What is Forever Skies?

You wake up alone in a crashed pod with an ominous message about finding a virus, and stepping outside reveals that something catastrophic has happened to the planet. The metallic, skeletal remains of once towering buildings litter the horizon, and that thick sea of dust hovers just below your feet.

Clearly, humanity has failed to survive an ecological calamity. You’ll slowly reveal what happened as you recover logs and pick up on details littered throughout the environment. But first, you need to survive; managing your food and water intake as well as a variety of illnesses is your core concern, especially in the beginning.

There are no signs of survivors, but as you explore, you stumble across an almost functional airship. For whatever reason, whoever was trying to get it up and running failed, but that task now falls to you. You need to survive!

Once you’ve repaired the airship and have been introduced to the core loop of collecting and purifying water, fishing for food from the dust below, and how to scavenge resources, you have all the tools you need. It’s at this point that Forever Skies opens up, as exploration — visiting those now derelict towers — and hunting for useful resources becomes your main activity.

Each discovery opens up the possibility space — giving you more moment-to-moment choices — from the location radar that helps visualise the position of viable exploration spots to the technology improvements that allow you to expand not only the size of your airship but the capabilities and creature comforts it provides.

The airship becomes your home in this seemingly desolate world as you aim to discover what went wrong and also find evidence of this mysterious virus somewhere beneath all the dust. Of course, nature itself is a threat, with violent storms, hostile weather, and even debris from the world below potentially causing damage to you as you scramble from location to location just trying to stay afloat.

One thing Far From Home has nailed is the atmosphere in the game. It feels desolate, lonely, and claustrophobic despite having the whole world stretched out in front of you. The visuals, whilst depicting this almost grim reality, can also be hauntingly beautiful at times. The dust swirling below, teeming with life, is always a highlight, especially when daylight rolls around.

If you are looking for a new survival experience, then you may want to take a deeper look at Forever Skies as it enters Early Access on Steam. It’s taking a different approach, and it’s hard to deny that floating above the world below isn’t enticing.

During the Early Access period, Far From Home plans to expand the story elements of the game, as well as eventually include cooperative play for up to four players. They also plan to add new mechanics, such as gardening so you can grow a variety of flora on your ship as well as include more threats both above and below the dust.