Astrolobe Interactive, the developers of Aloft, have recently announced a partnership with Funcom, the creators of my favorite game, Conan Exiles. Unlike the intense barbarian survival adventure, Aloft aims to offer players a calm and stress-free experience.

Aloft’s storyline is based on saving the ecosystem of floating islands around a giant hurricane. What was once a paradise of blooming flowers, green trees, and singing birds has now turned into a grey, lifeless world. Fungal corruption, invasive weeds, and irresponsible harvesting have drained the vitality from nature.

The goal is to cleanse the fungal corruption to restore nature to life and uncover the secrets of ancient civilizations. You can transform any island into your base and embark on a journey to search for ‘dead’ islands. Wind punk technologies must be mastered to navigate your skyship through clouds and avoid damage from hurricanes.

The game’s world is divided into biomes, each of which contains a dried Life Tree affected by fungal corruption. To revive these trees, you must restore the ecosystems of the surrounding islands. This will bring them back to life, revealing hidden chambers at their roots. Additional benefits, such as improved weather conditions, unlocked rare crops, Life Tree fruits, and more, are available for restored Life Trees.

Aloft provides tools such as a spyglass and table map to help you identify the affected islands from a distance, saving you a lot of travel time. The symptoms of low vitality areas include sick trees, invasive plants, unharvestable crops, animal bones, and others.

When you land on one of these islands, you will need a Field Guide to determine what is needed to revive the ecosystem. The guide will be invaluable, marking birdhouses to repair, corruption spots to destroy, and damaged trees to cut down. Life will return once the requirements of the Field Guide are met.

Restoring an island’s ecosystem comes with multiple rewards. You’ll experience a boost in your physical characteristics, such as running speed, attack speed, and damage, and gain the “Enthusiastic” status. You can also tame animals and transfer them between your base and other islands, as well as gather special crops. Chests and areas blocked by vines will be unlocked, allowing you to loot and explore them.

Astrolobe Interactive has not yet revealed the release date of Aloft, but it expected that the game can enter Early Access in Q3 2024.