Review: A Nation Of Wind

"A Nation of Wind" (Commonly shortened to ANow) is an beautiful freeware game set in a world of floating islands where the goal is to colonise all the islands in this shattered world. (Note: It is in beta, but the creator has no more plans to add anything more, so it seems this is the final version.)

The player controls their own airship  using the wasd or arrow keys and moves around each medium sized map made from 5-8 islands. When the players starts the game, they will jump into a fairly brief tutorial, that explains how to switch between build weapon and magic mode, and the basic functions of each. Magic is not explained very much in the tutorial, so you may have to bring up the help menu to learn more about it. 

Once the tutorial has been completed, a map is brought up showing a dozen or so islands. These islands each have their own stats, such as how common stone is, or how many enemies appear.

Gathering resources is similar to some RTS games, you build the appropriate building and it will gather the resources it can in a 1 tile radius and send it to you in a hot air balloon at the end of the day. Of coarse, it will need to be the right building for the right tile, such as a woodmill for forest tiles. 

A map of islands has 8 obelisks. If the player claims 4 or more of these by putting temples of magic around them, than the stage is complete. Building temples around the obelisks also boots your magic powers which are used to do things such as flatten mountains, create tiles or clear up rivers. 

You will need to defend your town with your harpoons, bombs and guns against the many flying creatures that appear from the various maelstroms around the map. It's quite frustrating when your town is destroyed when you are elsewhere on the map, so it is a necessity to build watch towers, turrets, and perhaps 

walls. 

     

The Skyharbour acts as a trading post and a portal to the other islands once the stage has been completed. You will need to trading post if you suddenly have no gold and no town halls to make you gold.

The soundtrack of the game is beautiful and minimalistic and suits the games style very well, even if it is a little repetitive. 

But argh.... the menus stick out with its cluttered brown info and scrolling checked background hurts my eyes. 

Positives: 

Nice style, addictive, awesome music and gameplay, nice buildings and setting.

Negatives:

The menus, slight lack of variety.

Final score:

A great free game and fun to play. 8/10

A nation of wind can be downloaded at: http://nationofwind.tumblr.com/download