I was given the opportunity to preview Aloft at Summer Game Fest. A beautiful survival building game coming to Steam Early Access from Astrolabe Interactive Inc. It follows in the footsteps of games like Subnautica and The Raft, but brings a flavor of its own with floating sky island traversal and a focus on cozy nature preservation. While I’ve played quite a few of these types of games, Aloft got its hooks in me early and left me thinking about it for long after my appointment was over.
The demo began by introducing me to the world of Aloft, a grouping of sky islands all swirling around a massive tornado vortex. Your character has woken up with amnesia, and it’s up to you to survive by gathering resources, crafting your way through the world and learning about your mysterious past. Basic recipes are learned from knowledge stones in the environment as well as using a sketchbook for learning crafting decorations.
Once you’ve built your home and learned all you can from your initial island, you get the recipe for a wingsuit, which sets you off flying outward into a world of floating islands. Traveling from island to island, finding new recipes and healing them from corruption. Islands will often get corrupted and filled with enemies. With some light combat, you can remove the evil corruption, and restore the natural flora and fauna of the island. This part is actually kind of cool because islands will require varying flora and fauna to be fully restored. So it’s up to you to replant, regrow, and repopulate the islands as needed to fully cleanse them. It’s a real statement on our environment and I really loved it. There are three biomes planned for Early Access but much more to come.
So there’s crafting, for more expansive recipes and island exploration, but there’s another added element which is building up your home base island. Building up your home is very easy in snap up frame builder, which allows you to build your frame and fill in the rest as you go. This adds an architectural element, and allows for a lot of cool designs. On top of your home, as you get deeper into the game you can actually turn your home base floating island into a full on flying airship! Crafting sails, rudders and a steering wheel will allow you to pilot your island around the vortex world and keep your base close to you at all times.
The floating islands are not procedurally generated but fully handcrafted, but item and enemy generation are in fact randomized, to make each experience different for the players, but major story beats remain the same. There’s also online co-op so the experience can be shared best with friends on private or public servers. You can also build up a specialized island and export it to the Steam Workshop so others can download it too. There are so many other neat details featured in the game, from voluminous clouds that contain moisture for water collection to a cooking system that provides buffs along your journey, there’s so much going on here to dig into.
While the developer has made it clear that this game is in fact a cozy game that’s meant for a conservationist experience, I still dream of piloting a floating battleship island with cannons firing in all directions like a demented griefing Bowser’s Castle. Hey, a man can dream. Until then, there’s currently a demo on Steam, and I’ll be raring to go, day one, when this hits Early Access.
superggradio.wordpress.com 