Awakening in the Adobe Abyss
Dust swirls like a specter’s sigh across the sun-baked badlands, where the line between life and the great beyond blurs faster than a mirage at high noon. Welcome to Above Snakes, a 2025 PS5 port (courtesy of Crytivo’s console carriage, following its 2023 PC premiere) from the indie trailblazers at Square Glade Games, a dynamic duo whose Kickstarter corral rounded up €56,000 from 1,756 backers for this isometric odyssey of outlaws and otherworldlies. Priced at a prospector’s pittance of $19.99 (or $29.99 bundled with the digital developer’s diary and soundtrack sips), it blends mild-mannered survival crafting with world-weaving whimsy in a Wild West whisper that’s equal parts Don’t Starve‘s devious drudgery and Minecraft‘s modular mirth, clocking 15-25 hours for the core cattle drive, with endless eternities in exploration’s expansive elbow room. Set in a fictional frontier flickering between 1870s grit and ghostly glitches, you embody Aiyana, a half-Native, half-settler orphan born from battlefield blooms amid the bloodiest clashes of the Indian Wars, a poignant premise penned with purpose, where love’s legacy lures you from the grave to graft a new ghost town from the grit.
The narrative, a lightweight lasso of lore rather than a noose of necessity, unfurls as a resurrection riff: revived by a shaman’s spirit in a limbo of lost souls, Aiyana awakens amid adobe ruins, tasked with taming the terrain while teasing out the town’s tragic tapestry, settler sins summoning spectral serpents, or ancestral angers animating adobe apparitions? Quests quiver with quiet quests: barter with beleaguered blacksmiths for bullet blueprints, or befriend beleaguered braves for bowstring blessings, each errand etching empathy into the ether without enforcing fevered fetches. It’s a story that starts strong, a “solid Wild West yarn” with supernatural spice, but sags into “uninspired” interludes where spectral summons feel like “out-of-place oddities,” as one reviewer reckoned after unraveling the ruins. For survival settlers starved of Valheim‘s Viking vigor or Subnautica‘s submerged sprawl, Above Snakes offers a tamer trail: relaxing rhythms punctuated by mild mysteries, where building your base isn’t about bunkers but beauty, a balm for button-mashers burned by brutal biomes.
This PS5 polish, optimized for seamless saves and haptic hammers that hum with every hew, breathes new life into the mobile-born prototype, though early adopters whisper of a demo that hooked harder than the full frontier. Community cowboys corral kudos for the “cozy calamity” of crafting amid curses, one pixel-pecker panning for praise after prospecting 160 in-game days, though gripes gallop on the grind: “linear quests that quest too quietly,” turning triumph to tedium for the trail-hardened. Subtle humor slinks in like a saloon snake: your character’s exaggerated stumbles over freshly placed cacti, or a spirit guide’s dry quip about “eternal dust allergies,” a wry reminder that even in the afterlife, the West is weirdly welcoming. With a Metacritic murmur of 72 and 76% Steam acclaim from recent rangers, it’s a sales saddle that’s saddled up steadily, proving indies can lasso lightning in bottles of boundless beauty.
Tiles of the Tumbleweed Trail: Crafting the Canvas
Gameplay in Above Snakes is a harmonious hoedown of creation and curation, where survival’s sharper edges are sanded smooth for a sandbox that prioritizes poetry over peril, blending Terraria‘s tile-tinkering with Stardew Valley‘s settler serenity in a spectral spin that’s “solid and easy to sink into,” even if echoes of familiarity faint. You stir on a spectral plain, a 16×16 tile grid representing your immediate environs, and expand it by harvesting horizons: chop saguaro arms for wood whispers, mine quartz veins for stone secrets, or forage berries from bramble bushes, all rendered in a charming isometric vista that lets you rotate for perfect placement, a “unique tile-based map system” that adds “strategy and creativity to exploration,” as enthusiasts extol. Crafting is intuitive yet inventive: fashion a pickaxe from bone and sinew for subterranean scrapes, or brew potions from desert blooms to summon rain for your nascent farm, a loop that’s “heavy on exploration and crafting” with a “dash of horror” that dares to slow the savage.
The world-weaving mechanic is the game’s golden nugget: place tiles to “reveal” procedural chunks of the map, unlocking biomes like lush oases of oracle olives or haunted hollows of hallowed husks, each with unique resources and riddles that ripple replay, a “good idea of base” that’s “boring after 2 hours” without quality-of-life quickens, as some sigh. Quests propel progression in Adventure Mode, retrieve a shaman’s totem from bandit-blighted bunkers, or mediate a ghost town’s water rights wrangle, while Exploration Mode unleashes full freedom, letting you lasso procedurally generated prairies into personal paradises, a “cozy survival” that “trades adrenaline for atmosphere,” though its “linear” leash lurches the lore. Combat, when it creeps in, is mild-mannered: dodge-roll spectral snakes or lasso undead outlaws for quick takedowns, emphasizing strategy over slaughter, a “light but intriguing story” that intrigues without intimidating.
Farming adds folksy flair: plant corn in irrigated plots, tend to ghostly goats for milk (for cheese charms, naturally), or brew moonshine from fermented fruits to trade with wandering traders, a forgiving fertility where crops grow overnight without wither woes. The companion system endears, with your coyote pal fetching fetch-ables or fighting phantoms with pint-sized pluck, while base upgrades, like a spirit-infused scarecrow that wards off wraiths, layer light RPG progression without overwhelming the zen. Quirks? The tile system’s initial opacity can feel like assembling IKEA furniture blindfolded, a “NULA calidad de vida” that nullifies novelty, and enemy AI occasionally pathfinds into your own pitfalls like drunk deputies, a “heavy particle hitch” hitched to the horror’s heel. Yet, it’s this unhurried alchemy, craft a corral one afternoon, hunt a horizon the next, that crafts addiction, a “must-have portable” that’s portable but potent for the patient pioneer.
Sagebrush Spectacles: Pixels in the Prairie Palette
Visually, Above Snakes is a canvas of canyon colors, its isometric vistas awash in sunset oranges and twilight indigos that evoke Ori and the Blind Forest‘s ethereal elegance crossed with Don’t Starve‘s quirky grit, a “polished art style” that’s “bright, colourful, and detailed enough to give you a sense of place,” though its “blocky visual presentation” blocks the blockbuster sheen. Biomes burst with bespoke beauty: badlands etched with wind-worn hoodoos in burnt siennas, canyons cloaked in creosote haze with high-res fonts that flicker like frontier fireflies, each tile placement blooming into layered landscapes with parallax depth, foreground cacti swaying, distant mesas shimmering like shattered shields. Character models, from Aiyana’s braided locks to her spectral steed’s ethereal glow, animate with fluid finesse, while supernatural flourishes like will-o’-the-wisps dancing over dig sites add a dash of otherworldly whimsy, a “voguish spin on Atari aesthetics” that’s toggleable for the twitchy.
Performance on PS5 is a steady stallion, locking 60fps in fidelity mode with ray-traced reflections rippling in rain-slicked puddles, though dynamic dimming in dense dust storms dips to 45 in boss ballets, a forgivable flicker for the atmospheric alchemy, a “heavy particle hitch” hitched but hardly halting. Audio ambles along like a harmonica solo at high noon: a soundtrack of twangy guitars and flute flourishes swells from serene strums during builds to tense tremolos in totem trials, evoking Red Dead‘s lonesome ballads with a supernatural serenade, a “one of the strongest soundtracks” that underscores the saga’s soul. Sound design delights: the satisfying thunk of a hammer on adobe, the ethereal whoosh of spirit winds, and coyote yips that echo like laughter in the void, a “sensory sink” that sinks hooks deep. Voice lines are sparse, wisely, letting environmental echoes tell tales, but Aiyana’s occasional sighs or triumphant “Yeehaw!” inject personality without overpowering the peace, minor menu mutes melting in the melee’s melody. It’s a sensory sunset that soothes the savage soul, aliasing in fog frontiers notwithstanding.
Spurs of Serenity, Snakes of Subtlety: Peaks and Pitfalls
Above Snakes‘ spurs shine in its serene synthesis: the tile-expansion twist on survival crafting feels fresh, a “unique tile-based map system” letting you “build your world piece by piece” with 100+ unique world pieces blending biomes like lush oases and haunted hollows, a “good idea of base” that’s “boring after 2 hours” without quality-of-life quickens but quickens curiosity for the creative. Adventure Mode’s linear lore, unraveling Aiyana’s heritage through spirit visions and settler showdowns, provides gentle guidance for greenhorns, a “light but intriguing story” that intrigues without intimidating, while Exploration Mode’s procedural prairies reward veterans with randomized ruins ripe for raiding, a “cozy survival” that “trades adrenaline for atmosphere and complexity for calm,” though it “may have gone too far” for the frantic. The companion coyote steals scenes, fetching flotsam or fighting phantoms with pint-sized pluck, and farming’s forgiving fertility (crops grow overnight, no wither worries) keeps the cozy quotient high, a “must-have portable” for the patient.
Snakes slither in subtlety, however: the crafting clunk, menus that meander like a lost mustang, can snag the flow, a “NULA calidad de vida” that nullifies novelty, and combat’s mildness mutes menace, with ghosts glitching through grids or bandits behaving like bewildered bots, a “supernatural monsters feel out of place” that places the peculiar poorly. Resource rarity ramps up repetitively, turning hunts into hauls that echo Minecraft‘s early ennui, a “gameplay becomes repetitive after the initial novelty wears off,” and the story’s supernatural strands fray in the finale, leaving some lore lovers longing for tighter ties, a “shallow writing” that writes off the wonder. Community cowboys concur, with tales of “addictive afternoons” terraforming ghost towns, though a few lasso complaints about the lack of multiplayer mirth, solo snakes only, no posse play, a “linear quests that quest too quietly” turning triumph to tedium. Humor hitches along: a ghost horse that phases through fences, or a totem that “curses” your crops with comically oversized gourds, keeping the grit grinning.
It’s a frontier forged with feeling, flaws as folksy as a faulty fence, but one that corrals creativity without corralling the calm, a “solid Wild West entry in the survival genre” with an “unwanted twist” that’s twisted but tolerable.
Phantoms of the Prairie: A Modular Manifesto
Beneath the badlands beats a thoughtful tale: Above Snakes isn’t just pixel-placing pastime, but a meditation on mending divides, with Aiyana’s mixed heritage mirroring the game’s blend of settler strife and indigenous spirits, fostering themes of harmony in a haunted heartland, a “lightweight story of a young woman in the middle of a conflict” that conflicts without clashing. The world-building wizardry, tiles that “awaken” procedural poetry, empowers players as pioneers of possibility, turning barren bytes into blooming biographies, a nod to survival’s soulful side amid Ark‘s aggressive arches, a “cozy survival game that’s stuck in a sort of ‘creative mode'” that’s creative but constrained. It’s educational in its echoes: quests touching on historical tensions with tact, inviting reflection on reconciliation without rote lectures, while the coyote’s loyal lopes symbolize steadfast companionship in solitude’s sprawl.
Unique unearthings abound: the “spirit forge,” where you meld mined minerals with mystic motifs for enchanted tools (a lasso that tethers tornadoes? Yes, please), or randomized ruins hiding holographic holograms of lost lore, blending AR flair with Wild West wonder, a “unique tile-based map system” that “adds strategy and creativity to exploration.” Against Eastshade‘s painterly perambulations, it stakes a supernatural claim, carving a cozy corner for contemplative crafters, a “must-have portable” that’s portable but potent. Player prospectors pan for praise, one unearthing a “hidden harmony” in the haunting, underscoring its subtle spark.
It’s more than mirage: a mosaic of making, where every tile tells a tale of taming the untamed, proving indies can lasso lightning in bottles of boundless beauty, a “solid and easy to sink into” survival that’s sinkable but satisfying.
Final Thoughts
Above Snakes saddles up as a supernatural standout, merging mild survival savvy with world-weaving wonder in a Wild West whisper that’s as relaxing as a rocker on the ranch porch. Its tile-taming triumphs and lore-laced quests craft a canvas of calm creativity, where building bases and banishing phantoms feels like frontier therapy, clocking satisfying hours without the hassle of hardcore hunger bars. With biomes blooming under your blueprint and a coyote companion that’s cuter than a corral full of kittens, it’s a homestead hit for heartland hobbyists.
The clunky crafts and spectral stutters snag like sagebrush boots, but their mild manners ensure they don’t derail the dream. For Stardew settlers craving canyons or Minecraft miners missing mesas, it’s a spectral slice of serenity that proves the West was wild, but the building? Wonderfully whimsical.
We prepared this review with a digital copy of Above Snakes for the PS5 version provided by Evolve PR.
