Breakwaters Preview

Breakwaters is a new survival crafting game by Soaring Pixels Games, with a focus on island exploration and fighting colossal Titans. Now, you may be saying, “another survival crafting game?” Yes. Another survival crafting game, but there was one very clear and fresh aspect of the game that got me particularly excited: the water physics. We’ll get into that shortly.

Breakwaters starts off as many other games in the genre do, plopping your character into a newly generated game world, which slowly introduces more aspects of the crafting and survival mechanics. You have the usual suspects; gather food, gather water, kill mobs, and chop things down for crafting materials.

I'maaaa Islaaaaand Boyyyy

On the first island you spawn on, you’ll meet an NPC guide that lets you know of Refined Crystal, a resource that allows you to craft special bottles that you can throw to move water and part sections of the ocean; this is where you’ll get the first taste of the water physics system. You’re then tasked to recover a quest item from under the water near your starting island, the only problem being that you’re unable to dig underwater. These bottles allow you to shift the water aside, creating a dry space for you to walk on and use your shovel to recover the item.

This only just scrapes the tip of the iceberg however. The water not only looks gorgeous but reacts like real water; you can carve out a little waterway on your island and the water will flow through it, and you can lower the water levels of a lake if you create rivers for it to travel down. Once you’ve acquired more crafting abilities and progressed to further islands, your creativity will be your only limit when it comes to constructing awesome structures and pushing the water physics to their limit.

Challenging colossal rock monsters to a dance-off is not advisable

Now comes the Titans. Your end goal is to summon the huge Titan that you see strolling around in the distant waters and defeat it. With the help of several more NPCs that guide you further through the world, you will come to summon the Titan and activate the ancient trap that will prevent it from escaping when you face it. These Titans hit hard. Very hard. They cause water to move erratically as they fight you, and their giant laser beam of doom will part huge lines of the ocean as it storms toward you. You better hope you came prepared.

Aside from the Titans, the enemies are still in need of some work, as hostile creatures and pirates can feel a bit frustrating to fight against, but Soaring Pixels Games seems to be taking on community feedback, and through regular updates and hotfixes, appear to be moulding the game to what players want.

Don't mind me, just trying to catch some fish

Breakwaters still feels quite early in development but it shows a huge amount of promise. The islands look beautiful during the sunny days, and are lit up pleasantly by the moonlight and glowing crystals dotted around the shores at night. The ocean feels alive, with the tides coming in and out throughout the day and the waves crashing against the side of your boat as you traverse the world. Breakwaters currently offers a fun experience with fresh mechanics that revitalise the survival crafting genre and is bound to make a big splash when it is fully released.