I’m a bit of a survival game nut. I still fondly remember the horrifically terrifying jaunts through an island full of cannibals and bone totems in Sons of the Forest. The adventure and sense of whimsy that you get on the vast open seas building a raft in, well, Raft. Even if I eventually bounce off of some of them, distracted by bigger hallmark releases, I have some of those fun water-cooler-talk style gameplay moments from these sandbox games still ingrained in my brain. Towers of Aghasba is one of the most recent examples of such ventures, released earlier this month. Though its Early Access launch is quite rough, it’s an adventure with a lot of promise.
Towers of Aghasba has players controlling an adventurer who’s part of a tribe. Having your nomadic crew crash-landed their sea-faring ship on a vast open set of land. Coincidentally, it is the same land that the tribe had heard whispers of. A place where you could live off the land for the rest of your life, the grass was green and the animals and flora were abundant. The problem is where you are is nothing like that. Everything’s dehydrated and dead. Temples are dilapidated and there’s little to see and do. It’s up to you to bolster the tribe up, set camp on these new lands, restore it to what it once was and set out into the great unknown. I’ll spoil that great unknown for you right now; it’s a little disappointing thus far.
There are many quests and small tasks to keep you busy and guide you towards progression in Towers of Aghasba. One of your earliest tasks is establishing the first village and expanding outwards. Planting a magical and rare sapling seed causes a monolith of a tree to grow. When this occurs, grass, greenery and fauna return from hiding and cracks in the Earth. You learn that from here you can expand outwards by sporadically placing these trees and other saplings like it to extend the reach of your vibrant ecosystem and keep the dead rot at bay. Combine this with the typical base-building affairs you get with survival games, including setting up farms and other buildings for material creation and it’s very apparent that you have full control over how picturesque you want your world to look. I just wish all the in-between stuff of that was smoother and more fun to play.
Towers of Aghasba will every so often roadblock your general feeling of meaningful progression by tasking you with quests that are a pain to resolve or even getting registered that you’ve completed them. An early mission required me to be more acquainted with the hunting found in the game, requiring me to kill a series of fish. The problem was, that the damned things don’t spawn half the time. When they do, you’re squinting through the thick water to, hopefully, line up the shot just right. When I finally snagged one with a spear, I had to clear my inventory for a moment to free room to pick it up. In the maybe twenty seconds I was going through this ordeal, I hopped out of the menu and was about to grab it when it somehow miraculously sprung to life and swam away. Let me re-emphasise: it didn’t despawn like you’d expect. It revived itself, swam away and then the process had to begin again. Bizarre.
The game is full of these rough edges. Creatures you’re chasing mid-hunt will despawn in front of your very eyes. It’s not all that hard to get stuck on the topography as the game uses the Breath of the Wild style approach of letting you climb anything, but without the polish. A tent I placed to rest in my village rendered a vital NPC unable to be interacted with because, following a story sequence, he now stands exactly where this tent is. Certain missions task you with feeding animals, but both foods such as foraged berries are in short supply and the game never tells you that you need to strictly feed animals in this one specific area. That’s just something you have to work out for yourself! I wasted time lobbing my scarce amount of food at different animals that wouldn’t take to it. Silly me!
Towers of Aghasba also makes the survival game cardinal sin of making gathering supplies and resources too tedious and unclear. Boulders that look like they can be mined for stone can’t because it’s solely environmental flourishes. You instead have to go to this other rock that can be mined, indicated only by this tiny green arrow that’s entirely too easy to miss that hangs above it. Foraging spots such as bushes don’t always net you the same type of resource you need. I felt like cursing the skies every time a bush decided to give me a fibre instead of a thatch, further delaying me from fulfilling a milestone goal of resources needed to restore a broken temple or building.
I’ve been incredibly critical of Towers of Aghasba thus far, but it must be further emphasised how much pretty and wonder is still found within. This is a game incredibly strong in vibes; the day and night cycle works beautifully, often leaving me taken aback and just pausing and taking it all in as dawn breaks while I’m atop a mountain, looking at my growing civilisation and greenery that I developed myself. There are weird and wonderful creatures including (friendly) disembodied giant walking hands that look ripped from Elden Ring. When you grow one of these rarer great big trees, these little green sprite characters emerge and greet you with tasks. The most curious sight for me thus far was the fact that I saw a horde of these little guys surrounding an animated and ethereal pile of dung in a cave. Really.
It has a hang glider that you can deploy to safely ascend from great heights and take it all in as you do so. The mark of any good video game. I can’t be mad at Towers of Aghasba all that much and though it’s far from where it should be (perhaps it shouldn’t even quite be in Early Access just yet), I’ve also seen games come back from far worse. The detailed roadmap promises quality-of-life improvements including new questlines and biomes, villages, creatures, and so much more. Its ‘major questline’ looks to be coming as of 2026, a year that still feels incredibly far off. I hope it gets there and I can then confidently convince my friends to pick it up despite the overabundant survival games out there now.
Towers of Aghasba still has a long road ahead of it during its Early Access period that’s currently available on PS5 and PC. While I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it right now due to bugs and some frustrating tedium, its vibes and premise prove there’s a diamond in the rough there. Stay tuned, eager survival fans.
About the Author
Charlie Kelly
She/Her, They/Them
Charlie loves her video games as much as she loves dumb, charming JRPG protagonists: probably way too much. You can often catch her spending too much time being emotional over LGBT stories in games. She also thinks Yakuza 6 is the best one.
