Solarpunk Review – The Co-Op Survival Game in the Sky
I’ve been watching Solarpunk since it first showed up on my radar, and within the first hour of actually playing it, I understood why it kept pulling me back in. It’s not trying to be louder or more chaotic than everything else, it’s actually heading in the complete opposite direction.
This is a survival game built around floating islands, renewable energy, farming, crafting, and co-operative creativity. In this Solarpunk review, I’ll be honest, that concept alone makes it worth paying attention to.
Where most survival games ask you how long you can last, Solarpunk asks what you want to build. That’s a small shift in framing that changes everything about how the game feels to play.
What is Solarpunk?
At its core, Solarpunk is a co-op survival crafting game set in a bright, vertical world made up of floating islands.
Now that the game has officially been released, you can step into this world and experience it firsthand.
You and your friends can build, expand, and shape life across the sky. Instead of scraping together survival in harsh environments, the focus is on creating sustainable spaces powered by nature inspired systems and renewable energy.
The best way I can describe the tone is that it’s the first survival game I’ve played where I wasn’t stressed about dying. I was stressed about my wind turbine placement. Which, honestly, is a better problem to have.
Why Solarpunk Stands Out
Most survival games lean into stress, scarcity, and danger. Solarpunk goes in the opposite direction: it’s built with calm progression and collaborative building in mind. I mean it won’t be your new mindfulness method but it can help lower the intensity after moving across from games like..say…battlefield. The first time I jumped on my airship and sailed between islands, I kept waiting for something to attack me. Nothing did. After a while, that absence stopped feeling like something was missing and started feeling like the whole point.
The aesthetic does a lot of work too. Clean, bright, no darkness or decay. After hundreds of hours in post-apocalyptic everything, a survival game that’s genuinely nice to look at feels like a minor miracle.
Gameplay Expectations in This Solarpunk Review
The core loop is pretty straightforward. You gather resources across islands, craft tools and structures collaboratively, and gradually automate the systems that eat up your time. It sounds simple, and in the early hours it is but the satisfaction comes from watching a base that started as a few wooden platforms turn into something that actually runs itself.
Combat is not the focus here. The emphasis stays on building systems, exploration, and shared progression rather than pressure heavy survival mechanics. It sits much closer to a relaxed survival type crafting hybrid than a hardcore survival sim.
Where Solarpunk Gets Complicated
The mid-game is where Solarpunk shows its edges. The early hours are genuinely great. You have these new systems, new islands, everything feels purposeful. But the automation unlock curve is slower than it should be, and you’ll feel the resource grind before you feel the payoff. I found that the tutorial also leaves you to figure out Solarpunk’s most interesting systems, the energy flow, weather impact, airship routing, entirely on your own, which costs time you’d rather spend actually enjoying them. It’s had mixed reviews since launch for a reason, and most of that reason lives here.
Is Solarpunk Is Worth it?
Yes, with a caveat. If you’re coming in expecting the depth of Valheim or the content volume of No Man’s Sky at its current state, you might hit the ceiling sooner than you’d like. But if you want something that actually does something different with the survival genre and you’ve got a couple of friends to play with then Solarpunk delivers on its concept in a way most games in this space don’t even attempt.
It’s calmer, it’s prettier, and it makes you think differently about what a survival game can be. In a genre that keeps giving us more of the same darkness, that’s worth something.
Grab it with a friend. Give it three or four hours before you judge it and maybe don’t place your first turbine somewhere it’ll get struck by lightning, ask me how I know.
Where to play Solarpunk
If the idea of floating islands, co-op building, and relaxed survival crafting sounds appealing, Solarpunk is worth checking out on Steam to see if it fits your playstyle.
Release Date: 08 June 2026
Platforms:
- Xbox X/S Gamepass, PlayAnywhere
- PC
- PS5
- Nintendo Switch 2 (TBA)
