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Has life got you down in the dumps due to the dreary slog of the mundane grind here on the surface of the Earth? Does it feel like life would be better if you only had to worry about eating, drinking, and the occasional lightning strike? Do you want to build a new life amid the clouds exactly how you envision designing it? If you answered yes to these questions, I have the escape for you into the sky world of Solarpunk.
Solarpunk is a cozy crafting survival game set in a world of floating islands. In it, players work to build, survive, and thrive on a set of sky islands. If the idea of complete freedom to build and decorate a sky farm however you see fit, with limited and generous survival mechanics, interests you, this is a game to check out.
In addition to co-op capabilities, there are two game modes: Standard and Soft. Soft reduces hunger & thirst, turns “keep inventory” on, and removes the threat of being struck by lightning. We played on Standard for this review, to give players a good look at what they will be getting into.
Key Details
- Developer: Cyberwave
- Publisher: Rokaplay/Metaroot
- Platform: PC via Steam
- Price: $22.99
- Review Code Provided: Yes, for PC via Steam
A Vast World With Plenty of Challenges
Solarpunk trods well worn ground in the survival crafting genre with the core gameplay loop. You start in an initial area with adequate resources for basic survival, but not much beyond that. You wake up to a blue sky with birds flying overhead and a few items to get started.
After you get moving, you will need to collect sticks and rocks from the ground while performing the initial exploration of the first island. Chopping trees requires a tool (you cannot punch trees to get wood here), so players start with a low-durability axe.
There are some limited items that are hand-craftable, including the basic tools needed for making a crafting table and a research table. The starting island only has a few types of resources, making exploration a mandatory part of game progression. Crafting a survival guide is highly recommended as it is the only real source of in-game guidance going forward.
After gathering resources and setting up the initial farming of raspberries and cotton, the player will be able to unlock the airship dock in the research table. Once the airship dock and airship are built, the second island and the Merchant airship become accessible.
Crafting Tables, Electronics Tables, and Build Hammers, Oh My!
Once you are airborne in Solarpunk, the game starts to challenge you, while offering plenty of new ways to explore and build.
After each airship upgrade is applied, the circle where the player can travel expands; there are new mineral resources, crops, and sometimes animals to collect, grow, and raise. When enough of the resources are gathered or crafted, you will trade them in and advance the unlocked recipes until another airship upgrade is available.
After you have gotten comfortable exploring, you will also need to take time to build new tools.
The crafting table and electronics tables are where most of the crafting work is done in Solarpunk. Crafting is simpler in Solarpunk versus other games such as Minecraft, as there are no shaped recipes to remember. Just have the correct quantity of ingredients in the player inventory, click the craft button, and the item is produced.
The build hammer is the primary way to construct buildings and has a wide variety of shapes that can be put together to make custom structures. To sleep through the night, the player must place a bed on a foundation with a roof overhead. There is a radial menu that allows for constructing a selection of shapes that snap together in a satisfying manner.
Wood is the first material that can be built with, but glass and brick equivalents can be unlocked at the research table as the game progresses. Buildings get built piece by piece via the build hammer. Decorations to fill buildings and the land are made at the crafting table or electronics table depending on the recipe.
Solarpunk does not truly have an end to it, as it can be played endlessly as a player builds on any or all of the islands. When everything is unlocked, the game is fully a sandbox, where the player gathers resources from the infinite resource nodes and then builds and decorates as they see fit.
In addition to crafting and exploration, you will also have to take care of your own basic needs. I reversed the standard name of Solarpunk’s genre in the intro, as the emphasis is on crafting and the freedom to decorate the world over the survival mechanics. Players have health, hunger, and thirst wheels. Health will increase over time when the hunger and thirst wheels are high enough. The only ways to take health damage are via fall damage or being struck by lightning during a thunderstorm. Walking off the edge of the island also technically deals damage… it is just all of the damage resulting in respawn.
Death has little consequence in Solarpunk on Standard mode. Player inventory is dropped in a chest where you died, or near the skydock if the cause of death was airship durability loss. The airship can be summoned back to the skydock and then repaired if needed. A simple box retrieval is needed to reacquire a player’s inventory.
These lighter survival mechanics would be good for players who want to craft and design a world with limited risk involved, over just a creative mode, or for players who are new to the survival game genre.
Deep Mechanics But Lacking Narrative Direction
Despite the deep crafting mechanics, Solarpunk is not driven by an overarching narrative. There is no explanation for why you are waking up on a sky island and embarking on a life of crafting, building, and farming. Nor is it explained why there is a merchant sky ship just chilling and hanging out in the center of the map.
Based on the trailer for Solarpunk on Steam, I believe that a purposeful choice was made to lean into the freedom aspect of the game and not include any sort of story or narrative. For players who desire full freedom to build a dream world in the sky, this would be a highlight of Solarpunk.
Personally, I like to see some narrative or story to help drive me through a survival-crafting game. Even if it is just the tutorial, having some level of story and/or a narrative starting point helps me invest myself in a game. This can be overcome with some other motivation, like surviving scary monsters in early Minecraft. Without a threat or story, I had a harder time connecting to the world of Solarpunk.
In addition to the lack of narrative, I also ran into a few minor and slightly humorous bugs. In particular, there were some bugs related to the pathfinding of the animals, which I did see.
My first chicken, Tom, did not make it into his hut at night or during thunderstorms. He stood next to the hut and vibrated like he was trying to warp inside but could not. Multiple animals got stuck at their water or feed troughs and just kind of stood there. This did not seem to negatively impact their hunger, thirst, or shelter bars, but it was odd seeing them standing there when everyone else was asleep. This behavior seemed to resolve upon reloading the game, until the next one got stuck.
Graphics Had Many Pluses and One Minus, Much Like the Watermelons
Solarpunk is made in Unreal Engine. The game looks good and has an art style that works well for it. The trees and grass sway in the wind in a nice way. Some of the trees are very pretty as well. I enjoyed gathering the maple trees to put on my main island. I would have liked to put the trees that are unlocked at the very end of the game on the main islands, but they are tied to a specific biome, which was a little disappointing.
However, the pretty graphics and models in the game lead to my single biggest pet peeve, which is that for crops, the in-ground display of many of the crops has multiple instances, but when harvested, you always only get one of them. The clearest example of this is the watermelon. A watermelon crop has four full-sized watermelons prior to harvest, but after harvest you only get one watermelon. This feels really slow before the recipe to make more seeds is unlocked. It was immersion-breaking for me.
Final Score – 7/10
Solarpunk is a good survival crafting game with an emphasis placed on the cozy and crafting aspects. It is clearly lovingly made by the Cyberwave development team, and that is felt in the detail that is put into the models and the building mechanics of the game. Cyberwave succeeded in making a cozy, survival-lite, crafting game that allows for much player freedom and creativity.
While the game is well made, the lack of narrative and risk in the game keeps me from wanting to jump back into the world or continue building out my sky farm. I think that it would have benefited from some additional game modes that would have added more challenge to the world.
While I did not test the co-op portion of the game out, I think that playing with some friends could be a good way to break up the pre-automation chores of the game by being able to divide up responsibility.
If playing co-op, standard caution should be taken with who you play with in a crafting game. While I don’t think there is a lot to do to actively hinder other players, I could see arguments breaking out if the visions for the creative building are too different.
**Bonus Action was provided with a PC code of Solarpunk for the purpose of this review**
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