Airships: Conquer the Skies will have you build a Steampunk airship full of cannons, out now

Not many games will allow you to build a flying Steampunk fortress, while you brace for impact as a massive flying Kraken smashes it to pieces - Airships: Conquer the Skies let's you do that.

After five years of development, Airships: Conquer the Skies is out giving us an interesting blending of building, combat and conquest that will allow you to have some pretty damn epic battles. You're not limited to airships though, the building system is smart enough to allow you to create all sorts of crazy land vehicles too.

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It has multiple game modes available, tutorials to teach you the basics as well as some of the more advanced building aspects. You can jump right into some special missions (like taking on the Kraken), attempt a Conquest mode, create your own missions and set them up how you like for each side as well as online and LAN battle support.

The Conquest mode is definitely an interesting tug of war, which has you build up fleets of airships to conquer distant lands. Like a lot of strategy games, it has a world map that allows you to research newer tech, send spies to other cities and design/building your death machines. Each city on the map can be fortified with fleets and defensive buildings, all of which you can design yourself of course. You can even send Spies across to other cities to see what you're up against.

Then when you get into battles, you have the side-on view for you to direct your war party across the screen to destroy the enemy. I have to admit, it's an incredibly satisfying game when it comes to the destruction. Distracting a heavily armoured airship with a smaller one of my own, while I position another to drop some bombs on it from above. Sitting back and watching the fireworks, as the enemy ship catches fire, explodes and crumbles to the ground—that kind of thing never gets old.

If you have issues with it seemingly like mouse clicks not working, use the system cursor on the settings. That made the issue go away for me and it was smooth sailing from then on.

It's available across multiple stores, take your pick: Humble Store, GOG, itch.io or Steam.