Aloft Early Access Review: Aiming for the Skies in Pursuit of Survival and Ecological Restoration

Aloft is a co-op survival game from developer Astrolabe Interactive and publisher Funcom that finally gets to see the sun peering from the clouds following its initial delay. A demo was launched in June 2022, with Early Access initially planned for Fall 2024; however, "following many discussions and much consideration," the developer decided to move its release to allow the team time to give the game "extra polish, detail, and fine-tuning that we would love to complete before truly raising the anchor."

I enjoyed the time I spent playing the demo and spending ample time in the Skyship exploring the world that's "set in the clouds." Much of the game is focused on survival and crafting mechanics to explore the Skylands further, transforming islands into their Skyship or building their dream home in the skies and cleansing them from a destructive corruption threatening its "airborne ecosystem."

Restoring the World One Corrupted Island At A Time

In Aloft, your created character lands on a floating island, which they must explore, build their Skyship to travel across these islands and construct their dream home in the sky while surviving the environment. The real heart of the game is its deep survival, exploration, crafting mechanics, and narrative as players race against time to acquire ancient knowledge to help them repel the corruption and, importantly, survive the hurricane to save its ecosystem.

Ecological restoration is the primary objective in Aloft; aside from surviving the harsh weather conditions and the corruption that grips the islands, this game's unique approach to ecological restoration promotes environmental conservation. This is done by planting Inoculants on corrupted islands, planting various crops to restore the ecosystem, and ensuring that players do not overharvest or else the island's ecosystem begins to deteriorate, which is the right condition for corruption to fester.

In an interview with Game Rant with Astrolabe Interactive CEO Manuel Bergeron, this insightful approach to ecological restoration in Aloft has players investing in this endeavor rather proactively was "important" for the developer beyond the scope of it being utilized as a "gameplay loop." This is evident in every gameplay element, from visual and audio design to dynamic weather systems; these choices are quite ingenious and appealing as they're all centered around the game's core environmentalism themes with positive and approachable messaging.

It's the Survival of the Fittest

Gameplay is largely centered around Aloft's robust survival and crafting mechanics, pivotal to exploring the Sky Islands, building their home and Skyship, and cleansing the corruption found across multiple islands. It's one of a few co-op survival games with a unique approach to these mechanics centered on ecosystem restoration.

These mechanics work in tandem once players have completed the tutorial quest and start exploring the Sky Islands by commandeering an island as their Skyship. The Skyship can be used to explore the expansive world, or players can use a Glider, crafted using a recipe (or blueprint) acquired during the tutorial quest.

These recipes are extremely important as crafting is how players access a variety of items, including gear, tools, furniture, consumables, and workstations, that will help them along their journey to restoring the Sky Islands' ecosystem. When it comes to crafting, players will use the Workbench for most general crafting purposes and for crafting other workstations like the Loom, Millstone, Sawmill, Brewing, and Research Lab stations.

The latter two are a subsection of the crafting system that helps players in cleansing corrupted islands as the Research Lab station is used for researching purposes with three levels or tiers to unlock before they can eventually develop a cure, which is where the Brewing Lab comes into play by crafting a fungicide, antidote and then the cure. To survive this sprawling world littered with islands suffering from deep-rooted corruption, various mechanics will help cleanse the island and build their home island, such as farming, building, and animal husbandry.

After removing corruption from a dying island, players can place Inoculants, which serve as the island's "decomposers," and consulting the Field Guide, they'll be instructed to plant unique flora and place various animals to increase its ecosystem. The developer has indicated that players will gain access to unique livestock across the Sky Islands and multiple types of crops, fauna, and flora to sustain the islands' ecosystems.

However, the Inoculants can only be crafted by foraging specific resources placed on the Millstone before they can be utilized, but they will need to defeat the corrupted enemies before cleansing the island. The combat system isn't robust compared to other popular survival games, but it has the basics, in which there are seven unique weapons to find or craft, and most weapons have two tiers for upgrading.

Each weapon comes with powerful combos to land devastating hits on enemies, of which there are reportedly more than ten combat movesets to discover and master. Just as important as mastering these combat movesets and weapon combos, there are unique buffs that the weapons can gain by applying antidotes crafted at the Brewing Lab.

Ensure that each weapon’s durability is up to scratch, or risk losing the battle and having to restart. Luckily, you can consume specific foods and unique consumables like bandages to keep you in the fight. Your health is equally important as consuming specific foods and using other unique consumables like bandages can keep you in the fight for a prolonged period, which can be viewed on the item description from the Inventory system, so craft what you need to bring them into battle.

Likewise, hunger and thirst factor into your character's survival. Consuming various foods grants unique buffs and HP. Water, a byproduct of dirty water, can be used to hydrate livestock and water crops, but it can also be consumed for a Momentum Charge, the game's revised stamina system.

There will be a few additions to the Momentum system coming soon to Aloft, like gaining charges from repairing the sails of their Skyship and gliding across the skies with birds. Speaking of gliding, it's one of two confirmed key traversal features regarding exploration, and both are unlocked within the first two hours of Aloft; once they have the gliding and have a modest Skyship, they're free to explore the Sky Islands without any limitations except mastering steering in the case of the Skyship.

Upon its Early Access launch, the game will have full controller support for Xbox peripherals, alongside the mouse and keyboard support. There isn't any confirmation whether PlayStation controller support will be added to the game at launch or post-launch, but we're awaiting details from the developer.

Regarding the game modes available for Aloft at launch, we've mentioned the Island Editor, which players can access with unique features to unleash their creativity beyond the skies. It's worth pointing out that the base game's sky-high world isn't procedurally generated; however, its in-game music is as it follows the created character's actions and behavior, but I wish there were a way for players to tag islands when viewing them through the Spyglass for better visibility or to optimize them to make searching islands more efficient.

In Aloft’s Island Editor, players can develop unique creations to share with friends and the community. The developer also released a multiplayer mode, supporting up to eight players, where players can help each other restore the ecosystem, explore the Sky Islands together, and tackle the corrupted islands.

A Well-Polished Game With Its Fair Share of Issues

Visually, Aloft oozes coziness, offering its unique art style charm and striking visuals that stand out from other notable survival games. Its distinctive art style showcases its unique identity throughout the game, from its engaging setting (the Sky Islands) to world-building, paired with its riveting story and strong narrative themes.

From a technical viewpoint, the game, by default, has gameplay tips enabled, which players can turn off with the Options menu, but for the first few hours, it can be helpful to have them on as a guide through basic gameplay mechanics. However, the demo and the review copy didn't possess in-game tutorials explaining how specific mechanics and features work, leaving players guessing, like crafting gear items, consumables, and resources.

This slight omission of in-game tutorials can benefit one as combining resources on the Worktable can produce recipes for valuable tools like the Stone tool set (Stone Dorkip, Hammer, Pickaxe, Sickle, and Sword). That said, recipe acquisition can be a bit of a pain as some rare recipes will be challenging to find, and there's no explanation for which resources to combine on the Worktable, which some I've discovered on the game's Steam Discussions.

It will take some time to learn which resources can craft the gear, resources, and consumables you'll need to survive corrupted islands and, eventually, the hurricane. There are some recipes that are acquired more easily, such as those from Learning Stones found across the islands or by utilizing the Sketchbook.

We advise using the Sketchbook in a limited capacity as it consumes charcoal and paper, the latter of which is rare. It's unclear if the Sketchbook can be crafted like the Field Guide, primarily used for examining islands and their biomes and is a great way to monitor their health and biodiversity.

I encountered various bugs in my review copy, which the developer noted and is likely to be patched up in a later update. These included performance drop rates that sometimes made the game laggy or blurry, especially when gliding and engaging in combat. There were a few hilarious bugs, like trees spawning mid-air, or characters stuck in a stationary position.

A Stunning Beacon of Hope for a Better, Promising Eco-Positive Future

Aloft has stuck with me since I heard about it during the Steam Next Fest in June 2024. Its strong narrative messaging of ecological restoration continues to draw my attention and is found throughout the game in its world-building, audio design, resources, and, more importantly, mechanics.

Sure, the visuals and cozy art style may be a little brightly colored for most survival game enthusiasts, but this art direction makes it stand out from the others. It deepens a player's immersion as they watch the sunset and sunrise from their built dream home or while sailing on their Skyship, which makes for such a pleasant in-game experience.

These details make you fully appreciate how much love and passion was put into the game and how much the developer enjoyed working on Aloft. There are a few known issues and bugs many players will experience or encounter, but keep in mind that they'll likely be fixed once the game has launched; that's one promising thing to anticipate, which speaks to the developer's commitment to fully supporting the game.

A few things can be improved upon, like tagging islands when viewing them through the Spyglass, in-game tutorials and tooltips, and more map functionalities like zooming in and out, map filters, and markers that clearly label the names of the islands. That said, the Table Map is undoubtedly impressive, although quite large, and interacting with it is quite a treat but intimidating with fewer features.

Hopefully, we can see more crops, crafting, building, and farming items added to the game in future updates. Aloft has a solid crafting system, but it can be strengthened with more features, recipes, and items that can make the Island Editor a more popular game mode. I hope the game's lore will be further expanded in future updates, as there are still some unanswered questions on how the Sky Islands came to be and what became of the ancient civilizations that are leaving behind their knowledge and legacy through the Learning Stones.