| Towers of Aghasba | |||
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| Gameplay & Story | Release Date | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Towers of Aghasba is an open world survival craft game about reclaiming your home from monsters. Read on to learn everything we know, our review of the demo, and more.
Everything We Know About Towers of Aghasba
Towers of Aghasba Plot
Decades after the Shimu people were forced to flee their homes because of the mysterious Withered, they have returned to reclaim their rightful home: the fantastical land of Aghasba. As the junior architect, it’s your responsibility to revive Aghasba’s once-thriving ecosystem and rebuild your civilization to its former greatness.
Towers of Aghasba Gameplay
Explore the island of Aghasba with its varied terrain, colossal mountains, and visually stunning vistas. Rebuild Shimu settlements and befriend creatures as you populate and revitalize the ecosystem in this sandbox with bizarre ecosystems. Craft equipment and concoctions to help you do battle against the lingering Withered in the island, where you can invite up to 3 friends to help you in your quest to retake Aghasba.
In Early Access, players will get to explore 6 vast open-world lands, build 3 types of settlements to design and decorate, 3 ecosystems to grow in your homestead as well as over 50 unique creatures to discover. More will be introduced as the game continues to be actively developed in Early Access, so stay tuned!
Towers of Aghasba Release Date
Towers of Aghasba was released November 19, 2024 in Early Access for PC and PlayStation 5.
It was released at 1 p.m. EDT / 10 a.m. PDT on PS5, with the Steam version following suit an hour later.
Towers of Aghasba Review (Early Access)
A Fantastical Mess
I’m a big fan of survival games—not as much as I am of ruining my life and wallet with gacha games, but survival games are definitely up there (yes, I know gacha is a mechanic). So, I was understandably excited to try Towers of Aghasba after Palworld and Sons of the Forest spoiled me silly almost a year ago.
It did have such a banger trailer during State of Play 2024, after all.
Now that I’ve tried it, I can’t help but feel… underwhelmed. It’s not that the game itself is bad. On the contrary, I enjoy the slow pace, quirky NPCs, and the whole revitalizing-islands-with-mystical-power thing. I mean, who doesn’t love a fantasy about bringing dead worlds back to life?
The story follows a young apprentice architect and her people, who shipwreck near a dying island. Luckily, it’s the homeland they lost to the Withered—a lifeless scourge that detests all life, leaving wastelands in its wake. Now, you and the Shimu people must reclaim what’s rightfully yours.
It’s an open-world survival game with crafting, adventure, and action. Sounds great, right? The problem is, it stumbles at almost every step. Frames drop every few seconds, terrain actively fights you, your inventory is just grossly insufficient, NPCs clip through walls (or floors), and cutscenes feature disappearing characters or unresponsive dialogues.
To be fair, Towers of Aghasba is still in Early Access, and if the devs keep at it, there’s potential. But right now, it’s hard to enjoy when you could just as easily pick up something else while waiting for patches.
The Real Survival Gameplay is Against Your Patience
Survival games with crafting and base building aren’t exactly known for their speed. They’re slow burners, with progression that often feels like an uphill climb—but that’s the point. It doesn’t make sense to start a new Minecraft world and immediately build a semi-automated farm; you first have to get baptized by the experience of punching trees. The reward comes when you’ve worked your way up, and suddenly the whole world feels like your playground.
Towers of Aghasba, however, takes that “slow start” concept and stretches it out until it’s almost unbearable. Regardless of how far you progress, the game seems determined to keep your feet stuck in the mud. And unlike other survival games where the slow pace is a deliberate, natural buildup, here it feels like the game itself is holding you back.
The first, and most glaring, issue is the absolutely tiny inventory space. You can carry so few items that after just a few minutes of gathering materials, you’ll find yourself trekking back to your storage boxes like it’s your day job. And no, it’s not a weight system—materials don’t weigh anything, and they even stack. The problem lies in the sheer variety of items the game throws at you, even from the get-go.
Every action yields a deluge of different resources. Chop down a tree? You get wood, bark, and roots. Gather berries? You also get seeds. Kill an enemy? They’ll drop meat, bones, hide, and maybe even some random trinket. The inventory simply isn’t designed to handle this much clutter, and the frustration piles up faster than your stacks of unusable junk. On top of that, your tools need to be manually selected, yes, but the game uses an extremely unwieldy radial selection tool instead of the much faster number key-bound hotkeys.
Naturally, you’ll turn to storage boxes as a solution. But guess what? Those are laughably limited, too. You can only store so many items in each one, which means the only way to keep up is to craft a small forest of storage boxes. And since crafting storage boxes requires even more materials, you’re stuck in an endless loop of gather-craft-store-repeat. It’s like playing a survival game inside another survival game.
That’s not even the end of it. The game doesn’t let you place markers on your map, so unless you have a photographic memory—or a notebook handy—you’ll constantly forget where rare resources are. And just when you think you’ve found a moment to gather materials in peace, the game’s overly aggressive enemies will chase you halfway across the island. The worst part? Your settlement guards, who should theoretically help you out, just stand around like they’re on a permanent cigarette break. So much for teamwork.
To top it off, the main quest doesn’t do the game any favors. Instead of offering compelling objectives or an engaging narrative, it boils down to a glorified checklist of chores. It’s like the game is holding your hand while also slapping it away, making sure you don’t get too creative or go full farming simulator on it. The tasks feel more like busywork than a meaningful contribution to the story.
At its core, survival games are about overcoming challenges and eventually thriving in a hostile world. But in Towers of Aghasba, it feels like the biggest challenge isn’t the environment or the enemies—it’s the game itself.
Quirky, Predictable NPCs
If there’s one bright spot in Towers of Aghasba, it’s the NPCs. They’re not exactly complex, mind you—far from it. Most of them are so one-dimensional that you can predict their every move or line of dialogue with eerie accuracy. But somehow, that works in the game’s favor. These characters are so exaggerated in their personalities that they swing right back around to being entertaining.
You’ve got the righteous, by-the-book types who radiate moral superiority and deliver cringe-worthy inspirational speeches, the kind that makes you roll your eyes so hard you can see your own brain. Then there are the egotistical, self-obsessed goofballs who somehow think they’re the center of the universe. And don’t forget the occasional wildcard—characters who are just plain weird for no discernible reason.
Now, why does this work? Because the game knows they don’t really matter. These NPCs aren’t meant to be pivotal figures driving the plot forward. Instead, they’re like set dressing with a pulse—there to provide flavor text, quirky distractions, and the occasional breadcrumb trail leading you to the next objective. They’re not here to win awards for character development, and honestly, that’s fine. Their over-the-top antics and predictable quirks add a layer of absurd humor to the otherwise frustrating experience.
Unfortunately, the voice acting doesn’t do them any favors. Most of the dialogue is delivered in a constructed language—a kind of gibberish that’s supposed to sound mystical but often comes across as random noise. It’s tolerable during moments of chanting or ritualistic scenes, but for day-to-day interactions, it feels like a missed opportunity. Imagine if those egotistical characters had voice lines dripping with sarcasm that you could actually understand. It could’ve added so much more personality.
Still, I’ll admit the NPCs kept me amused, if only because they were so ridiculous. If nothing else, they’re proof that you can find entertainment in the most unexpected places—even in a game riddled with flaws.
You Need a Pesticide for All These Bugs
Let’s talk about bugs, and no, I don’t mean the ones scuttling around the game’s environment (there’s a lot of them, by the way). I’m talking about the glitches, crashes, and downright baffling errors that plague Towers of Aghasba. You’d think that as a survival game, the real challenge would be the Withered or the hostile creatures roaming the world. But nope—the real fight is against the game itself.
Take wall climbing, for example. In theory, it’s a cool feature that lets you scale cliffs and explore vertically. It worked extremely well in Breath of the Wild, Wuthering Waves, and Genshin Impact. In practice? It’s a nightmare. Your character either refuses to grab onto walls, clings to them like a terrified cat even when the surface levels out, or, worse, decides gravity doesn’t apply and just floats off mid-climb, forcing unwanted faceplanting scenes (figuratively).
Then there’s the terrain. You’d think navigating the map would be straightforward, but no. The environment is littered with tiny, insignificant objects—rocks, roots, shrubs—that may act like impassable barriers. I’ve been physically blocked by things so small I initially thought they were just visual clutter. And sometimes, just for fun, these objects will trap you entirely.
But wait, there’s more! NPCs seem to have a talent for breaking the laws of reality. They’ll clip through walls, fall halfway into the ground, or, my personal favorite, vanish entirely at the beginning or mid-conversation. On the flip side, I’ve also encountered chests that float in mid-air, reticles that persist through cutscenes (accidentally creating James Bond-esque intros), and NPCs who T-pose if the game’s under heavy load. It’s equal parts hilarious and frustrating—like the game is trolling you at every turn.
Oh, and, yes, my game does crash at times. Not a very common occurrence, though!
Now, I get it—it’s Early Access. Bugs are expected, and Towers of Aghasba is still in its infancy. But there’s a difference between a rough edge here and there and a full-blown infestation. The sheer volume and severity of these issues make it hard to immerse yourself in the game, no matter how compelling the premise might be.
Is Towers of Aghasba Worth It?
Not Right Now, But Maybe Soon
Here’s the thing: I didn’t hate my time with Towers of Aghasba. In fact, there were many moments where I genuinely had fun. The concept of balancing creative and destructive acts to harvest a mystical energy resource is intriguing, even if it comes with restrictions that limit your freedom. At its core, there’s a good game buried under the layers of bugs and clunky mechanics.
But for now, it’s hard to recommend. The unpolished systems, frustrating design choices, and relentless technical issues make the experience more exhausting than enjoyable. That said, I’m cautiously optimistic about its future. With enough time and dedication from the developers, this could evolve into a standout survival game.
So, is Towers of Aghasba worth it? Not right now. But maybe—just maybe—it will be someday. After all, if there’s one thing the developers have, it’s time.
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Towers of Aghasba Product Information
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| Title | TOWERS OF AGHASBA |
|---|---|
| Release Date | November 19, 2024 (Early Access) |
| Developer | Dreamlit Inc. |
| Publisher | Dreamlit Inc. |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam), PlayStation 5 |
| Genre | Adventure, Survival |
| Number of Players | 1-4 (Online) |
| Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Towers of Aghasba Official Website |
