Black Skylands vs Ylands
Black Skylands
Black Skylands is a sandbox-based adventure set in the skies. In this game, you’ll not only get to customize your very own airship and rebuild the Fathership (your home base); you’ll also get to embark on an exciting adventure to recover various floating islands in Aspya from the Falcons in the name of the Earners. To do so, you’ll need to clear all Falcons on those islands. And there are also creatures from another plane...For what it’s worth, Black Skylands is truly a very promising game, but the game has way too many bugs and issues to provide a suitably enjoyable experience. It is possible that your hours of effort will just go down the drain if you happen to encounter a bug that required a fresh gameplay to fix. It might be wise to wishlist the game for now and buy it later down the road, maybe after the game is launched.
Ylands
Ylands is a sandbox adventure game that has a gameplay that's a lot like a massively expanded version of Minecraft with a lot more resources for you to gather, items to craft, and amazing things to build. Instead of being "just a game", Ylands is more like a platform, much like Roblox is, where players are given the tools to create whatever worlds or games they like, be it a fun go-kart racing game that's inspired from Lega Racers or even a watery world where epic pirate-themed naval battles can take place. The worlds are completely interactive as well and every action you do will modify, no matter how slightly, the game environment of that segment of the world you happen to be in. In fact, if you change a terrain and populate it with an entirely different diversity of flora and fauna, you can basically change the climate system there.Unlike Minecraft though, Ylands has opted for a more polygonal appearance which gave it the extra leverage it needed to overcome the painful dismissal and degratory label of being simply a "Minecraft clone" - which admittedly, Ylands is most definitely not. The game has so much going for it and players truly have all the freedom within the game's pretty wide parameters to literally create anything they like. Of course, the game also supports sharing, so you can let other players in Yland enjoy that (for example) crazy maze-running game you've just made!
Ylands is most certainly impressive to say the least. However, due to its indie origins, not many players know about the game, let alone buy it on Steam. So, if you really like Minecraft-like sandbox games, you simply must give this game a try, and if you've had a great time there, be sure to recommend it to your friends or even buy it for them as their Christmas/ birthday gift!