Laysara: Summit Kingdom has piqued our interest with beautiful graphics and an exciting setting. We’ll tell you what’s behind it.
Sometimes I watch game trailers and make a noise that sounds something like a quiet “Ohhui” and in extreme cases I even raise an eyebrow. And that’s exactly the reaction I got from a first look at the building game Laysara: Summit Kingdom – because my God, it looks great.
Lush green meadows, golden shining wheat fields, icy glittering snowy landscapes and of course the universally sung about scurry factor – and all that on the top of a gigantic mountain. Laysara ingratiates itself with a beautiful feel-good look and an unusual setting. But what’s behind the facade?
Table of Contents
What is Laysara: Summit Kingdom about?
Building land is always a bit tight these days. And if there can be flats less than a metre wide squeezed between two houses – then there can also be entire housing estates on a steep mountainside where avalanches of snow regularly come hurtling down.
Three strata of population, modelled on Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan, settle here on the snow-covered mountain top, in the fields below and at the foot of the mountain in green meadows, forming a symbiosis of commodity chains.
Since this is not at all easy on steep mountain slopes, you need complex bridges, shafts and mechanical lifting devices to meet the needs of your inhabitants. And yes, of course, every now and then a snow avalanche comes down or it starts to storm bitterly. But look how great it looks:
Who is it interesting for?
Apart from the harsh (but very chic) weather conditions, each mountain you build on also comes with its own challenges. Sometimes there’s plenty of room for farming, other times you’ll have to play Tetris with your fields. And it’s not only the field puzzling that is reminiscent of Anno 1800, the upgrading of the houses also exudes a bit of Anno atmosphere.
In contrast to Anno, however, buildings such as conveyor belts can be freely built down cliffs in Laysara to your heart’s content – after all, they play a major role in the planning. I don’t know about you, but my heart leapt a little at the sight of it in the trailer.
But even more exciting than what all Laysara does is what Laysara does NOT do. Because it completely dispenses with military and any form of real-time combat – which is pretty rare even in pure building games. The developers reveal on Steam that they want to focus entirely on “economy, resource management and survival despite the inhospitable environment”.
In the end, however, you don’t (just) build for fun, but work towards your big end goal: an impressive temple at the top of the mountain. However, this must first be reached safely and the numerous resources also want to find their way to the top.
What do we like so far? What remains unclear?
What do we like so far?
- Beautiful visuals: Aside from the graphics, which can be seen in the first trailer, the scurry factor and detailed building design is also a real feast for the eyes.
- Clear focus: Unlike many other indie expansion games, Laysara doesn’t feel cluttered or overambitious, but follows a clear and rather clever gameplay idea to which it subordinates everything else.
- Monument as final goal: The most beautiful building game is useless if the long-term motivation is missing. Building a temple as a monument could be the right direction here.
- Interesting scenario: Tinkering around on mountain slopes and opening a trade route in the smallest of spaces seems both refreshing and challenging.
What remains unclear?
- Long-term motivation? The temple alone, of course, does not make for motivating gameplay. So let’s hope that the campaign and sandbox mode also offer enough variety in gameplay.
- Disaster frustration? As fancy as the avalanche looks in the trailer: When it razes the settlement, which has been built with as much effort as love, to the ground, you need comprehensible reasons for the catastrophe on the one hand and interesting game concepts on the other hand to keep the motivation to build up high after such a wrenching experience.
- Is this doable? The team behind Laysara consists of just two developers from Poland, who previously worked on Dying Light 2 and Ancestors Legacy. As a studio, however, they have no experience yet.
Far too many build-up games with impressive trailers turned out to be castles in the air over the last few years – or don’t even appear, as in the case of the countless games from PlayWay’s catalogue.
Hopefully we’ll find out later this year whether Laysara is more successful, as the developers are currently targeting a 2022 release without an Early Access phase.
Editor’s Verdict
I’m hungry. Not necessarily for a nice burger (though…), but for new building games. Yes, there are dozens of promising games coming out in the indie space this year and next, but I still end up playing Anno 1800, because too many turn out to be unfinished or not well-designed, or just can’t match the charm of an Anno.
Laysara: Summit Kingdom, however, gives me an unusual amount of hope that it could really captivate me again. Yes, maybe the pretty look is blinding me a little right now. But even with sunglasses on, the mechanics and the abandonment of the tiresome half-baked real-time battles in building games seem really promising. In any case, I’m keeping all my fingers crossed.
