While I applaud indie developers having the gumption to tackle combining different styles of play, or simply trying to make something new, not all such efforts work out for the best. Whether the issue is gameplay that just doesn’t seem to gel, new ideas that feel like they don’t quite work, or simply an issue of helping the player understand the vision of what’s intended, new concepts bring risks. In the case of Sky of Destruction, as far as I can tell the goal was to come up with a game that would mix together elements of shooting action and real-time strategy into something different and satisfying. Unfortunately, it only really succeeds in being a general mess.

Conceptually, you’ll be in charge of the aerial forces of whoever it is you’re fighting for, and your job will be to protect your own key ships while trying to destroy those of your enemy. At first you’ll only have access to a limited number of ship types, but as you progress you’ll get the opportunity to unlock different ones that will have their own characteristics, as well as continue to use equipment you salvage or create to power up those that you already have. Once you go into battle you’ll need to somewhat find a balance between the need to deploy specific types of ships with a given task, whether to hunt for enemies, defend, or attack a specific area. You’ll do this while also flying around yourself, evading fire and doing some damage of your own with some twin-stick shooting.

The problem is that while the summary above sounds like it could have potential on paper, in execution it’s really lacking in positives. Strategically you’re simply given too little opportunity to make meaningful decisions, and honestly while flying around it doesn’t appear your units do all that hot a job of following your orders anyway. As a shooter it’s really a bit of a mess as well, considering there’s just too much noise with ships for both sides flying around pretty erratically, and your effectiveness generally feeling weak at best. Worse, the in-game instructions are pretty terrible, with one core issue being the fact that nowhere did I see it communicated that you could shoot with the right stick, making me waste time trying every button before finally trying the right stick randomly. Continuing in that vein though, as you’d acquire equipment, blueprints, create consumable weapons and more, the text telling you what to do and conveying the rules for how everything works are next to no help at all. Some things I was able to stumble into understanding and others, after repeated attempts with no success, I simply gave up on.

In the end, Sky of Destruction’s core concept may have the potential to be interesting, but as implemented it’s simply a mess. Even if somehow everything were executed much better in terms of play, I think that the poor in-game help and descriptions for key game concepts would end up effectively hiding them by failing to properly explain most of it. Successful games are really about all aspects of the experience coming together and working as a whole, and this game simply doesn’t pull that off.