PC Specifications:
Processor: Intel Core i7-4790
Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960
Memory (RAM): 16 GB RAM
Game Version: 1.0.1
Price Point: 29.99$
I found that I like survival crafters. Figuring things out when exploring is great, and it gives the old lizard brain that nice scratch it so loves, which is why I still enjoy the first Subnautica despite the devs being twats. Anyway, this game is one of the latest contestants chasing that trend: Forever Skies! I had high hopes for this one, though maybe I should have adjusted my expectations after spotting the burning airship on the cover image.
Anyway, we're going to explore a ruined Earth, cure a plague, dive under a deadly layer of Dust and learn to hate PETA and Greenpeace while doing so. Let's go!
Also, this review contains spoilers. You were warned.
Story
The narrative of Forever Skies is serviceable on the surface but ultimately forgettable. The opening act is good, offering a clear sense of purpose and momentum: you're a random guy sent back to a poisoned Earth to re-establish contact with an expedition that went there to find a cure for a deadly disease. Giving the player a family photo to remind you why you’re down on ruined Earth is a nice touch: find the cure for the Grey Plague to save your loved ones. How nice, a man out to save his family and there is no shrieking woman in sight to lecture us! The only fly in the ointment is that I’m not sure how a White man and an Asian woman produce what looks like a black daughter. Clearly the genetic mutations on the space station are out of control; I don’t even want to know what kind of freak the player character is.
The story also wastes no time telling you what the ultimate evil is: humans, and their environmental pollution. Yes, this is the post apocalypse supposedly caused by human meddling with technology, so you could excuse this as a realistic mindset on the part of the few survivors facing the imminent extinction of their race. Still, as the game wears on the message becomes ever more grating.
Then, to my shock and confusion, the story takes a sharp turn with its main antagonist: an eco-terrorist AI determined to eliminate humanity under the guise of environmental preservation. This plot twist aims for shock value but feels disjointed, especially given the AI's role in actively sabotaging efforts to repair the world’s ecosystem and stop said deadly plague, and despite the AI itself also wanting the cure. The moral messaging is heavy-handed, and the lack of nuance in its portrayal of environmental themes comes off as excessively preachy. The fact is that the message manages to undermine itself by making the main villain an AI humans built with the express intent to help protect the environment is just the cherry on top.
With humanity facing extinction, environmentalists spent the last few days on Earth doing work that really mattered: painting building sized murals to tell everyone how much humanity sucked. Clearly their time was well spent.
To make matters even worse, every confrontation with the AI lacks emotional weight. There’s a clear attempt to emulate Portal: the AI is a hippy GLaDOS but without any the sarcastic menace, biting wit, or complexity. The result is a villain that feels more like a narrative obligation than a genuine threat. It’s a shame, as the initial world-building hinted at a deeper exploration of survival and rebuilding in a post-apocalyptic world. Instead, the plot leans too heavily into “save the environment” clichés, to the point that the message from the developers in the end tells the player that they hope the game will remain fictional. I get preached at less when I go to church, and they don’t bill me thirty bucks for the privilege!
The story itself is also really short, with my playthrough clocking in at 28 hours, with a significant portion of that being owed to my obsession to try and find blueprints. If you don’t care about building an airship, I wouldn’t be surprised to find the entire game being a little over 10 hours.
Graphics
Visually, Forever Skies is a mixed bag. The initial locations are crafted with a good level of detail, with vibrant colors contrasting the greys of collapsing buildings, towering structures, and suitable environments that invite exploration. The airship itself is highly customizable, and its evolving appearance reflects your progress in the game, which is a strong visual reward. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that building your airship is the greatest draw in the game. Unfortunately, this level of attention doesn’t extend to later areas. The world, while vast, becomes repetitive, with identical-looking ruined islands and structures that lack variety. The art style is appropriately apocalyptic, but its charm is diluted by the copy-pasted aesthetic that dominates the game's back half. The sky really does go on forever, but by the time you realize that it has become a threat rather than a promise. For a game that emphasizes exploration, a greater variety of landscapes would have elevated my enjoyment considerably. At least the game’s theme is on point, in that the later sections are increasingly overrun with mutated plant life and reclaimed by nature. The more overgrown a building is, the greater the threat, at least in theory. The unfortunately small areas under the Dust are as visually impressive as the game gets, but even they get copypasted to hell and back.
Uh, hi?
As you can see from my PC specs, my machine is basically a glorified potato battery at this point, yet the game runs fine even with the best textures, and the settings menu is both detailed and offers perfect controller support, which is something I really appreciate in my survival crafters.
Gameplay
The real heart of Forever Skies lies in its construction mechanics. Building your own airship is not only the main attraction but arguably the game’s saving grace. The customization options are actually quite deep, allowing for functional, aesthetic, and strategic choices that genuinely impact gameplay. As an example, some of the buildings are so utterly wrecked that you can’t land on them. In order to still access them, you need an extendable boarding ramp. Later on (or too late, as the case may be), you can automate resource gathering and build an entire automated farming setup.
However, the pacing of blueprint acquisition is annoyingly uneven. Core blueprints necessary for functional upgrades are reasonably spaced, but cosmetic options are all crammed into the final areas. This decision feels counterintuitive, hampering player creativity during the main stretch of the game. Base building is at its best when experimentation is possible early and often, not throttled until the end. Subnautica did this well, and it becomes incredibly obvious that this game is trying to put a spin on the concept. Unfortunately it whiffs every other attempt to improve and blunders from one questionable design choice to another. This is apparent very early on, since the game copies Subnautica’s approach to base building: you have a tool with which you walk around your ship to build stuff.
And here the shortsightedness of the design becomes apparent: Subnautica is set under water, meaning you have complete access to every part of your base by swimming around it. Forever Skies, as the name implies, is set in the sky, and as such you have to land for large parts of the construction, which is incredibly annoying and fiddly, especially for ships that need a larger landing platform. Also, you need to constantly watch your step as you walk around your ship, lest you plummet to your death while building.
Not pictured: guardrails.
Additionally, while the game offers post-main-story exploration, there’s very little incentive to continue. The world feels empty and repetitive, with nothing in the way of secrets or meaningful encounters. The lack of interesting gameplay elements or unique challenges post-game means that once the final mission is complete, there’s little reason to stay invested. This means that I never actually bothered building the airship I’d planned, since acquiring the blueprints took so long the game was over before I got even the basic rooms and walls I’d wanted for it.
The game is at its best in the early sections, while you struggle to find food and drinkable water in the ruins, flying around in your half-finished airship the size of a shoebox. I actually had a lot of fun there, because everything was still full of exploration and I hadn’t yet realized how shallow the game ultimately was.
One of the greatest joys you'll have in the game. Just pray that it drops a seed.
Combat:
The game does have weapons and a combat element, but I almost wish it didn’t. Like with so many other things in the game I can almost taste the desperation of the poor, talented developer who wrote the combat AI and other, under-the-hood programs, only to have all his work wasted. There is one, exactly one type of enemy that can attack you in your airship: something called a scrap hatchery, which latches onto the ship and slowly tears off the piece it has latched onto. The enemy has no actually damaging attacks and is defeated by aiming the basic deconstruction tool at it. That’s it.
There are other enemies that can actually damage you, but all of those save for a single one are static: yes, even the swarm of wasps doesn’t attack or follow you unless you literally walk into their attack radius. There is a nice idea buried in the combat though: enemy attacks (and tainted water, and uncooked food) give you certain diseases that distort your vision, make you hallucinate or slowly kill you… but only near the end of the game, because your immunity is at 100% at the beginning of the game, and diseases become threatening only when it has degraded severely, which is gated by story events.
There was only a single “fight” where I was actually in danger of losing: the fight against three mantises, the only competent enemy in the game. And even that is mostly owed to my own stupidity, since I was too busy fighting to notice that I could have simply climbed back up the ladder and attacked them with electric bolts from a safe distance.
Behold the mantis: the only enemy in the game more threatening than a coma patient with brittle bone disease.
Final Thoughts:
Forever Skies shines where it lets the player tinker and create, but falls off the railing in its pacing, narrative execution, and endgame content. If you’re drawn to the idea of building and customizing your own flying fortress, there’s enjoyment to be found here as long as you can live with the game trying to keep you from your fun until the story is over and done with. However, if you’re looking for a deep narrative or engaging post-game experience, you might find it lacking. Wait for a sale if you’re on the fence; otherwise, it’s a pass for those seeking more than just brief, surface-level engagement. Personally, if I could go back in time I wouldn’t buy it purely because the preaching makes me want to spite the developers.
Rating: 4.5/10
Hm, a dead human survivor next to a pile of now worthless money. What did the game mean by this?
(Good luck hiring again and being able to afford.) Smart moves everywhere you look. 