Atmosfar Sets October 29 Early Access Date for Sky Islands
The latest flying-island open world has a launch date and a trailer full of cloud cruisers, sky taxis, and the same pitch every airship game makes right before it sinks.
Another sky-island open world wants your Steam wishlist, and this one at least has the decency to put a date on it: 29th October for early access, according to Rock Paper Shotgun. The trailer shows the genre's standard loadout: floating landmasses, cloud cruisers, sky taxis, the works. 'Immersive' is the word the marketing wants you to swallow. I'd settle for 'stays up.'
That's not a cheap shot. The sky-island genre has a body count. Bossa's Worlds Adrift tried to make an aerial MMO out of physics-driven airships and died trying, which is a shame because an RPS writer's fondest memory of the project is failing to rebuild one mid-hurricane and plummeting to a satisfying death anyway. Bossa came back swinging with Lost Skies, built from the wreckage. Bohemia tried its own version with Everwind. Aloft went the fungal route. None of them, per that same report, have cracked Steam's Top 20 Most Played. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom gets credit as the trend's obvious spark, but it had Nintendo's engineering budget behind the floating rocks. These are not that.
Atmosfar gets three weeks to prove its islands hold air better than its predecessors', and 'early access' means the real benchmark, player retention past month one, doesn't start until the servers do.