Forever Skies Review Summary

A highly fun and replayable co-op experience with stunning visuals, but excessive grinding, poor optimization, and frequent bugs hold it back.

Game is highly fun: The majority of reviews express that the game is fun, enjoyable, and has a great atmosphere, with many players highlighting smooth and engaging gameplay.

Great solo and co-op: Players appreciate both solo and co-op modes, with solo play considered well-balanced for single-player enthusiasts and co-op described as fantastic and working well with friends.

Stunning visuals and environments: Visuals and environments are consistently praised as stunning, beautiful, and visually appealing, with detailed animations and gorgeous scenery enhancing the overall experience.

Airship building praised: The airship and ship building are standout features, with customization and decoration being fun, meaningful, and a unique take on base building that players enjoy.

Exploration and crafting praised: Exploration is described as enjoyable, rewarding, and relaxing, with resource gathering and crafting also receiving positive feedback for being simple, convenient, and satisfying.

Excessive repetition and grinding: Players overwhelmingly report that the game becomes repetitive quickly, with too much grinding, similar locations, and a lack of variety in both visuals and gameplay. The repetition is often described as tedious and chore-like, making the experience boring after the first few hours.

Poor optimization causes performance issues: A significant number of players suffer from severe performance problems, including lag, frame drops, stuttering, and poor optimization even on powerful hardware. These issues disrupt gameplay and are often accompanied by bugs and crashes.

Frequent bugs cause instability: Multiple bugs and crashes are reported, ranging from frequent small glitches that ruin immersion to progression-corrupting issues and constant crashes. Some players experienced multiple consecutive crashes, making the game unstable and sometimes unplayable.

Story is too short: Many players feel the main story is too short and ends abruptly, leaving them wanting more content. The brevity is highlighted as a major flaw, with the story not feeling fully developed before reaching its conclusion.

Game feels unpolished and clunky: The game feels rough and clunky, with stiff movement and combat that is frustrating and slow. These issues contribute to an overall sense of poor polish and unsatisfying gameplay mechanics.

Survival and crafting core: The core gameplay loop is centered on survival, crafting, resource gathering, building, and exploration. Players must manage basic needs like hunger, thirst, and sleep while gathering resources to craft tools and build bases.

Airship base building focus: A defining feature is the ability to build, customize, and upgrade a mobile airship that serves as the player's home base. This airship can be expanded, modified, and redecorated, and it acts as a central hub for exploration and survival.

Co-op and multiplayer support: The game supports co-op and multiplayer modes, allowing friends to play together and share duties. Cooperative combat and resource collection are possible, emphasizing a shared experience.

Exploration and POI discovery: Exploration of points of interest is a core gameplay pillar, with procedurally generated POIs offering various types and difficulty levels. Players navigate the world to discover lore, loot, and complete quests at these locations.

Combat with enemies: Combat is a core mechanic, with the game featuring enemies and a combat system. Movement and combat mechanics are integral to gameplay, though details on the combat style are vague.

Performance issues are widespread.: Broad performance issues dominate feedback, including severe lag, FPS drops on both high-end and lower-end systems, and stuttering. These occur across various hardware and game modes, from low-end laptops to Steam Deck.

Frequent crashes hinder experience.: Frequent crashes are reported, with some players experiencing 4 crashes in 38 hours or constant crashes after updates. Crash issues are common and disrupt gameplay.

Performance degrades over time.: Performance declines over play sessions, with FPS dropping after 20-30 minutes or during specific actions, often fixed only by restarting. This suggests a potential memory leak, as noted by some players.

Some users have smooth performance.: A minority of players report the game runs smoothly on recommended specs, with 60+ FPS, no stutters, and few crashes, particularly after recent updates. This suggests performance varies widely by hardware and configuration.

High-end PCs still suffer.: Even on high-end systems like RTX 2080Ti and 4070Ti, the game stutters and has FPS drops, particularly at high settings or in specific areas. This suggests scalability issues.

Buy on sale, not full price: A large set of feedback advises buying the game on sale or at a discount, rather than paying full price. This suggests the game is good but may not justify its full cost for many players.

Some players say avoid: Several reviews advise against buying or playing the game, citing issues or lack of value. Mixed with the not-worth-its-price feedback, this indicates a notable portion of players are dissatisfied.

Co-op fun once fixed: Co-op is recommended when it works well, but another cluster warns that multiplayer needs fixes before playing with friends. The mixed feedback highlights both potential and current problems.

Cozy base-building appeal: Recommendations highlight the game's cozy exploration, base building, and farming elements. Several players specifically enjoy building and progressing from a mobile base.

Crafting fans will enjoy: Crafting and building enthusiasts are a clear target audience. Clusters note the game is worth getting for home and base building gameplay.

Community fair range: $10.00 - $20.00.

Game completion: 30.0h.

Story completion: 6.0h.

The game is engaging for the first few hours as players enjoy novel exploration and ship building, but quickly becomes repetitive and boring due to shallow content, relentless grinding, and lack of variety.

Reported time to anchor: 2h.

Friction: repetitive points of interest; tedious resource grinding; unclear progression; boring combat; performance issues.

Subnautica Veteran: Exploration-driven, focused on building and upgrading the airship, with moderate resource gathering. Motivation: To experience a new survival-crafting world similar to Subnautica, with a unique vertical/airship theme. Stance: sale.

Co-op Enthusiast: Cooperative multiplayer, sharing tasks like resource gathering, building, and navigating. Ladder bugs and desyncs are common frustrations. Motivation: To enjoy a shared survival experience with friends or partners, building and exploring together. Stance: sale.

Chill Builder: Slow-paced, methodical exploration and base-building with minimal combat. Relaxed, often in single-player or with a friend for company. Motivation: To unwind and engage in creative, low-stakes building and resource management in a post-apocalyptic setting. Stance: buy.

Performance across Windows hardware cohorts is generally poor, with frequent crashes, stuttering, and FPS drops, especially on systems with less than 12GB VRAM; higher-end systems show mixed results with improvements but lingering issues.

Windows 8-11GB VRAM: negative. Performance is poor, with frequent FPS drops, stuttering, and VRAM issues, especially in multiplayer and late game, despite a few positive reports.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: negative. Most reports describe poor optimization, low frame rates, and crashes even on high-end hardware, with only a few users finding playable performance.

Windows <8GB VRAM: negative. Constant crashes, stuttering, and very poor optimization make the game nearly unplayable on these systems, with only rare mentions of adequate performance.

Steam Deck: The game suffers from frequent crashes on Steam Deck (especially when tabbing out or in dense environments) and poor performance often below 30fps. It requires tinkering with Proton versions and is mislabeled as Verified, resulting in a broken experience for many users.

Linux and Proton: The game runs on Linux via Proton for most users, with some reporting out-of-the-box success. A common workaround is using Proton 9.0-4 to fix an alt-tab crash. Performance may be laggy for some, but overall the game is playable with minor tweaks.

External guides: The dominant complaint is the necessity to consult external wikis for progression guidance, item locations, and system explanations due to inadequate in-game tutorials and hidden mechanics. Additionally, significant bug and glitch issues are reported, including broken survival meters and map geometry problems. A positive note acknowledges helpful in-game information systems.

Subnautica comparison frequent: Many reviewers liken the game to Subnautica, often describing it as a sky or air-based variant of that exploration and survival loop. This reference appears across dozens of clusters and is the dominant point of comparison.

Raft comparison common: The game is also frequently compared to Raft, with some noting it is set in the sky with an airship instead of a raft on water. Reviewers often group it with Subnautica and Raft as similar survival crafting games.

Active developer updates praised: Several clusters highlight that the developers are actively updating the game, responding to feedback, and improving various systems. This ongoing support is viewed positively and contributes to the game's evolving nature.

Planet Crafter comparison: A smaller set of reviews compare the game to Planet Crafter, drawing parallels in building and exploration mechanics. This comparison is less frequent than Subnautica or Raft but still notable.

Variable game length reported: Completion time varies widely among reviewers, from about 16 hours to 40 hours. Most commonly, players report finishing in roughly 30 hours, suggesting a moderate-length experience.