Some of my favorite games are the product of mashing two seemingly incompatible concepts together. After all, where would we be if someone wasn’t crazy enough to combine deckbuilders with roguelikes to create Slay the Spire (or Dream Quest before it), first-person shooters and loot-heavy RPGs to create Borderlands, or cars and soccer to create Rocket League?
Aloft aims to do something similar, mixing the relaxing principles of a cozy game with the generally uncozy mechanics of a survival crafting game amidst a floating archipelago akin to The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
That odd combination certainly pays off in some ways, like its floating island-ship-hybrid building system that completely rules and the low-stakes cooperative exploration that makes for a very chill time with friends.
But in its current early access state, it’s also quite short on things to do, has way more dull and repetitive combat encounters than it should, and suffers from numerous performance issues that really started to grate on me over time.If you’ve played pretty much any survival game before, then Aloft will immediately feel familiar.
It has you swinging both pickaxes and axes of the non-pick variety to gather stone, wood, and other materials in order to craft your way to greater power and security.