Maroc - 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 19/Jan 02:56

Forever Skies – Preview

With so many survival base-building games out there, it’s sometimes hard to distinguish the bland ones from the more interesting ones. Even among those that end up interesting, there are quite a few that handle things in the same fashion, almost feeling as if the genre doesn’t have that many tricks up its sleeve anymore. When we originally saw Forever Skies, it already piqued our interest, but due to our heavy backlog, we sadly didn’t have time to take a closer look at the Early Access version of the game yet. Now, with the recent multiplayer update, we couldn’t resist the urge to start building a base high above the clouds together with a few friends. While the world of Forever Skies does have a fair amount of lore, it’s presented only via text logs you find scattered around the world. In short, there has been an ecological disaster and our precious Earth is now covered in toxic dust. Only those who reside above the clouds are safe from the toxic dust. You, however, are one of the few who return to Earth in order to find a cure and perhaps make the planet inhabitable again. It’s a fairly simple premise but it’s interesting nonetheless. Forever Skies is a fairly good-looking title. The environments you explore look detailed, and the developers managed to nail the overall dystopian sci-fi atmosphere. We quite enjoyed the backdrops, the new installations we could place on our ship, and so on. For an Early Access project, we didn’t encounter too many graphical bugs, and clipping was also kept to a minimum. Some of our fellow players did become invisible at times, however. Sadly, the game does recycle not only its assets a lot but quite a few areas are exactly the same as those we explored earlier. We reckon it’s the developer’s way to ensure players don’t miss key items, but it also felt a bit cheap. The sound design was decent, but there were a few audio queues that didn’t make much sense. We sometimes could hear the audio clip being played that something attached itself to the hull of our ship when said enemy was already dead. In many ways, the game doesn’t do that much we haven’t seen before. You’ll have to start off slowly, with only the bare minimum to be able to make it to other outposts where you can start scavenging for more materials. As you progress, your ship will slowly upgrade and new facilities will become available, allowing you to craft new items, upgrades, and even weapons. Forever Skies also has combat, and you’ll steadily unlock new weapons as you go. We never really struggled with our progress, but for our multiplayer sessions, we were playing on a lower difficulty setting. This was because we also had to gather materials for a full party, which was a bit more difficult to steadily do on the higher difficulty settings. Even so, the gameplay loop was rather enjoyable and we never felt that our progress came to a grinding halt. What makes Forever Skies different compared to its competitors? Well, it’s the flying base. While this may sound like only a slight variation on the traditional formula, you’ll actually have to properly manage everything rather than just expand needlessly and let earlier parts of your base go to waste. You’ll have to make sure you don’t exceed your weight limit, you need to upgrade your balloon and turbines to reach higher altitudes, and so on. When flying around, you’ll have to be careful not to crash into things, and you can also be attacked. It’s a fresh take on an overdone formula, and we quite enjoyed being ‘forced’ to optimize everything we had. Outside of the base, you’ll be able to explore different abandoned structures and settlements. You can scavenge for materials, but also scan unknown items and structures to unlock new crafting recipes. The further you progress, the trickier things become, as you’ll also have to fend off hostile creatures. Combat is quite enjoyable, especially with multiple players. When playing on the easy difficulty setting, however, there are no real consequences for dying. This is great to learn what the game is all about, or if you just want a more zen-like experience. Even though Forever Skies is still in its Early Access period, we felt that it was already highly polished. Of course, there are a few items that are still rough around the edges and that could use some improvement but we didn’t notice that many bugs or issues. We did have a few encounters in multiplayer where a certain object would not spawn for the host or the occasional crash, but nothing that would detract from the overall fun experience. Some finetuning in performance is also needed, as we did experience a reasonable amount of frame drops during flying segments. We also encountered a bit of desync in multiplayer sessions, where one player was in the midst of a raging storm while other players experienced sunny weather. Conclusion Forever Skies already has loads to offer, even in its Early Access phase. The game becomes a lot of fun with friends, but working solo to build an impressive ship is also rather entertaining. Even though you’ll basically go from one structure to another to scavenge supplies, the general gameplay loop proves to be relaxing and engaging enough to sink in quite a few hours. If you’re looking for an interesting base-building survival game you can play with friends, we suggest checking out this one.