Survival games are great at making small achievements feel like big ones; building your first hunting shelter, surviving the first night, toppling an assailant with your first semi-decent caveman weapon, it’s all very satisfying, but there's rarely that feeling of exhilaration that you get with a good single-player adventure. Enter Aloft, a breezy co-op survival sandbox game (with a multiplayer demo available right now on Steam ) set among blankets of cosy clouds and scenic islands floating in the sky. Any of these islands can become your home-slash-skyship, which you can commandeer to cut through the clouds as you explore aerial realms in search of resources, knowledge, and unravelling the mystery of why the world is floating in the first place, and why it’s beset by a deadly fungus that threatens to destroy it all.
This deadly fungus is a fine reflection of the game's unique art style, which opts for pastelly palettes and vibrant colours that make it pop from the serious survival crowd. Fungus-corrupted islands are awash with the radiant reds, purples, and oranges of the alien matter, among which you'll fight shroomy monsters to reclaim the land. The combat itself is a little more in-depth than your typically stripped-back survival game too, giving you dash-attacks, aerial combos, and other flashy moves to take down your fungal foes with.
As you settle into your skybound homestead, filling it with allotments, vibrant farmlife, and crop fields, you'll get to expand it in.