When I was reading the description for Hazel Sky, which features a young engineer who happens to be straight and white, I was left scratching my head. When it was revealed that the protagonist’s name was Shane, the first thing that came to mind was that either the developers come from an extremely tiny studio or they must not be located in the U.S., France, Sweden, Germany or the U.K. Turns out that Hazel Sky is being published by Taiwanese outfit Another Indie and the developers at Coffee Addict Studio hail from Brazil, which basically answered all my questions.
It’s a sad indictment that only studios outside of first-world nations (aside from Japan) are willing to allow gamers to play male protagonists who are engineers… male protagonists with red hair, by the way.
Anyway, the story centers around Shane being sent to the flying city of Gideon where he must pass an engineering test. However, it’s not like any other test out there and it requires both physical and mental prowess. If he fails he’ll end up being banished from the city altogether.
The trailer gives you a look at the gameplay, the environments, and some of the puzzles and platforming segments.
In some ways it reminds me a lot of Tequila Softworks’ RiME.
I’m not really sure what’s up with the whole examining objects, but I suppose that will come into play with finding and examining certain objects to solve certain puzzles. It seems like it’s a little out of the way for a game like this, but then again if it’s implemented properly it might work out okay.
The animations are kind of stiff and I don’t see much in the way of a hook that would keep players engaged for hours on end, but maybe it’s one of those slow-burn adventure games where you play a little bit of it here and there until you finally complete it.
It’s an interesting looking game to say the least, so it’s worth keeping an eye on for that reason alone.
You can look for Hazel Sky to launch at some point in 2020 for PC, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. You can learn more by visiting the official Another Indie website.
