept Executed to Near-Perfection
Let’s talk about the beating heart of Airborne Empire: its concept. At its core, it’s a city-builder—but instead of developing on solid ground, your city takes to the skies, perched on a platform supported by airpunk tech like propellers, sails, and other fantastical mechanisms. If this was the end of its entire concept—a Mortal Engines-esque, Skyhaven-adjacent facelift—I’d not have wasted time with it. Fortunately, Airborne Empire doesn’t just flirt with the idea of a city in the skies, it marries into the idea entirely.
You won’t have to suspend your disbelief too much in this game, because it thoroughly accounts for the practicalities—and perils—of a floating metropolis. Aerodynamics? You bet. Lift, Drag, and Propulsion are fundamental mechanics, making your city’s stability as much of a resource to manage as food or fuel. And yes, weight distribution matters. Build too much on one side without counterbalancing, and your skyborne haven might start listing like a ship in a storm. Even within the constraints of a grid system, this forces you to rethink layouts in innovative ways.
What about the inherent dangers of living miles above the ground? Airborne Empire tackles these, too. From the pitch-black void of high altitudes to the ever-present risk of streets dropping straight into the abyss, the game keeps you on your wingtips. You’ll need to counter these hazards with specialized buildings that mitigate the risks and keep your citizens safe if you want to keep production going.
Plain and simple, the genius of Airborne Empire isn’t just that it looks like a city-builder in the clouds; it feels like one. Every mechanic, every design choice, commits to its premise, creating a game that blows past the honeymoon phase of a new city-builder and cements itself as a unique idea you’d want to keep experiencing.
Who Would’ve Ever Considered an Open-World City-Builder?
Just to keep the praises going, what really gives Airborne Empire an edge is its audacious and oddly effective fusion of two genres that, on paper, should clash like oil and water: city-building and open-world exploration. A game about settling down and constructing a municipal masterpiece combined with one that thrives on constant movement and expansive discovery? It sounds like a recipe for disaster. And yet, here it is, and here I am raving about it.
The secret to this seemingly impossible union lies in how Airborne Empire takes the city-building genre as its foundation and boldly bends (or outright shatters) its conventions to accommodate its open-world RPG elements. It doesn’t overcommit, undersell, or cherry-pick just the best bits of either genre—it created something new that, frankly, could only exist with its core identity as a floating city-builder.
Sticking true to its airborne theme, your city is never tethered to the ground. Logistical micromanagement is practically nonexistent because if resources are too far, you don’t haul them in with trade routes, your entire city glides to where they are instead.
Diplomacy no longer requires foreign correspondence or connections. Your city is the emissary, descending majestically upon settlements to inspire awe—or dread. Land acquisition? Not applicable. There’s no land to claim, only sky, which wouldn’t make sense to have to buy. Instead, you juggle Lift, Drag, and Propulsion, mechanics that determine how much you can build, how fast your city moves, and how to offset its growing weight.
Even the overarching objective breaks from tradition. Instead of cultivating a stationary haven into some utopian benchmark, you roam an expansive map, harvesting resources, forging alliances with powerful factions, and uncovering secrets—all while constructing a city in motion. If this is how oil and water mix, then give me more of it.
The World-Building is as Satisfying as the City-Building
One of the most surprising—and delightful—aspects of Airborne Empire is its world-building. After all, what’s the point of soaring through the skies if there’s nothing below but a dull, featureless expanse? Thankfully, that’s not the case here. Believe it or not, this city-builder has lore—a rarity in a genre that typically dumps you in the middle of nowhere and says, “Rebuild Chicago. Go.”
The setting is an archipelago of floating islands, teeming with intrigue, rival leaders, and sky pirates that threaten your progress. And there’s more to your journey than just expanding your aerial city: it’s all in service of reviving the legendary Airborne Kingdom. Yes, there’s an actual narrative underpinning your travels, and your interactions with other leaders, battles in the sky, and steady expansion all feed into this larger goal.
No, the writing won’t snag a Pulitzer anytime soon, but in a genre where backstory comes at a premium, it may as well have already.
Some Bugs and Monotonous Combat to Deal With Still
Of course, no game is without its flaws, and Airborne Empire is no exception. These imperfections, while not grounding the experience entirely, do keep it from reaching the sun. The grid system, for instance, can be finicky—particularly when placing propulsion buildings. And while the visuals have a charming, stylized aesthetic, the lack of detail in some assets feels more like a limitation than a choice.
Then there are the Sky Pirate raids, which fall flat—not because they’re too challenging, but because they’re woefully underwhelming. Despite NPCs hyping them as a major threat, they barely register as more than a nuisance during the early and mid-game. The encounters lack variety, both in terms of enemy types and the strategies you can employ to defend against them. A little more spice here would go a long way in keeping these battles engaging and dynamic.
Still, these issues are relatively minor against the backdrop of an otherwise fantastic game. Airborne Empire is already bursting with creativity and ambition in its early access state. With a bit more refinement and attention to these rough edges, this game could transcend its current heights. Give it time, a little spit and polish, and you can watch this puppy soar.
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Airborne Empire Product Information
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| Title | AIRBORNE EMPIRE |
|---|---|
| Release Date | January 13, 2025 |
| Developer | The Wandering Band LLC |
| Publisher | The Wandering Band LLC, Stray Fawn Publishing |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam) |
| Genre | Strategy, Simulation, RPG, City-Builder |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Airborne Empire Website |
