"Lovely floating islands that empty out in a weekend"
About
Solarpunk is a first-person survival-crafting game set on a chain of floating islands. You grow crops like cotton, watermelons and paprika on farming pads, mine resources, craft gadgets, and set up solar panels and sprinklers to automate the busywork, then board your airship to reach other islands. Danger is minimal: no combat, just hunger and thirst meters, fall damage, and the odd physics accident. You can play solo or in online co-op, though each player needs their own airship and progress isn't fully shared.
Verdict
Solarpunk nails the surface it promises: a bright, unhurried place to grow crops and put up buildings without anything trying to kill you. The trouble starts once you notice how little sits underneath. The islands empty out fast, the research tree closes in under twenty hours, and the day-to-day is dragged down by inventory management that fights you and controls that won't snap where you want them. Add a shipping-blocking bug or two and the 1.0 badge feels premature. There's a pleasant game here for the right mood, but it asks patience the content doesn't repay.
You'll like it if …
- +You want a calm builder with no combat and no failure states
- +Decorating and shaping a base is reward enough on its own
- +You're happy to stop after 15 hours once you've seen everything
You'll dislike it if …
- −You expect a survival sandbox to keep unfolding past the first unlock cycle
- −Fiddly inventory and placement controls sour the building for you
- −You want real co-op where friends share an airship and a journey
Breakdown
- +The build-farm-automate loop is deliberately low-stress, and for players who want that it lands as advertised
- +Automating watering and harvesting with sprinklers and solar panels removes the tedium once you unlock it
- +The only threats are self-inflicted, which keeps the tone calm rather than tense
- −Resource gathering leans on tool durability, so you spend a lot of time recrafting picks mid-harvest
- −Many players read the pacing as padding rather than relaxation, the same three clicks repeated for hours
- −Co-op can't share an airship, so friends explore separately instead of travelling as a group
- +The building and decoration sandbox gives creative players room to shape a base the way they want
- −The full unlock and upgrade cycle finishes in 10 to 20 hours, and there's little reason to continue after
- −Fewer than ten small islands, and they feel interchangeable and barren once you land
- −No secrets or escalating systems to pull you back once the research tree is done
- +The absence of story suits players who just want to build and be left alone
- −A single trade robot is the only NPC, and there's no lore or worldbuilding at all
- −The solarpunk name promises community and a hopeful future, and the empty islands deliver none of it
- +The art direction is warm and consistent, and the floating-island look holds together
- +Runs smoothly with near-instant loading and no noticeable lag
- +The soundtrack stays calm and unobtrusive, matching the mood
- −Bugs undercut the polish: character customization that doesn't persist, frozen animals, ships that instakill on collision
- −Physics glitches let you fall through the world
- +Performance is well optimised, which is more than many survival sandboxes manage at launch
- −Inventory handling is among the worst in the genre: tiny stacks, no auto-stacking, no crafting from chests
- −Placement has no grid snapping and you can't build downward, which fights your creativity
- −No pause in single-player unless you mod one in
- −Progression blockers reported, including broken chicken AI that bricks saves
- −UI hides things like the research button and confuses basic menus
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