7.6/10

Ambrosia Sky Is An Immersive Sim About Fighting Alien Fungus That Mostly Cleans Up Okay

By Elijah Gonzalez | November 10, 2025 | 9:00am

Video Games Reviews Ambrosia Sky

Ambrosia Sky Is An Immersive Sim About Fighting Alien Fungus That Mostly Cleans Up Okay

Space, the final frontier. Home to countless sci-fi yarns that have taken us across the cosmos while following explorers, soldiers, scientists, smugglers, and every other flashy job in between. And now, thanks to act one (out of three) of Ambrosia Sky, you can add space mortician to the list.

While that gig sounds gloomy (and it sometimes is), the moment-to-moment of Soft Rains’ debut conjures a different vibe than this occupation would suggest, having you fight your way through psychedelic space fungus in immersive sim styled levels, as you clean away this place’s sins (and also the space fungus with a power washer). Altogether, it makes for an evocative trip with a unique central loop, even if repetition begins to set in before the job is done.

You play as Dahlia. She’s a member of the Scarabs, an enigmatic research group looking for the secret to immortality. As part of this quest, Dahlia is tasked with gathering DNA from recently deceased humans. Unfortunately for her, her latest assignment takes her someplace she’s been avoiding: home. Forced to return to the colony she grew up in, one dedicated to fungus farming that feeds what remains of humanity, Dahlia is forced to confront her past as she uncovers what went wrong here.

As for how that translates to the player, the game is built around a series of missions that take Dahlia through different parts of this space station. In some levels, she needs to do the main thing in her job description: lay people to rest while extracting their genetic data. This is rarely simple, though, as these dead bodies are usually hidden amid winding corridors and behind colonies of alien fungus. Beyond this, Dahlia will also find herself searching for seeds—again, this devastated farming colony was the bread basket for what remains of humankind—as well as harvesting the organs of dead alien gods. She’d better be earning some hazard pay for all that.

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Each level is designed as an interconnected maze of locked doors and hidden air ducts, letting you move through these areas via different paths. The somewhat open-ended approach here is quite a boon, and exploring this moody space is perhaps the game’s greatest delight: it leaves behind the sterile whites found in many of its sci-fi peers for something far trippier and more interesting, with a space station that is all purples and deep maroons. The art style is suitably stylized, less photo-realistic, and more defined by exaggerated shapes and wonderfully off-kilter character designs that communicate a speculative strangeness.

Another idiosyncrasy is that, unlike most immersive sims, you won’t be taking out goons with a silenced pistol, but fighting a different kind of battle: the battle of cleanliness. This colony was wiped out by a rampant fungus that mutated into several dangerous forms, like variants that crackle with electricity or explode if you get too close. Sure, there are also these little slug guys (unrelated to the fungus) who will spit acid at you, but they’re honestly more of a sideshow compared to the rapidly spreading mycelium.

As this setup would imply, the game draws on titles like PowerWash Simulator, but with a futuristic twist. To hose down fungus, you utilize a powerful spray hooked up to several nozzles, blasting away layers until only squeaky clean steel remains. However, you’ll need to be careful, because there are fruit growing from these fungal colonies that can be harvested for resources, but only if you slice them clean with some degree of finesse.

On the one hand, these cleaning mechanics draw on the brain-scratching pleasure found in plenty of other games about washing away gunk. It is simply satisfying to spray everything down until it’s clean, slicing through with a variety of nozzle options that you can tinker with to meet the current threat. For players like myself, it very much helps that this cleaning gameplay is structured around other objectives beyond simply tidying up—you can spend minutes or hours blasting away every trace of grit and grime, but you certainly don’t need to in order to accomplish your mission. Oh, and it doesn’t hurt that the game has one of the best tethers in recent memory, letting you propel through environments with reckless abandon, something that’s particularly helpful when spraying things down in zero-G.

Unfortunately, though, as the experience wears on, a certain degree of tedium begins to kick in. There are really only two main types of killer fungus you encounter: the electric and the explosive kinds, leaving you dealing with these hazards in the same way over and over again. Additionally, while you’re given several types of spray liquids beyond your basic stream—including one that is extra effective, another that conducts electricity, and a final one that lights things on fire—I felt little need to use these to complete the base objectives. While you may find mild rewards for exploring these levels more thoroughly, these aspects are quite half-baked right now, with the alternate sprays not feeling as useful as they should.

Another issue is that it really doesn’t feel like the game wants you to go all-in on cleaning: you’re basic nozzle runs out of liquid fairly quickly, forcing you to wait around while it slowly recharges. Meanwhile, your other sprays run out even faster and can only be recharged between missions. Basically, you’re armed as if you’re playing an FPS instead of a cleaning sim, and the game fails to fully cater to either mode—like I mentioned, you’ll run into some alien slugs to shoot, but these battles are underwhelming and very clearly not the focus.

That said, it’s a good thing that exploring this space is quite intrinsically satisfying, with the greatest reward for poking and prodding being that you learn more about the people who once lived here. In classic “I’m exploring an abandoned space station” fashion, there are data logs everywhere, detailing the slow unraveling of this place and its people, as obfuscated truths and overoptimism led to a community slow-walking to its own doom.

There are engaging throughlines that help us learn about these characters, and perhaps most importantly, they’re all paired with beautifully illustrated portraits that convey their personalities and help put their words to a face. It all very much allows us to take on Dahlia’s place in mourning this dead community, as we lay these people to rest. While the story is still very much in progress, as again, this is only the first act of three, it all builds up a convincing sense of community, making us invested in learning what went wrong here.

There is one problem with the story’s delivery, though, which is the main character, Dahlia. Unlike the largely wordless Gordon Freeman, this protagonist has a lot to say. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, as evidenced by first-person narration-driven games like Gone Home or What Happened To Edith Finch, but in this case, it doesn’t work nearly as well. The main issue is that Dahlia’s running commentary undermines a lot of the quiet ambiance and sense of self-discovery. She’s recording everything that happens for her handler, kind of like Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, but her sometimes twee style of speech and penchant for bluntly stating what the player should be allowed to take in themselves lessens the sense of mystery and danger.

There’s certainly room for narration and even a bit of color commentary, especially as Dahlia breaks down her personal relationships with the compelling people here, like her estranged ex-girlfriend or her stepmother who runs the colony, but not so much when every stray data log gets a reaction. Again, the issue is less that these monologues are present at all, and more how they’re written and when they appear.

Additionally, it should be noted that while I personally didn’t experience any bugs (besides the slugs that spit acid at you), a colleague of mine wasn’t so fortunate, running into several crashes that were exacerbated by the lack of a manual save option.

Still, while the first act of Ambrosia Sky is far from squeaky clean, the core of what’s here—exploring a beautifully rendered dead space station and uncovering its hidden truths while battling alien fungus with a power washer—can be quite compelling when it clicks. While its gameplay didn’t fully sink its hooks in, I’m invested enough in the secrets of this doomed space station that I may be coming back for more when the next two acts of the game launch in 2026. Hopefully, those will be a bit more polished.

Ambrosia Sky: Act One was developed and published by Soft Rains. It is available on PC via Steam.

Elijah Gonzalez is an associate editor for Endless Mode. In addition to playing the latest, he also loves anime, movies, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.