Lost Skies is a game that has a very tiny, almost negligible, corner of my brain if only because it’s an attempted do-over after the PvP version Worlds Adrift failed to gain traction. Apparently the game was designed to fit a tech niche — specifically using SpatialOS to handle the “massively living world” aspects — but didn’t quite get the love and attention from the studio to make it, you know, enjoyable, by developers Bossa Studio, and apparently the consumers didn’t take to it either. The closure of Worlds Adrift seemed to be the right decision at the right time as it allowed Bossa Studios to pivot to other games such as [checks notes] Pigeon Simulator rather than close up shop. But what to do with all of those assets designed for Worlds Adrift? Well, it looks like Bossa and Inflexion, makers of Nightingale and also a SpatialOS refugee, frequent the same watering hole because we now have Lost Skies, a small-batch multiplayer survivalbox game with a very particular hook.

Although there’s not a lot of curve-balls initially in Lost Skies, there’s something about this one that feels a bit different until the point where it gets a lot different. You are a survivor of some kind of calamity which saw your world utterly destroyed by some kind of behemoths or something.

You wake up as the sole occupant of an Ark, do some communing with the Ark’s computer, and then are released into what’s left of your world: a series of floating islands marginally connected by smaller chunks of what used to be your neighborhood.

Part of the interesting thing about how Lost Skies opens is that you don’t immediately go out and start punching trees. Instead, you do a little exploring. First, learn how to build and equip a glider. Then, happen upon a grappling hook. These two pieces of equipment do a lot of heavy lifting in the early game as you explore some of the more immediate islands. Eventually you find a handgun, learn about combat, and then are tasked with creating your first axe and your first mining pick. All of this is in service to reaching the exit of the introduction, the crafting your own flying ship.

I really enjoyed this demo for the most part. I appreciate the delayed approach Bossa took in lazily getting around to the most basic staples of the survivalbox genre; I wasn’t expecting it so my first order of business outside of the Ark was to literally attempt to punch trees and rocks, seeing as how I didn’t start with tools or a means by which to build them. Instead, I learned about the environment, the world, and basic crafting. By the time I had to devote efforts towards creating my lame-ass skyship, I had complete knowledge of how to get all of the resources I needed, and in fact already had a whole lot of them.

Building the ship was easy, although a wee bit confusing in part because I put my shipyard in the middle of a bunch of trees and couldn’t see the shell I was building. Flying the ship, however, was my least favorite aspect as I didn’t find it super intuitive. Player(s) need to unfurl sails manually, and if you catch a wind current (visible, in LoZ: Wind Waker fashion) the ship will immediately get underway. Ship control is entirely keyboard-driven, with vertical, pitch, and yaw controlled by CTRL/SPACE and WASD. Slowing down, as far as I could tell, is not really an option except to hit the SHIFT key to roll up the sails and even then it’s not the kind of vehicle which stops on a dime. After taking the ship out I managed to enter open sky and was doing OK with wide turns and such, but when I tried to get back to the shipyard, I was unable to do so. I jumped off the ship, and then — because of my chosen design — I was unable to get back to the top deck to reach the helm. There is a teleporter which allows players to reach the ship from the ground, but not to be able to get to higher decks unless the ship was designed with stairs or a ladder or something. Oops!

Still, the game is attractive, and it’s probably in a really good state right now on account of the fact that it’s built on the bones of a game which was probably OK, but just didn’t find a market. Everything runs smooth, traversal is pretty decent (you can also scale vertical faces, which does not use stamina thank gawd), and combat is a bit sluggish but since this is not a competitive shooter I’m OK with it.

This was already on my wishlist, but now that I’ve put hands on it I’m eager to see it’s final price point. Considering that the skyship is integral to the overall game, and considering how much I’m not a fan of it, I don’t know that I’d jump on this immediately upon release, and I doubt there will be any overhauls to piloting between now and release. It might be fun to get a bunch of people on board a well-designed skyship (which mine was not) under the control of a competent pilot (which I am not), plying the skyways, exploring the world, and battling the BBEGs that are apparently still skulking around.