[PAX East] ABOVE the sea

Flying is a dream for most people, but in a world that has been flooded and inhabited by giant sea creatures, it’s necessary to get around. ABOVE follows the story of Mary, a young girl on a quest to find her lost brother. To go out looking for him Mary has to build and fly different planes, helping those she meets along the way in the hopes that they might help her in return. At PAX East, developers Mighty Moth have been giving players their first chance to try the game after announcing it just a few weeks ago at GDC. On display was an early part of the game that gave a basic idea on how the planes would handle and what sort of things you would be doing in this world.

Unlike most flying based games, the player’s viewpoint isn’t in the driver’s seat of the plane, but above it, making you and your plane look like a tiny spec in a vast ocean. This camera angle is a little disorienting at first, but I was quickly able to grasp my positioning in the air. This angle also helps you admire the beautifully rendered ocean and potentially the deadly monsters which lurk underneath. The demo only featured one quest, requiring you to use a hook attached to a rope coming off your plane to retrieve some scrap metal floating around in the water. The rope only had a certain length to it, forcing you to fly close to the water. After collecting this scrap you were able to upgrade the plane to fly higher into the air. During my demo, CEO/Developer for Mighty Moth Ole Toubro pointed out to me that all of the planes were based on real world counterparts and featured upgrades that people would have actually made to those planes. After upgrading the plane, you were tasked to drop boxes into a volcano-like island, which you were now able to get to the top of because of the engine upgrade. ABOVE will be more narratively focused, so simple missions like these are likely to be the basics for what players can expect. There will be dogfighting in the game, but I was told that combat, at least with other planes, would not be a major focus of the game. The developers want to focus on a sense of escaping things that keep you tied down and chasing your dreams, like they have in getting to develop the game.

Although the demo was brief, ABOVE shows a lot of promise. The demo plane handled terrifically and certainly hinted at some of the maneuvers you would have to pull off further down the line. Currently Mighty Moth hopes to have the game out by Q1 2019 on the PC. They are also planning to bring it to as many platforms as they can, and though they haven’t announced anything I will say that my demo was on a build for the Nintendo Switch.