Aloft is a warm and cosy survival sandbox | Hands-on impressions
From the moment you step out of your cave, blinking into the sunlight, you’ll feel a sense of familiarity with Aloft. There are trees to hack to pieces, rocks to pile into your pack, flowers to pick, and ancient stone tablets full of arcane knowledge. As I say: so far, so familiar. This is an open world sandbox that feels ripe with potential. Gather, craft and make the world your own.
It’s after the opening hour that things start to take a turn for the unusual. You are tasked with crafting a glider. Nothing too odd there; but this is no stamina-bar limited, glorified parachute. No, these are to all intents and purposes, wings. It’s unbelievably freeing to not have to worry about eating every five seconds to top up your energy. With freedom to soar through the skies to your heart’s desire you’ll flit from island to island, exploring ruins of abandoned settlements or destroying the fungus that has taken over the local ecosystems to restore each area to its natural balance.
This freedom of flight is also a clue as to the unique hook of the game: Sky islands. Rather than running across open plains or up snowy peaks, in Aloft you’ll take to the skies in what is a most unexpected manner. Following a tutorial of finding four of the aforementioned stone tablets, you’ll be gifted the parts to make a rudder, sail, wheel and balloon. These are to be attached to your island of choice so you can, y’know fly it around.
Yes, your main vehicle and base of operations is a huge chunk of manoeuvrable rock. Why keep walking home when you can bring home with you? Fly around to discover new areas to cleanse, dodge whirling tornadoes, grab the local fauna for your farming pleasure, and beautify your little piece of land. The skies are yours to do as you will.
It’s not just the setting that offers a unique take on the genre but there are also a number of little touches to set Aloft apart from the crowd. Crafting and recipes can come from the classic technique of taking a number of inventory items and combining them into something new at a crafting table but you’ll also find a sketchbook early on in your journey. After wondering just how to make a lovely set of four stairs with banister, it turns out that you can use the sketchbook to take notes of the world around you, adding the items to your growing list of craftable recipes, a lovely way of interacting with your world.
Islands can be full of corruption that must be cleansed, often with some light combat, before planting the prerequisite flora to restore the ecological balance & usually offering a small reward for doing so. The combat itself is simple, arguably a little too simple, but fun whether you play in first or third person perspective. It offers a series of light challenges but nothing too strenuous.
Both combat and building offer a mechanic that reminded me of breaking objects in Fortnite. As a bar fills, there’s a highlighted area that offers a sweet-spot for your click, buffing your next swing, keeping you engaged on a moment to moment basis rather than falling into what can become a dull stupor of holding the left mouse button. It’s a small mechanical addition but it’s always the little things that can make such a difference to the grind for materials in open-world games.
There’s plenty of things that I’m still looking forward to trying out such as automation of production methods and the mechanics of using wind power across your island to power machinery. With more still to discover, I can see myself spending even more time exploring the vast skies throughout 2025.
I’ll be the first to admit that I went into Aloft expecting “just another” survival game but I was wrong. There’s more here than first meets the eye. Aloft is a warm and cosy survival sandbox with a heavy emphasis on creative base building and a heartfelt message of taking care of the world around you, be it solo or with friends in creative co-op play. A mix of cottage-core gaming, open-world exploration, and light narrative elements, it’s going to be a pleasure to watch Aloft’s trajectory in the coming months.
Aloft is released in PC early access on January 15th.
