Over here at Soft Rains, we’ve just announced our first game that we’ve been working hard on: Ambrosia Sky! If you missed our announce trailer in the PC Gaming Show, you can check it out here.
We’re kicking off a series of developer logs that’ll dig into different aspects of the game and some of the creative choices we made along the way. But before we sink our teeth into that, let’s take a moment to ask: what exactly IS Ambrosia Sky?
The Game: Clean ’em up as care
In Ambrosia Sky, you are Dalia, a deep-space disaster specialist dispatched to the rings of Saturn. As Dalia, you’ll lay victims to rest, clean up alien fungus, and research its strange origins. But this isn’t just another random job for Dalia: the place she is dispatched to, the Cluster, is her home. This is the story of Dalia’s homecoming, a woman who left this place behind when she was a teen and now has to return under tragic circumstances.
Ambrosia Sky’s core gameplay is a blend of meditative cleaning and FPS-style action, grounding these two proven foundations in an immersive world. To talk about it in classic this-with-that terms: it’s a bit like Metroid Prime meets PowerWash Simulator.
When we first started thinking about Ambrosia Sky, we were initially interested in how we could blend the “job sim” style of gameplay, similar to PowerWash Simulator, with narrative-heavy exploration. This led us to consider different forms of cleaning in the world, which in turn led us to death cleaners and individuals who clean up after a person passes away. We then connected those acts of care with the rigorous standards of jobs in biohazard cleaning.
It instantly clicked, and we explored those ideas through immediate prototyping of the cleaning mechanic. Even in its earliest, wild-idea, brainstorm moments, Ambrosia Sky was a reflection of our collective taste, experiences, and inspirations. As the game evolved through prototypes and playtests, and as the team grew, the raw material of the idea constantly germinated into something more interesting and unusual than any one of us would have crafted on our own. And once we got in-engine, the idea worked.
The core of Ambrosia Sky, of course, is the cleaning gameplay. As Dalia, you use a chemical sprayer to clean up the alien contamination that has caused the disastrous crisis, killing almost everybody that Dalia once knew. But the alien fungus isn’t a sedentary presence, just there to be cleaned. Each species of alien fungus blurs the line between environment and enemy with unique behaviours, causing fiery explosions, interfering with electricity, or actively seeking out Dalia.
Each fungus also has its own fruit, which can be harvested and researched. That research enables Dalia to create new spray types that, in turn, replicate the gameplay effects of the fungi from which they are derived.
But Dalia isn’t just here to clean up the contamination. She’s also here to find the recently deceased. As you explore, you’ll encounter victims of the crisis and lay them to rest. These scenes reveal the mystery of the crisis and connect the disaster to the lives of the people who fell victim to it. These Death Rites offer an opportunity to learn more about the people and this world, as well as catch a glimpse into the varied relationships we all have with death and mortality.
All of these actions make up the role of a Scarab, Dalia’s day job. In our next developer log, we’ll dive deeper into who Scarabs are, what they want, and how this perspective shapes Dalia’s story and her as a playable character.
The Setting: Saturn’s Cluster
Our setting, the Cluster, is an agricultural colony established in Saturn’s rings during humanity’s early exploration of the universe. A source of naturally growing alien fungus, the Cluster was hailed as a hallmark of humanity’s ingenuity: an agricultural station that could sustainably supply food for human life off-Earth.
But that frontier era was over 90 years ago. These days, generations have passed, and they have formed their own unique cultures and identities. Now, the Cluster has slipped into obscurity, a crucial yet bygone fixture in humanity’s extraterrestrial infrastructure. Gone are the glory days of the first generation, and Dalia’s generation must now contend with their home as a mostly forgotten waystation en route to all the galaxy has to offer, a relic clinging to its prestigious history.
Early on, when we first started thinking about creating Ambrosia Sky, we gave a lot of thought to the type of science fiction that truly resonated with us and inspired us. We discussed at length how to incorporate contemporary concerns and modern themes into a speculative setting. This line of thinking led us to discuss food scarcity and the role of agriculture in space-faring expeditions, which in turn inspired us to ground our sci-fi world in an agricultural colony. This connected elegantly with our interest in first-person shooting mechanics that weren’t about shooting, but instead about cleaning up and restoring a space.
This setting also inspired a great deal of fun in our 3D environment art, as well as our music design, considering how the different generations of the Cluster would build their homes and what sort of cultural connections these people, a group of frontier cosmic farmers, would have to Earth. We look forward to sharing more thoughts on how we attempted to manifest the world of the Cluster in our art and music in upcoming developer logs.
The Protagonist: Dalia
Dalia is a brilliant but emotionally unstable Scarab, a mystical mortuary scientist. Dalia has a strong stomach and is a capable scientist, and while she’s less inclined toward the spiritual side of being a Scarab, she is good at the job. She left her home to escape the closed, controlling life she had on the Cluster. Her stepmother, Hale, had grand plans for Dalia that Dalia didn’t want for herself. So Dalia left, and in doing so, she didn’t just abandon a controlling mother, but also her best friend and first-ever love, Maeve.
Now Dalia’s homecoming is anything but heartwarming. Hale threatens to pull Dalia back into their tumultuous relationship, and Maeve wants nothing to do with her estranged friend. Dalia must come to terms with her choices, as well as her survivor’s guilt, as she investigates the crisis that killed almost everybody she knew.
Everything about Ambrosia Sky is filtered through Dalia’s perspective: her understanding of her home, her use of tools to clean and restore this space, and the way she interacts with the deceased. Dalia will uncover a universe that is larger and weirder than she ever could’ve imagined, as she grapples with her own guilt, struggling toward understanding how she can forgive herself while saying goodbye to her home for good. We’re excited for everyone to meet Dalia and to see the Cluster through her eyes.
Thanks for reading! We’re excited to share more about Ambrosia Sky, so stay tuned for more developer logs as we dig into some behind-the-scenes of how we approached building the game.
Please wishlist the game on Steam, join our community Discord, follow us on social media, and, of course, download the demo to get your first hands-on experience with Ambrosia Sky.