Forever Skies

Excellent blend of exploration of the various locations and creativity for building your airship base. The story is intriguing and the monsters a little spooky.

Many of these style games get compared to the fan favorite, Subnautica, and for good reason. Subnautica provided an amazing experience with beautiful visuals as we explored the depths of the ocean. Forever Skies is a worthy addition to this genre, though not without some minor critiques. Due to environmental collapse, humanity was forced to build higher and higher to avoid the ever increasing toxic smog that covers the Earth. Reaching their limit, the remainder of humanity vacated the planet, residing now in a space station called "The Ark". They were safe from the gray plague, until they weren't. Now, with the plague, a virus born from the toxic smog, running rampant in "The Ark", you are sent down to Earth alone to find a cure. That is the premise and it is where I will stop. The gameplay on "normal"(the only mode I played) is chill and the game is first and foremost about exploration and narrative. The biomes and environments are well done rewarding the player with interesting and beautiful landscapes as you fly your base around from location to location obtaining materials to survive and clues to finding the cure. Crafting and base construction is VERY similar to Subnautica. You scan real world items to get blueprints which you then craft at various workstations in your base. The devs made building and placing items (except for sprinklers!) intuitive, easy, and forgiving. Building was never an issue and never caused aggravation (except for sprinklers!). I give them a 9/10 for their building and crafting mechanics. What sets Forever Skies apart is that your base is mobile! So, unlike Subnautica where you have to essentially build a temp base in each new biome, in Forever Skies, you take your base with you. You have to augment your airship with turbines and engines and increase the size of the main balloon in order to reach different areas of the game. However, most of this mechanic is cosmetic, but height is necessary to reach some locations. The game has three MAIN biomes with each location being procedurally generated so you never visit the same place twice, per se. However, the scannable equipment you need is also part of that generation, and though I did not have much of a problem finding them, others have reported having to visit at least a few of same locations before the game generated the equipment. One tweak I wish the developers had pursued lay with the exploration itself. Forever Skies, for being set in the atmosphere, is pretty flat. You fly around, up and down, but you never really descend in your airship below the breathable atmosphere. Instead, you fly to locations and then journey, on foot, to small representation of what they call "The Underdust" - which are beautiful, exotic locations filled with all manner of flora and fauna. What I wish the developers did instead was have the player find technology to improve their airships oxygen recycling and toxic resistance and have you delve, in your airship, deeper and deeper into the Underdust itself, making the progression a descent into the unknown, rather than covering only the surface and riding elevators down. The premise set up massively tall skyscrapers that would allow for the ability to have different biomes layered on top of each other for a more striation style experience. They could then add a few more dangers that would cause you to upgrade your ship or personal equipment in order to survive the toxic dust and larger fauna before you go deeper. It's a minor thing, but one I believe the devs should think about in any sequels, which appears to be inevitable. Overall, the game is a great buy, especially on sale, and the devs put in a great amount of work and care to give players a truly exploratory and narrative experience! I give it a solid 7/10 for the genre with high hopes the devs can improve on the sequel.