is about building spaceships. More accurately, it’s about learning to build spaceships. And if we’re being completely honest, it’s a game about learning how not to build them. At its heart is one of the most flexible digital construction toys I’ve come across, which allows for enormous complexity despite a relatively unforgiving learning curve, and Nimbatus would be a worthy purchase if its freestyle sandbox mode was all there was.
But welded onto it is a game about hopping from planet to planet whilst pursued by space gits, facing increasingly stern challenges to your engineering skill, and I’m not altogether certain what to make of it. On the one hand, it’s brutally difficult, and often in the most frustrating ways. But on the other hand, it’s an elegant piece of game design that manages to add impetus, strategy and tension to an otherwise aimless physics sandbox. It’s a roguelite whose purpose is to force you to get better at using a toy, and the more I smash my head against it, the more I think I like it.