Forward to the Sky is a short, two hour journey to stop the evil witch at the top of the tower. Or… is she truly evil?
I’ve had interest in Forward to the Sky since I saw it get greenlit several months ago. Now, finally, it’s seen release on Steam and I was excited to play it. The gameplay feels very similar to Zelda titles. You play as the Princess who has decided to head for the tower and stop the witch that dwells there.
From the start you’ll get a sense that what you’ve heard about this witch isn’t true. That she isn’t really evil. However, at the same time, you’ll also get a sense that what your character has heard (which she will monologue) is true. As you go through the levels, the characters will interact through speaking. The voice acting is actually fairly good, I thought. The music, however, gets a bit repetitive as there was only really one track per level.
In each level there are 100 crystals to collect. Collecting all 100 will reveal the full story for that level. There are 3 statues to be found and destroyed in each level, as well as 25 enemies. The enemies do get progressively harder… or really, just more annoying. The worst for me were the soldiers and the second tier mages. The second tier mages caused me to have one of the dumbest deaths I’ve ever seen – I went in to try and kill 2 that were next to each other and they got me in a perfect combo with their attacks to just kill me. Of course, if you die, you have to restart the level and I was halfway through… Wasn’t really that happy.
The combat is extremely simplistic and really feels like an after thought in some places. You have two types of attacks – a regular sword combo and a combo that leads into a sword stab motion. The second one does a bit more damage but is easily interrupted, whereas the first does a bit less but can hit things a bit easier. For the most part you’ll probably never really use the second one. At least I didn’t really use it. You also have a backwards leap that isn’t really useful at all. In theory you can try to use it to avoid attacks but it hardly seems to actually avoid them. Really, it’s a bit hard to avoid attacks in general I thought. This added with the fact there isn’t really a way to heal… Yeah.
Despite my complaints about the combat and the slightly repetitive music, I still thought Forward to the Sky was a fairly good title. I enjoyed the storyline and thought the puzzles were well done. Well okay, maybe except the laser beam puzzles. I wasn’t a fan of those as much. However, the ones that actually made me think hey, what do I need to do here? Those were great.
Would I suggest it though? If you’re looking for a short (~2 hour) adventure puzzle title to play, Gamers looking for something a bit more hardcore may want to look elsewhere though. I enjoyed myself playing it in the end, though things like that mage stunlock death were frustrating. I’ll probably be heading back in at some point to try and pick up the one statue I missed in a level.
Forward to the Sky Review Score
3.5/5
I would like to thank the developer for providing me with a copy of the game for review.
Forward to the Sky is available now on Steam.
