Aloft

I used to love this game. Played through to the teapot four times! I loved being an ecosystem engineer with my mobile clinic of plants, animals and insects to rescue degraded islands. And most of all, loved the AGENCY I had as a player. Sure, I had to hit up the special unlock islands but other than that I could visit the rest of the game world in any order. The Bloom & Blight update nerfed a lot of player agency. The base side of things (building, crafting, farming) is still good when you finally manage to unlock the techs. But getting those unlocks is quite regimented, and a bit harsh. Progression may look like a tree, but it acts more like a numbered checklist. There are step-by-step guides on the workshop to teach the ideal unlock order but even then you'll be forced to choose between two timely and essential unlocks. For example: combat buffs from cooking -OR- farming sheep. Make a wrong choice and progression is on hold until you pass the time-consuming 'visit these specific islands in this order before proceeding' chore. In my house we've started calling Aloft "Backtrackia." That's the effect of the restrictive progression system. A lot of time spent sailing backwards to the islands with stuff we weren't allowed to make use of when we first passed through the area. If you are tolerant of all the gate keeping it's otherwise a lovely game. I'm not, so for me that only saving grace is legacy version of the game under Betas.

《Aloft》这个名字乍一看它的海报会让人觉得这是个“空中版木筏求生”——在蓝天白云之间漂浮的岛屿、资源采集、建筑扩展的那种。 入坑感受：不像传统生存，更像“天空中的悠闲拓荒” 游戏一开始给人的感觉其实挺柔和的。不是那种一出现就要拼命砍树挖矿回血找 Shelter 的 Survival，Aloft 的节奏更慢一点，你自己安排日常 → 追着目标慢慢推进 → 自己觉得哪不够再补哪。 你一开始拿着简单工具上手，探索附近的浮空岛，收集树木、石头这些基础资源，慢慢才建设自己的基地和飞艇部分。这种逐步推进，让人不会一下子就被压力推到生存边缘。 核心循环：探索、净化、扩展 游戏的玩法骨架其实很清晰： 在不同漂浮岛屿间飞行探索 收集资源、制作工具和设备 净化被真菌腐化的岛屿，恢复生态 用这些资源扩大你的家园或飞艇 重复以上循环、触发更多进度 “净化”这个关键词在社区讨论里提得挺多。玩家会先专注清理被真菌感染的小岛，然后逐步推进到更大、更复杂的岛屿去扩展你的基地或探索新的科技。 这种机制其实挺容易理解： 它不是从一开始就给你一堆技能树或复杂系统，而是靠你自己去慢慢接触这套逻辑。哪块需要做什么、哪个岛资源紧缺，这些内容你在做的时候自然而然就会理解。 很多传统 Survival 游戏喜欢用惩罚机制把你逼到角落里：天气冷、怪物猛、饥饿高压——那种玩法玩家往往要不断纠结“下一步怎么活下去”。Aloft 这边明显更温和一些。它把生存压力融入了探索和净化目标里： 资源是必须的，但不像某些沙盒那样“必须一直催着干” 喂动物、种植作物、烹饪食物都能给你稳定收益 真菌腐化是一种威胁，但不是突然把你打回死循环里 建造逻辑看上去方向挺自由，你可以把任何一个岛屿做成你的“天空船”。说明里写得很浪漫，但玩起来步骤还是有点琐碎。放置结构、连接风车、安装风帆这些环节一开始不难 但当你想系统性地自动化生产、优化路径的时候，会发现工具链还不够成熟 目前自动化和高级生产还有提升空间 这种状态其实挺符合 Early Access 的节奏：核心想法够新颖，但细节打磨和实际流程还是需要玩家自己一点点摸索。社区里也有很多玩家提到“用风力和缆绳来提升制作效率这个想法挺好，但现在体验还有提升空间”。 游戏画面不是那种惊艳型、炫技型的美术呈现，而是： 风吹过草地、云朵在脚下流动、远处有未知岛屿等着你探险 这种风与浮空岛画面组合起来，玩的时候很容易就进入一种“放空”状态。 结合声音和背景音乐，这种氛围让你不是在对抗 Survival 系统，而是在陪自己慢慢做事情。不少玩家在社区说这款游戏是“治愈向的生存体验”，我玩的时候也有这种感觉——。有时比起追任务，我更喜欢慢慢飞着找风向、摆摊位、看景。 Aloft 目前是 一款更偏“放松探索+温和生存”而不是“高压求生”的游戏。它的亮点没有在华丽机制，而是在： 自由在天空里飞行、建造和探索 将资源采集、净化生态这样的目标设计得不那么死板 玩法节奏偏慢但舒适，适合碎片时间或下班放松 如果你想找那种压力小、布局自由、看着自己的天空岛慢慢成长的体验，Aloft 已经足够玩上一段时间； 如果你偏好“系统深度到爆”、“对抗式生存”，目前 Early Access 版还显得稍微温柔一些。 [h1][quote=] [table] [tr] [th] 欢迎关注 [b][u][i]U_U鉴赏家培养计划[/i][/u][/b][/th] [/tr] [tr] [th] 关注U_U鉴赏家，开启精彩游戏之旅。 [/th] [/tr] [/table] [/quote][/h1]

It is honestly such a shame. The vibe and visuals of this game are amazing. The building is great. But the performance is atrocious, it is awful. It is hard to describe just how optimized it is. The devs would make a huge mistake if they focus on *anything* but improving the performance. Any new feature or addition can wait.

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☑ Beautiful ☐ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☑ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☑ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☑ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 10% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☑ Easy ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☑ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☐ Average ☑ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☐ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☑ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☑ 9 ☐ 10

This is a painfully slow experience with endless railroading and time gating, with nothing interesting to do on most of the islands. There is no freedom to be found in this game, and hardly any variety of content. The best thing you can do is build a nice house and decorate with animals and such, but plenty of games have that with better gameplay features. This is bad even for early access, and should not have been released in this state. The gameplay loop consists of the following: (After you make your glider and island) 1: Fly your slow as dirt clump to a cluster of islands. 2: Visit all the islands and hope they have research points and seeds on them. Clear the infected islands (this is required) and renew the central island's ecosystem. [i]You also have to watch the cutscene for the fruit EVERY TIME. And it's not a fast cutscene.[/i] 3: Do this 3 more times to complete the sub area you're in so you can get the ALSO REQUIRED tree point at the end. After that you go to the next area and repeat the same steps, visiting and repairing every island. It's a slow and tedious process. Also, if you accidentally miss something, or you think you can move on because your islands suck... well enjoy backtracking against an eternal headwind, because you will not have enough insight to progress any farther in the game. It's also strange to put a wind direction system into the game at all when the wind never changes direction. You also HAVE to unlock everything in the skill tree in order to progress. I don't know what the point of having branching paths to unlock is if you only really get one or two things before having to go to the other branch just to continue. This is absolutely shameful to charge money for what is basically a demo. That being said, there is potential here... but it needs A LOT of time in the oven, and a revamp to allow more freedom and variation of content. I'd like to see more variety in what can spawn early as well. It seems they've broken their game up into "rings" that are unique zones with unique spawns. The problem is, finding only corn and wheat for 10 hours is boring. I'd much prefer if biomes were randomized in some way.

I would not currently recommend this game at full price, but it could be worth it on sale. If you enjoy being rewarded for exploration and delving into a game, this isn't the game for you. If you want to build a pretty base and not do much else, this game will work, but you could probably do that elsewhere. PROS: + aesthetics: some of the animations are awkward, but I do like the aesthetic choices in the game. it's very pretty and cohesive. animal friends are cute. building bases can be pretty and intricate, though this is available in other games, that doesn't make it less fun here. + some bugs but I didn't find anything gamebreaking. + gliding trials were decently fun. + bringing your base around with you is, in concept, convenient. CONS: - not very deep, same tasks repeat often. - you are both physically railroaded and metaphorically railroaded. - backtracking is a massive pain in the ass. - environment restoration is kind of a chore after the first few times. you just run around doing the same three things, shove some animals somewhere, and then hug a tree. - bringing your base around with you is, in practice, a pain in the ass because it's slow as ♥♥♥♥ and you can't really backtrack with it. - you'll end up a little disheartened because the game could be so much cooler and it's just not. - you're not rewarded for exploring in a genre which should be about exploration. The game is pretty and I do enjoy the concepts. The gliding feels natural and once you get the hang of combat it's decent, though not deep. I think there's some fun to be had, but the central repeat pretty quickly becomes stale. While you can progress forwards between island clusters easily thanks to the headwinds, going back with your slow as ♥♥♥♥ dirt clump is a big pain in the ass. If you're like me and refuse to leave behind any possible animal friends, this quickly becomes a chore. There's just not... much to do, really, especially for 25USD. You get pretty much all possible resources for your first tier of environments by the second island cluster, and you've still got a ways to go. You just kinda gotta keep... going... and you're wondering why. Sure, you can unlock new techs - but what's the point of them? You don't access new resources or new mechanics. A lot of filler and fluff and not much else to do. If I compare this to other survival games, too, I realize that while the environment was pretty, I also got bored of the linear progression quickly. I like getting to explore different environments and obtain different resources from them, such as in Subnautica, where different biomes have vastly different resources and you'll have to explore far to get everything you need. I like wandering off in Subnautica and somehow ending up miles from home deep in a chasm dying to a sea monster. Here, you're railroaded between clusters of islands with a single type of environment and therefore a single set of resources and enemies. There's no side tangents, no way to explore outside of what the game railroads you onto. Similarly, while I was excited to get to restore the environments of islands, I realized pretty quickly that there's no real direction to them. You slap some trees and plants and critters in and call it good. There's no "oh well this island needs more butterflies because of XYZ" or "that island needs some frogs because it has water" or even "lizards do well on sunny islands so if you pair lizards with some grasses you get a bonus" nope you just kind of toss whatever you want wherever you want. And it's pretty! But I would love a little more puzzle, or a reason for me to collect animals as I go along. I was so excited to have a big stash of animals I could bust out when an island needed specifically ladybugs because of a niche or whatever and... nah, I just put whatever I want. Which. That's fine, I guess. The ecologist in me is dying a little. But it could've been cooler. I think my central issue with the game is that there is no reward for exploration in what is inherently an explorative genre. While tech progression has some side branches, it's not super deep - so while there are small rewards for exploring off the beaten path and finding some nice side chest or lost atlas piece that reveals a hidden area, it's not... huge. It's nothing that you wouldn't have gotten from just doing the next main cluster of islands. The game doesn't reward me for delving into it, when that's the whole point of survival/adventure to me. I will say - though I am disappointed by the essential issue in this game (lack of depth), the gliding is smooth and enjoyable. The island piloting mechanics make sense and are approachable. The game functions fine, mechanically. There are no bugs stopping me from playing this game, and it's pretty, but the biggest issue is there's just no reason for me to play it. I don't sit down at my computer excited to boot it up. It's kind of disappointing in how it could be so much more.

Seriously, how in the ♥♥♥♥ can this game be so cpu bound that ultra to low settings does functionally nothing to fps, what are you guys running in the development studio that gets above 70 fps? running a sever takes a flat 20-30 fps off your game, and i regularly in heavy areas go to 20-30 fps at low. This game is NOT worth playing unless you're already used to playing at 30-60 fps in most games. it also seems to have horrendous garbage collection passes that cause the game to stutter every minute. Content isn't needed, it needs performance.

4 hours in I realized I was just doing the same thing over and over again but it was getting more grindy. After 4 hours I would hope to see something different. Even the enemies I was fighting was the same, and there was only 1...It felt like doing anything was kind of pointless and unnecessary like I could save time by just not doing anything except what was only absolutely necessary. Not fun. Also the game does a terrible job explaining how some of the game mechanics work. I dont want to need to consult a wiki or a guide when it should be explained in game.