Originally teased under the name “Project Oxygen” as the debut title from upstart studio, Far From Home, Forever Skies is an open-world action-survival game that takes cues from the likes of Subnautica and Death Stranding whilst also building out a tone all its own. The game is set on a long-since-evacuated Earth after an ecological disaster left the planet practically uninhabitable.

A lucky few have survived and now live above the toxic clouds in orbit around the now half-shrouded Earth, in what is the last remnants of humanity. You play as a lone scientist whose job is to infiltrate the toxic layer of dust aboard a mobile airship to discover how the Earth has changed since the evacuation and to study the damage.



Here’s some official blueprints we found while scavenging for more info:

Build, expand and control a high-tech airship that will act as your transport, shelter, laboratory and workshop for researching mysterious substances and crafting tools for survival. Scavenge, find ways of obtaining food and resources, and explore the ruins above and below the thick, toxic dust layer which now shrouds the Earth’s surface. Why is the dust there? What is it exactly? And perhaps more importantly, what lies beneath it. Gameplay in Forever Skies will include exploration in your airship and on foot, crafting, base building, planting, combat, and scientific research in virology in search of a cure to help those few, who survive in orbit.

Key Features

• Return To Earth - Take on the role of a scientist returning to Earth devastated by a global ecological disaster. This event caused the surface of the planet to be covered in a colossal layer of toxic dust, forcing humanity to build massive towers to try to survive.
  
• Build & Control Your Advanced Airship - Build and customize a high-tech airship. It will be your home, workshop, laboratory. Extract and gather resources to improve it to make it fit your gaming tactics.
  
• Utilise Science To Survive - Analyse scanned items and reverse engineer lost technology. Research new ways of obtaining food, resources, new tools and more.
  
• Scavenge Ruined Skies - Explore and discover the remains of our civilisation. Extract resources from the ruins that were built up high to escape the dust. Find out what happened and how we lost Earth.
  
• Descend Below The Dust - Discover a strange new world that changed with the absence of humanity. Hunt for viral pathogens, use them as weapons or better yourself with viral boosts.
  
• Fight for Your Life - Below the dust lies a totally new ecosystem so expect a fight against evolved and dangerous creatures.

Made up of cats who worked on the likes of Dying Light and the forthcoming Dying Light 2 as well as Dead Island, The Medium, Chernobylite and the Divinity Original Sin series, Far From Home’s credentials are more than solid, while the above teaser definitely shares the Subnautica-like vibes. And almost in answer to that series’ most requested feature, Forever Skies promises co-op play once the game has spent some time in Early Access.

Console versions of the game, in its most complete form (once all the PC kinks have been ironed out), are also promised, though whether that’s this year or not will remain to be seen.

“We were truly overwhelmed and humbled by the initial reception of our project,” says Andrzej Blumenfeld, Far From Home CEO and Gameplay Lead via press release. “I hope that the teaser trailer with the first gameplay running on the power of Unreal Engine will give a nice glimpse into our wrecked world and a clear idea of the direction we’re heading.”

For me, I was grabbed by this as soon as the concept of a mobile airship and Subnautica-like gameplay was promised. We’ll have more on Forever Skies soon, in the meantime check out the teaser trailer above, and a handful of new screenshots below.