Lost Skies, an open world base building game, just came out of Early Access and got its full release on Steam.
Lost Skies, an open world base building game, just came out of Early Access and got its full release on Steam.
Lost Skies, an open world base building game, just came out of Early Access and got its full release on Steam.
Sail into a sky torn apart, where islands drift alone and storms draw hard borders between them. Ancient ruins whisper of lost knowledge, waiting for you to dig it up and make it yours.
The real prize, though, is your ship—not a pretty toy, but a machine whose weight, lift, and balance decide if you cut through windwalls or get torn to pieces by skyborne beasts. Every plank and sail is survival, not decoration.
Bring up to five friends for the ride, or strike out solo if you’d rather test your mettle. Either way, the horizon never ends, and neither do the dangers.
Graphically, this is one of the most striking survival games in years. The art style blends a painterly steampunk aesthetic with vast natural beauty. Character models are sharp and full of detail. The floating islands are alive with color, vegetation, and ruined architecture that hints at a lost civilization. Lighting is where the game shines most—sunlight breaks across clouds, glints off your ship’s sails, and shifts into dramatic tones when storms close in. It looks closer to AAA than indie, a rare feat for a survival title.
The audio design follows a different philosophy. The soundtrack is calm and measured, leaning into a casual and chill tone that encourages you to breathe in the world rather than rush through it. Sound effects are precise—your grappling hook whirs with metallic tension, ship engines rumble as they strain against the wind, and creatures emit guttural roars that echo across the sky. Despite the threats, the soundscape is oddly relaxing, a contrast that makes the exploration loop addictive.
You can play with keyboard and mouse, which feels especially tight for ship construction and grappling. Both Xbox and PlayStation controllers are fully supported if you prefer lounging back.
Progression and saves are tied neatly into Steam Cloud, making it easy to hop between setups.
Officially, this is a Windows-only title. Steam Deck is not supported, and Valve has yet to give it a verification badge. However, ProtonDB reports show a more nuanced reality. Single-player works reliably under Proton, with very few crashes or performance hiccups. The main issues crop up in multiplayer sessions, where desync and server instability can appear. For Linux users, that means you’ll have a fine experience if you stick to solo play or smaller co-op groups.
Hardware demands are on the higher side, but not unreasonable. The minimum spec asks for an Intel Core i3-10100, 6 GB of RAM, and either an NVIDIA GTX 1650 or AMD Radeon RX 590. Storage requirements are light at just 8 GB. Recommended specs go higher—16 GB RAM, stronger CPUs like an i7-10700, and GPUs in the GTX 1070 / RX 5600 XT range—but this isn’t out of reach for most modern PCs.
Bossa Studios is behind this project. They’ve released six other games, with notable ones being Deep Dungeons of Doom, a compact roguelike, and the offbeat physics platformer I Am Fish. But Lost Skies has the strongest lineage to their earlier experiment, Worlds Adrift Island Creator, a community-driven spin-off that let players design islands in the same universe. It’s fitting, then, that Lost Skies feels like a spiritual successor to that experiment, albeit in a more streamlined, co-op format.
Humble Games published this one—the same Humble that gave us the Humble Bundle—and continues their tradition of spotlighting indie projects with bigger ambitions than their budgets usually allow.
Reception has been a mixed bag so far. Steam currently shows a 69% positive rating, which falls into the “Mixed” category. Many early reviews hammered the game for performance issues, frame drops, and occasional instability in multiplayer.
More recent reviews, however, lean more positive, with players praising the shipbuilding freedom, the grappling hook mechanics, and the sheer sense of scale in the expanded 1.0 world. Still, complaints about optimization remain, especially for those running mid-tier hardware.
The introductory price is C$26.00, with a limited-time launch discount. Given the current state of performance and stability, the cautious move is to wait a little while before jumping in—unless you’re the kind of player who doesn’t mind rough edges and wants to be part of the game’s post-launch shaping.
Lost Skies already offers a foundation worth experiencing, but it’s clear this world is still finding its balance.