Solarpunk is a new survival game in a technologically advanced world. You will travel between floating worlds to find new ingredients for crafting and building as you make your base and your solar-powered ship.

Hope You Aren’t Afraid of Heights

As it was said before, in Solarpunk you make your base in floating worlds, and yes… you can fall off the edge. Literally, they are floating worlds you must travel in between while using a ship that you will build during the game. The demo didn’t go far, it gives you a couple of hours of gameplay to let you explore and get a feel for the game. It lets you build a base and get the basics down.

You spawn on an island and are told to pick a bush, chop a tree, and mine stone. For any survival game veteran, it’s the first thing you will go for. To craft in the inventory you hit the ‘F’ key, and it brings up a small window that gives you your basic stuff: Stone axe, pickaxe, hoe, build-hammer, sticks (that you use from wood,) crafting table, and survival guide.

First off the survival guide, While it isn’t necessary for you to craft it, it will prove useful if you want to get a detail on how the game works, even in the demo. It lets you know the basics, how farming with a plot works, and even how to use stairs to get up to higher places.

Next, the crafting table. The crafting table will be your best friend here as it allows you to craft more advanced items like the research table, rain collector, seeds, and cloth from the cotton you find around the island. It has animals and furniture but there isn’t much besides a wild chicken. The research table will be with the crafting table as you will need it to learn new items to craft.

Surprisingly you can craft a ship, the bread and butter of Solarpunk. Surprisingly because I felt like it would be left out of the demo, while a surprise it’s very welcome as it gives you an idea of how it’s supposed to work, you will build a ship dock and from there you build it. From there you can explore the limits of the demo.

Cozy Gameplay

Although it feels simple, it still has a lot but it doesn’t make you feel overwhelmed by the idea of survival. It’s a cozy game with the atmosphere it gives, it’s relaxing and calm. So long as you don’t look over the edge and are afraid of heights. However, the environment is relaxing at most and despite the simplicity, it feels well put together.

There are storms that can ruin crops but feel nice, hopefully, there are more serious storms in the full game, not looking for Icarus level of storms but thunderstorms, windstorms, or something to add more ambiance to the game or to give a reason not to fly on certain days.

The Demo didn’t have much in terms of bugs. If there is one thing I wish to see “fixed” in Solarpunk is a better button pressed to lift the foundations, or anything in general. It’s not game-breaking or something to riot at, just a bit more QoL for me but nothing button reassigning can’t fix.

You can find Solarpunk on their Steam page, while it isn’t out you can wishlist it if you enjoy the demo.