Forever Skies: Why Far From Home Is Using Early Access To Develop Its First-Person, Post-Apocalyptic Survival Game

Forever Skies is Far From Home’s first-person survival game set on a decrepit procedurally-generated Earth, abandoned to waste away in ruin, and it’s coming to Early Access on PC this year. The safe space where humans are waiting for salvation will be abandoned and players will explore an Earth that has been covered with toxic dust after an ecological catastrophe. They hope to uncover more information about the Earth’s demise, and discover secrets that can save humanity. The reveal trailer gets straight to the point – humans messed Earth up and failed to do what was needed to save it. Do you sound familiar?

Game Informer spoke with Andrzej Rosenfeld, Far From Home’s CEO and lead in gameplay and brand manager Pawel Jawor about this premise, how it hits close to home, how it affects gameplay, and what players can expect out of Forever Skies’ Early Access lifecycle. 

Far From Home CEO and gameplay lead Andrzej Blumenfeld

While the idea of ecological disaster ruining Earth hits close to home for anyone looking at the health of this planet today, the premise was directly inspired by the studio’s home country of Poland. 

“There were…different pillars [in coming up with Forever Skies], and one of them was that we are living in Poland and for a very long time, we’ve seen what’s going on around us,” Blumenfeld tells Game Informer. “Sometimes we hear that Warsaw or Kraków, for example, are very polluted cities, like the most polluted cities in the world. And now, sometimes, we receive messages on the phone that say, ‘if you can, just please stay at home because going outside is dangerous.’ The air is like poison…and this was one of the many things that we were like, ‘yeah, maybe this is a good topic to speak about.’”

Jawor added that the team had a revelatory moment after a local scientist said that to reach healthy, clean air in Kraków, you need to go about 100 meters up in the air. It’s easy to connect the dots between that revelation and the game’s first two trailers, which showcase the protagonist scientist scaling skyscrapers high above the dusty land below. 

Pawel Jawor, Far from Home brand manager

Blumenfeld says the 23-person studio’s love of survival games like Subnautica and Raft also led to Forever Skies being a title in the same genre. He says that these games and many others were huge inspirations to him. Far From Home loves Subnautica’s combination of survival gameplay and a narrative-driven approach. Forever Skies will see this team one day. 

“As this is the very beginning of the game, we want to focus on the gameplay hook, so this will probably be [the focus] of the Early Access, and then in the future, we’ll try and get more and more in,” Blumenfeld says in regards to the ongoing development of the game’s narrative. 

Blumenfeld adds to this. Game InformerAt the heart of this story lies the notion that humanity must adapt to a dangerous and new environment that is its own fault. He says Far From Home isn’t trying to preach, but it’s hard not to when dire things are happening to our own Earth’s ecology. 

At the core of Forever Skies’ gameplay is a special gun. It’s a scientific tool that’s four-in-one: an extractor tool, used to extract resources and unlock new paths, a building tool, which, as the name implies, is used to build new things like ladders, a repair tool, used to fix damaged objects, and a scanner tool, which ties into the scientists’ goal of analyzing what’s gone wrong and learning more about how to overcome the dangers of this new Earth. 

Thus far, most of what’s been shown in trailers has been a destroyed cityscape, which presents an element of verticality for the game’s survival nature. However, Blumenfeld says this city isn’t the only biome players will encounter in Forever Skies. 

“I would say that the city is not the only place,” Blumenfeld says. “The city is even a little bit further in the game, and there will be smaller locations. It’s not only about the cities, and there will be different biomes. What’s super cool…is that you actually will be able to go out and below the dust.”

He says what’s above the dust will speak directly to the ruinous status of Earth, the resources you’re after, and the story of the collapse of human civilization. 

“What is below that is the evolution of an Earth that doesn’t belong to humans anymore,” Blumenfeld says.

Jawor also cited Annihilation and The Martian, both movies that were based on scifi novels as examples of the feelings Forever Skies hopes To imitate in its story telling and gameplay. 

Your airship, regardless of your location, will always be there for you, as it acts both as your lab and home base. 

“It will be your home, it will be your workshop, and your laboratory and it will be one of the very small number of places where you can feel a little bit of safety,” Blumenfeld says. “The other thing when we’re thinking about the airship is how the airship moves, how you control it, and how you are able to play with it. For example, you will be able to add turbines or different devices that will change how high you can fly.”

When starting the game, he says there will be locations you simply can’t reach. The game encourages you to increase your ship’s capabilities. You need an upgrade to your ship to be able to access that region. The desire to locate the resources required to make the upgrade may be the driving force behind one session. However, the next will focus on exploring the rewards of the upgrade. You can, for example, start the airship with one balloon. But, over time, you will be able to add another. Your airship can be upgraded with balloons and turbines. 

Game Informer

A two-boiler example of an Airship

Blumenfeld claims that players who have 30 hours of Forever Skies experience could theoretically own completely different airships. All depends on how focused they are in-game. 

“I will say that if you focus mostly on exploration, in the end, you’ll both have the same devices that will unlock your ability to get to different locations,” he says. “But if you want to take your time to customize, and if you want to take your time to create different walls and different layers, it’s definitely possible that you could end up with complex, different airships.”

Customization, and hypothetically anything else in the game, could change based on player feedback in the game’s PC Early Access. 

“From the perspective of our studio, it’s very important that we are as close as possible to the players and if you think about survival games, what is the most important thing is the instant gameplay loop and the feeling that it’s well-balanced and that you have something to do at all times,” Blumenfeld tells Game Informer. “That’s why we decided that we want to go in Early Access so we can be as close to the community as possible. We invite you to come join us. [on the Forever Skies Discord server] because we are very open to ideas from the players.”

Jawor adds that he hopes players will be interested in the game’s development and excited to help create some items with Far From Home that could be included in the final build as “artifacts from the lost world.” He mentions posters of lost locations or a collectible for players to stumble upon when exploring a building. 

Far From Home will take feedback from its players to help shape future developments, though it has its own roadmap with cooperative multiplayer and an exclusive story mode. Additionally, the studio is working to add locations and tools. 

“I think what needs to be said here is that contrary to popular belief, even if we are creating a game, we are not really creating that game for ourselves,” Jawor says. “We are working on a game that players, that we hope players at least, will enjoy and play for a long time.” 

If you’re interested in checking out Forever Skies, you can do so through its PC Early Access period which is set to go live sometime in 2022. You can join Far From Home’s Forever Skies Discord server here if you’re interested in the game’s community. For more, watch the Forever Skies reveal trailer and then watch this extended look trailer that showcases Forever Skies’ first-person survival gameplay. 

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