Cloudheim preview — A satisfying addition to the action-adventure genre

Cloudheim is the brand new action-adventure game from Noodle Cat Games that recently launched into early access on December 4th, and honestly, it has taken me by surprise. Before I was offered the chance to snag one of the review codes, I had never heard of the title, and I went from “sure, I’ll give it a try” to it sucking me in over the last few days. Having put 30 hours and counting into Cloudheim, I am excited to tell you my impressions.

Ragnarok has shattered the world, and we are the lucky ones who get to put it back together. Your home base is on the back of a flying turtle called Odin Shell, and the goal is to help out other corrupted flying lands to bring them back to harmony. You don’t get to design your own character in Cloudheim, but instead get to choose from fifteen predesigned adventurers, with a total of twenty-six becoming unlockable in the future. The designs are pretty diverse, and there should be something to please just about everyone. As you adventure along and earn that character's “trust,” you will unlock new skin variations. You can also swap to a different character at any time in the game. 

Cloudheim can be played with up to four friends, and your personal progress will be saved between visiting other players' worlds. What you accomplish with friends will also cross over to your personal world. While everything can be done with friends, Cloudheim scales to your level, so you’re never going to come across something you need to have more players to beat. The combat and boss fights are purely skill-based. 

Speaking of combat, Cloudheim uses chaotic physics-based combat, and boy, is it fun. The fighting in this game is so fluid and never feels boring or repetitive. As mentioned before, enemies scale to your level, and the game isn’t reliant on you having the best set or armor, or the shiniest new weapon. While your character can wield weapons and a minimal set of accessories, the fights are based on your situational awareness and your skill. 

There are currently four classes in the game: Runeblade, Sentinel, Breaker, and Ranger. While none of them reinvent the wheel, you can swap between any of these classes at point in the game. The classes themselves have individual skills you unlock as you level up the class. For instance, the Runeblade can cast elemental spells and sprinkle in a bit of healing, while also dishing out some crazy melee moves. Your weapons and skills level up as you use them, and your weapons will get additional enchantments as you discover weapon kits throughout your journey, mostly found in chests. You will also find accessories and what the game calls “gear” in chests. You have four slots for gear, which are skills like a kick or a lasso that help in combat. As you progress, you find updated versions of gear, such as Frigid Kick, which adds a chill effect when you kick an enemy away from you. There isn’t a lot of micromanaging with this system, and I love that about Cloudheim; it keeps things simple and lets you focus on just having fun.

That is the one thing that sticks out to me the most about Cloudheim actually, it takes a lot of the boring stuff that bogs a player down out of the equation, and it’s just FUN. You don’t have a bag, but a chest at your home base that everything you gather while adventuring gets sent to automatically, so you never have to worry about full bags and selling. When you run, you can sprint forever, and there is no fatigue bar. Jumping is a huge part of Cloudheim. Currently, I can jump five times upwards, and the second your feet hit the ground, you can do it again without a cooldown. It’s just little things like this that make the game feel fluid and not tedious.

Your home base is another example of things not feeling tedious. Cloudheim has taken a different twist on crafting, where most of the things you make aren’t for yourself, but for your shop, which is the basis for how you level up to build and decorate your home. Soon after you establish your little base on the back of the flying Odin Shell, you will be able to open a shop to help the other people of the lands re-establish themselves. 

Your shop has levels, and it levels up by selling what people buy. Each shopper will have an icon over their head, some want ore, some want raw materials, some want food, and so on. You can’t always fulfill what they want, but trying to do your best ensures they will tip your shop. As you adventure, you earn gold and Cloudheim’s currency, called Stardust. You use Stardust to buy crafting stations that are run by these adorable little creatures called Blin. Placing Blin on empty slots on your stations does various things like increase output, reduce time to craft, etc. You won’t have enough Blin to man all your stations at the start, but you can earn more through lockboxes or by feeding a creature named Gnasher the Void that you get when you establish your home. Making sure you have Blin on the stations you are currently using will help you produce extra items and reduce the duration of crafting.

The crafting is another area where Cloudheim breaks away from the usual monotony that so many of these base-building games seem to use. There are no confusing or bloated crafting menus, and in fact, there are no crafting menus at all. You just toss the items you get while you’re out adventuring in the station, it turns on, and it spits out a product. The only thing you can use for your own character that I have seen in my thirty-plus hours is the weapons. If it’s the first time you’ve made a specific weapon or upgrade, your character will keep it for use; otherwise, you sell it in the shop. As a side note, the visual way crafting works in this game is extremely satisfying to me, and I look forward to coming back from a dungeon or exploring to craft and set items in my shop.

Once your shop gets some levels on it, you will be able to unlock more crafting stations, bigger additions to your house, and new cosmetic items for your house. Finding the unlock icon to build your house is easy to miss, and apparently has been moved off to the side of the main crafting area since the earlier versions of the game. It’s to the right of the teleport gate, but once you have your house up, you can unlock some really cool decoration items with Stardust and gold as you level your shop up, and it appears that you can place decorations anywhere on the Odin Turtle as of now, so the whole island is your playground.

Exploring in the game is also quite fulfilling, as there are secrets and puzzles scattered all over the place, and I mean they are very common, so getting in the habit of looking all around every part of the map was something I adopted early on. There are chests, puzzles, and hidden areas around every turn it seems, so it feels like you always have something new to figure out or unlock. Gathering resources is a breeze, no tedious stopping and getting your mining pick out, you just roll right through rocks to gather the ore. As mentioned above, jumping is a big part of Cloudheim, and if there are puzzles that reveal small purple circles you can reach massive heights, which feels so satisfying. There is no fall damage, so you can fly high with no consequences. Again, I cannot emphasize enough how free and fun this game feels to play. The graphics and colors are so bright and cheerful that I find myself smiling almost the whole time I am playing. 

As you progress through the starting island, you will eventually have to go into instanced dungeons, and let me tell you, while Cloudheim might look like a cozy base-building game, it really has some amazing boss fight mechanics. I am currently just opening up the third floating island, and have done several dungeons on the previous two, and all of them have had exciting boss fights at the end, most of which will have some sort of mechanic or puzzle that is the key to taking them down. This game might be bright and cheerful, but it isn’t just fluff; there is fulfilling combat behind the beauty. 

Cloudheim has left me with a wonderful first impression for this preview. It has been a breath of fresh air, breaking away from other games in its genre that use tedious time sinks as a way to keep you engaged. Everything about Cloudheim feels fun and unrestrictive, and it lets you just get to the things that we enjoy about gaming. Fluid and in-depth combat make it stand out from the crowd, and taking away managing inventory and armor sets lets the player focus on exploration and base building. 

Noodle Cat Games has already pumped out 5 major patches, along with several small fixes coming in several times a week. There is a lovely roadmap in place for players to see what to expect next, including holiday-themed events. I am very excited to see how this game develops, because even in early access, this game far surpasses other games in this genre that I have played. 

In conclusion, Cloudheim is a fun and unique addition to the action-adventure/base-building genre that took me by complete surprise with its carefree and flexible gameplay. There is very little to lose by checking out this title, and I think we will see great things in future updates. Cloudheim is currently on the Steam and Epic store.