Forever Skies Preview

The idea of floating above the hustle and bustle, with the everyday masses far below out of earshot is such an idyllic one. The new survival game Forever Skies takes that idea and ruins your dreams in this post-apocalyptic vision.

Some catastrophe has affected the planet, humanity clearly erected huge structures to avoid whatever the aftereffects were, but it very obviously failed. You return to the surface in a crashed pod after receiving some kind of signal with a vague message to recover a virus. From there, you are on your own.

Initial discoveries as you leave your pod show that no one has seemingly made it. Some corpses hold onto logs that show that paranoia had set in with people just trying to survive. After making your way through these initial structures as the game teaches you the basics, you encounter an airship.

A broken-down airship that some people were trying to patch together but… didn’t. This is your opportunity to survive and try to complete your vague task. The game teaches you the basics of survival, collecting and cleaning water, luring food from the toxic dust below, and dealing with disease at this point.

Once done, however, you are free to explore the lonely, but at times quite beautiful, skies. This is where you’ll scavenge from the many derelict — but still mostly standing — structures as you learn new technologies and piece together what has happened from logs and other pieces of environmental storytelling.

As you float your airship to each glowing beacon in the distance, you’ll discover how to expand your craft, as you’ll make it larger by increasing the number of floors with ladders. Your abilities will also improve as you make new tools such as the Extractor — a hand-held resource-gathering tool — and the Location Radar, which indicates points of interest visually, making more informed choices possible.

Your new home becomes a target as the world itself seemingly strives to remove you from it; violent rainstorms, lightning, and debris from the world below all try to rip your airship apart. Combined with trying to maintain your hunger, thirst, and fatigue whilst balancing making discoveries. This all becomes quite the core loop.

The atmosphere of the game is well-crafted, somehow managing to feel desolate and claustrophobic whilst being set high in the clouds. The visuals can be quite beautiful at times, with the weather effects standing out in particular. The ever-circling dust down below is a constant highlight.

Forever Skies is entering Early Access and the developer has plans to expand the story elements throughout as well as implement cooperative play at a later date. The game currently is very focused on survival and exploration, but there are plans to include more threats both above and below the dust, including combat.

If you enjoy survival games, then this one is looking to be a little different, so it is definitely worth keeping an eye on as the game progresses. Forever Skies is coming to Early Access on Steam on the 22nd of June 2023.