Solarpunk

Solarpunk is a great cozy survival crafting video game set in a world of floating islands. Players can explore the floating islands using the airship and gather resources for advanced recipes. Despite it being a survival, it is more of a relaxed craft and build title, perfect for players who enjoy cozy, creative survival games. It has both Solo and Co-op modes, allowing players to craft, build, explore, and automate solo or with their friends.

Solarpunk is a laid-back gaming experience in which resource management and base-building take precedence over exploration and survival.

I do get a decent degree of enjoyment out of survival crafting games, and as much as the survival element here is not overly high stakes (which works for me), the crafting does provide a degree of fun. The game does feel a little clunky at times (I managed to die on an island by crashing my airship… I didn’t have a dock on the island, so I ended up having to destroy the bed I had set as a spawn point so that I could die and be sent back to the original island where I could access my airship). Whether you get enjoyment out of the game will depend primarily on whether you need a story or any indication of lore to motivate you. If you are fine just grinding and get a lot of enjoyment out of building a house to your own design… then Solar Punk could be for you. I would probably still suggest waiting for a sale, though.

Solarpunk is a nice, relaxing crafting game, which is held back by its inane world and restrictive progression.

Solarpunk, as a genre and movement, is built around imagining better futures and alternative ways of living. Here, that idea never fully develops; there is a beautiful sky to explore, but not enough substance beneath it.

The first few hours deliver a standard survival experience, with tree chopping and attention to thirst and hunger. After that, progression slows down due to excessive grinding for too little reward. While it may appeal to players focused on building, exploration-driven gameplay feels underdeveloped in Solarpunk.

Disconnected, desultory, and missing the sense of discovery that elevates the survival sim genre, Solarpunk is a survival sim that manufactures friction, without stakes, from its library of borrowed mechanics and ideas.