Ambrosia Sky is an essay on loss of life masquerading as a sci-fi cleansing sim

Dalia is a loss of life cleaner.

Dying cleansing, as we all know it, is the method of sanitizing and tidying the areas the place individuals take their closing breaths, typically lengthy after their our bodies have begun to decompose. It’s a job right here on Earth within the yr 2025, however Dalia’s model of loss of life cleansing takes place on the rings of Saturn in a distant future full of house journey, interplanetary colonization and devastating illness outbreaks. On this situation, loss of life cleansing includes spraying chemical substances over bulging piles of otherworldly contamination and avoiding their protection mechanisms, which might trigger fires, explosions and electrical interference. Dalia learns from the alien materials as she cleans, harvesting fruit from fungal mounds to create new choices for her sprayer. She additionally listens to the final phrases of the useless.

Ambrosia Sky is the primary sport from impartial studio Soft Rains and its story trailer landed on Wednesday. In Ambrosia Sky, Dalia is cleansing the Cluster, an agricultural outpost on Saturn’s rings that collapsed when a mysterious organic pressure subsumed the colony and its individuals. It is also Dalia’s former dwelling.

As a Scarab with The Ambrosia Venture, her job is to filter the alien fungus, analysis its origins and carry out Dying Rites on the corpses she encounters. Scarabs function within the shadowy areas between science and mysticism, and The Ambrosia Venture’s aim is to find a treatment for mortality among the many stars. Dying Rites contain listening to the deceased particular person’s Final Will and cremating their physique with specialised spores, including their DNA to The Ambrosia Venture for additional analysis. It’s a ritualistic acknowledgement of an individual’s life as a lot as their loss of life, and these small ceremonies are simply as crucial in Ambrosia Sky as the sport’s first-person cleansing mechanics.

“I actually let myself and our staff discover extra mythological or fantastical components, and even folkloric components, as a result of I believe there’s solely a lot we will find out about outer house,” Smooth Rains narrative director Kaitlin Tremblay instructed Engadget. “[Also] there are issues that we all know concretely about loss of life, however there’s a lot about it we do not know. I believe it is the identical form of attention-grabbing liminal house. What don’t we all know, and the way will we inform tales and attempt to consolation ourselves and take care of that? That really makes my model of sci-fi and my strategy on loss of life actually related.”

Ambrosia Sky is an investigation of the universe and mortality alike, within the type of a first-person, speculative-fiction cleansing sim on Saturn’s rings. It options zero-gravity scenes, crafting, gear upgrades and basic FPS play, underpinned by a slowly unfurling story of deadly catastrophe.

Smooth Rains has been quietly engaged on Ambrosia Sky since late 2022 and formally announced the game in March 2025. The studio was based by Tremblay — who was narrative designer on Watch Canine Legion and Grindstone, and lead author of A Mortician’s Story and Seasonala Cemetery — and other industry veterans from Bethesda, Ubisoft and indie groups.

Ambrosia Sky’s story trailer contains a staticky, disembodied voice saying, “Hey, Dalia. It’s me. Once I die, I need a Scarab known as in. And I would like it to be you.” It’s surprisingly heart-wrenching, for a two-minute teaser of a sci-fi clean-em-up.

“It is simply trustworthy, proper?” Tremblay stated. “We have now a variety of feelings about loss of life, and our personal loss of life and all the pieces round it. A few of these feelings comprise brightness and a few of them comprise darkness, and each are equally legitimate. Each can exist on the identical time.”

Dying is a daily customer in Tremblay’s writing. Particularly, A Mortician’s Story is an acclaimed presentation of the enterprise of mortality, and Seasonala Cemetery is a meditative expertise about spending time in a graveyard. In a devlog entry on June 10, Tremblay in contrast the mortality angle in Ambrosia Sky to that of A Mortician’s Story, writing, “With Ambrosia Sky, we needed to have the chance to discover how we really feel about our personal loss of life, fairly than the loss of life of our family members.”

I used to be struck by this distinction once I first learn it, and since I am additionally consumed by ideas of my very own inescapable expiration, I requested Tremblay for extra. They stated the next:

“That’s notably the strategy I am taking for the Dying Rituals. The Dying Rituals are once you discover these people on the planet and also you pattern their DNA for the venture, however you are additionally listening to their recorded Final Wills. I actually needed these to be a second to let the characters discuss authentically about what their loss of life truly means to them. As a result of I really feel like in my work and in so many different video games, it is typically about how we really feel about loss of life, or our grief or our mourning course of.

“I believe that is in all probability a symptom of post-pandemic mind and getting older, however I’m considering much more about what does my loss of life truly imply to me, and making an attempt to take a seat with it in a approach that does not hold me up till 4AM. So I believe that is actually that form of strategy. All of us in all probability take into consideration our personal loss of life and folks have a variety of emotions on their very own potential loss of life, and so I needed to offer voice to that, and have this house to speak by means of and work by means of a few of these feelings.”

And clear up large tendrils of neon fungus, in fact.

Ambrosia Sky is being developed and printed by Smooth Rains, and it is as a result of come out “quickly.” A demo is available now on Steam.