About five months ago a "cozy survival game" inspired by Stardew Valley and Minecraft stole my heart, and it's since smashed its initial Kickstarter goal 10 times over.
Back in June, Solarpunk blew right past its Kickstarter goal in just five hours, so it's no surprise to see the campaign continuing to thrive, but reaching 10 times its funding mark is quite an accomplishment. Clearly, a chilled-out survival farming sim laced with the creativity and freedom of Minecraft is something that's continued to resonate with a sizable crowd.
Solarpunk takes place in "a technically advanced world of floating islands," not terribly dissimilar to Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's multi-layered world. You can either go it alone or team up with friends as you construct buildings, farm for food, craft gadgets to combine into an automated energy system using sunlight, wind, and water, and explore distant islands from your customizable airship.
I've already written a more detailed story about Solarpunk and its inspirations, which you can find linked above, so I'll get right to the point and say that we're too close to reaching the Kickstarter's final stretch goal to quit now. At €330,000 (it's at €305,000 at the time of writing), studio Cyberwave will add pets that'll stick by your side through the whole game so long as you treat them well.
Frankly, that is too crucial a feature to be left out of the game due to something silly like funding. We need to collectively pump those numbers up before we're snatched of the privilege of pets and left to venture through Solarpunk with only stupid humans by our side.
With or without pets, though the thought is too much to bear, Solarpunk is due out on Nintendo Switch, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC in June.
Here are some games like Stardew Valley you can play today.
