Over a year after it smashed its Kickstarter goal 10 times over, open-world survival crafting game Solarpunk has released a demo as part of Steam Next Fest. It's quickly become the most-played survival game of the whole event, with "1-2+ hours of gameplay" available ahead of the game's proper launch, scheduled for later this year according to its Steam page.
Solarpunk was pitched as a familiar survival game core largely enlivened by its setting: a fractured world of floating islands. You'll decorate the interior of your house and perfectly optimize the customary farm, sure, but also take airships to distant territory in search of specific resources, harness the wind and weather for energy, and set up hovering off-island platforms for extra space or special uses. As someone who's become enamored with floating islands thanks to loads of JRPGs, something about Solarpunk's riff on the survival-craft formula speaks to me.
