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Forever Skies looks a bit like Subnautica up in the air

The new survival game announced today

Watching the trailer for upcoming craft-o-survival game Forever Skies, I now understand how people who fear the ocean must feel about Subnautica. While I'm at my happiest in water, I know depths and strange sealife give many others the heebie-jeebies. However, heights make me pray for death. So a game about exploring the skies and skyscrapers above the ruins of human civilisation in a customisable airship, ah yes, I would like to die now, thank you very much.

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Due to enter early access sometime in 2022 (then launch in full a year or so later), Forever Skies is set in the future, after Earth is ravaged. A mysterious cloud hangs across the surface, now home to strange new life, and the civilisation which built upwards to escape now lies in ruins. A classic setup for a good time. We'll get to explore in a fancy airship, customising and maintaining it as we search for supplies, new tools, and such, ultimately hoping to find a cure for an illness.

It all looks and sounds quite Subnautica-y to me: a goal-driven survival game about exploring, building your home, and encountering strange new life, with light elements of hunger and thirst but (it sounds like?) not a NEO Scavenger-grade survive 'em up. I'm up for that. Or would be, if up weren't the most terrible place.

A photograph of the Forth Bridge emerging from thick cloud.
"This is so cool!" I thought, stopping every ten metres to take a photograph of the bridge inspired by that one in GTA: San Andreas. "I hate this!"

Those spires above the clouds do like nice. I like that. But, turns out even being above thick clouds gives me the fear. We had a great haar (sea fog) the other week, which I cycled through then over. I did not enjoy being on a bridge over it. The cloud being close beneath my feet made the drop feel worse as an unknown quantity. Perhaps I was thousands of metres up in the air and who knew what lurked beneath? No. No thank you. I now see what y'all mean about the sea.

This is the debut game from new studio Far From Home, though they say members have previously worked on games including Dying Light and Divinity. They plan to launch Forever Skies into enter early access with an estimated 30 hours of singleplayer stuff to do. Then they'll do the early access dealio of fixing things while adding new stuff, which here might include new locations, new airship modules, and four-player co-op.

Forever Skies hits Steam Early Access later this year.

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