Ark of Charon - Early Access [Impressions]
Ark of Charon has a lot going on.
Ark of Charon. Credit: Sunsoft
Ark of Charon is a roguelite. It’s a colony builder simulation. It’s a strategy game. It’s tower defense. I think it’s too early right now to see how all of these moving parts will be tuned into a well oiled machine; the current Early Access version is a little rickety.
From the game’s Steam page:
The sacred World Tree has withered, and with it humanity. Now that a new sapling has sprouted, you must become its caretaker and guide it so that life that once was may return.
Ark of Charon is a new type of game that combines colony simulation and tower defense, where players embark on a journey to guide a giant, beast-like sapling of a World Tree to its nursery. Players take on the role of the tree's caretaker, controlling Golems and turning the tree into a fortified mobile fortress as they progress on their journey.
Ark of Charon. Credit: Sunsoft
In the game, you move your giant moving fortress from location to location, settling it down to farm and mine for resources so you can build a city and defenses on its back, until the storm that chases you approaches and you’re forced to move again. When your fortress travels to its next resting place, you’re attacked by relentless waves of creeps. Hopefully you’ve had the time to build enough defenses to ward them off.
Your golems will do the work—mine, build, repair, and more. You can set priorities for them to create a certain degree of automation in terms of what tasks they’ll do first. You can do the same for your production facilities. For example, your workbench that starts out as a ballista bolt factory can be set to maintain a certain amount of ammo in its stockpile automatically, and then cycle to another “program” until the ammo dips below quota and it must again switch back to bolt production.
The art in Ark of Charon immediately drew me in. The image of the gigantic world tree sapling trodding through the countryside with a city on its back is enchanting. The colored pencil quality of the art is appealing; the softer look adds to the feeling of fantasy in the game’s world.
Ark of Charon. Credit: Sunsoft
I didn’t like the pressure of having to move my fortress on a timer. I’d have to move when I wasn’t prepared and just get slaughtered by the creeps. Losing is frustrating because I’d put a lot of effort into the building portion of the game, and then have it destroyed and rebuild from scratch. The game’s colony simulation portion is just too slow and time consuming compared with the speed at which you’ll lose everything to an attack. In the future, I’ll play the easier mode that lets you stay in a location as long as you want so I can be truly prepared to defend myself while on the move.
It took me a little while to discover that Ark of Charon has a tutorial. I felt lost when I started playing, until I finally noticed a small message on the right side of the screen that I could click to open up a tutorial message describing what I should do next. A message would appear again when it was time to move on to the next step. It would be a good idea to direct players more explicitly toward the tutorial at the start of the game.
Ark of Charon has a promising core idea and a beautiful art style. There’s some dissonance between the steady, slow simulation phase and the quick tower defense gameplay; they don’t completely gel together. With some tweaking and balance during Early Access, I could see the game becoming a gem in its disparate genres. If it’s just not working, I hope Sunsoft recognizes that and trims out some bits to streamline the game.
Ark of Charon is available now for PC on Steam Early Access.
Played on: Steam Deck
