Echoes of Elysium Playtest Preview: Soarin’ and Buildin’

Thanks to the people at Loric Games, I had the opportunity to sit and playtest their upcoming (and first) indie game, Echoes of Elysium. Echoes of Elysium is a procedurally generated open-world adventure RPG that allows you to take to the skies in airships and explore with your friends or by yourself. The best part of the whole ordeal is that each airship is built by players. You have to explore, gather materials, and brave each biome in the game to make the best airship you can to fully explore the world of Elysium. Along the way, you will battle enemy airships, clockwork mechanical enemies, and possibly even your friends.

Echoes of Elysium‘s gameplay is pretty simple at its core: gather and build. For the playtest, we were put in charge of a very basic airship consisting of a deck and steering wheel. We flew it around in the sky near the starting area to gather debris that we could use to build upon our foundation. Your character can jump and fly around with cool little wings stored inside a backpack. The flying feels a lot like the rocket belt in Pilotwings. Holding the button long enough lets you soar through the sky like you are swimming in the clouds, while using it sparingly lets you perform tiny hops to keep yourself afloat. But keep in mind that it does have its limits, and making landfall from a really high point could result in your death. After you gather enough materials, you can use them to create a rudder for your airship and an engine to start exploring the world.

Building in Echoes of Elysium is pretty straightforward. After creating the object you wish to use, you can place it in front of your character pretty much anywhere where you want and then rotate it in any orientation to attach it to your airship. I have never played Fortnite or Minecraft, but I’ve at least seen them. Echoes of Elysium‘s building seems similar to building in those games; in other words, it is simple and intuitive, which is important in a game like this, where you may want to constantly improve upon what you already built. Airships can become creative masterpieces or bare-bones flying planks of wood, whatever suits your fancy to get to your next objective.

After building a working airship, you can fly to any nearby islands to start your exploration. The world is procedurally generated, so each new adventure will be different from the previous ones in terms of what kinds of sky islands you will explore and what you will run into. Some islands are dry dock ports that allow you to create additional airships to build up your fleet for yourself and your friends. They also serve as respawn locations if something terrible happens to your airship.

You will also need to explore (mostly) uninhabited islands to get more resources and build even better equipment. These islands can — and will — be inhabited by enemies you must defeat in melee combat with armor and weapons you need to craft for yourself. Of course, you can also use your airship in combat. By equipping it with cannons and harpoon guns, you can engage in battle with both enemies on land and those in the sky, such as enemy airships. It’s a fun and intuitive gameplay loop for those looking to scratch that classic Skies of Arcadia airship feel.

Loric Games also has plans to add quite a bit more to Echoes of Elysium before it releases sometime this year, so do keep it on your radar if this is your cup of tea. You can already download the Airship Builder tool on Steam to play around with making some fancifully designed airships and even submit it in their airship building contest that runs till the end of April. Echoes of Elysium has no specific release date yet, but Loric Games plans to release it sometime in 2025 for Windows via Steam.