Forever Skies Hands-On Preview: A Toxic But Relaxing Flight

ign.com:

Soaring above the clouds in an airplane – or, if you’re extra adventurous, a hot air balloon – is often a joy for anyone inclined toward the excitement of travel. You get to see the world from up above, and not to mention, airline food isn’t always half-bad. Now imagine the very same experience, but the world is absolutely and utterly destroyed. Welcome to Earth in the future: a total garbage pile where the sky is bright green and poisonous. Oh, and don’t forget the brutal thunderstorms and the ravenous roving swarms of giant moths. And that’s saying absolutely nothing about what lives beneath the giant dust storm blanketing the Earth’s lower atmosphere. It all seems so interesting that I can’t help but wonder – and fear – what I might find when I eventually build the right components on my airship to get down there. That’s the feeling drummed up by Forever Skies, an airborne survival (and, eventually, horror survival)-slash-airship building sim that I got the pleasure of experiencing in the form of a closed test.

If you’re interested in tons of combat and moment-to-moment action, you might want to look somewhere else. At least in its opening moments, Forever Skies is a slow-burn survival game that does its absolute darndest to make you feel insect-sized in its ravaged world. You start off by scrounging for the basics: food, water, health kits, crafting materials like metal and synthetics, and other tools you’ll need for survival. Very shortly after that, you get an airship that serves as your customizable home base and primary method of navigating through the world.

You’ll need to build and place the engines and keep them fueled – it’s all very, very meticulous and not to mention, very slow. That could be a good thing or