Solarpunk is a very pretty survival game that simply forgot to be solarpunk

There is a word in this game's title that makes a huge promise, and it is precisely the one the game keeps least. Solarpunk is lovely, gentle, restful, crossed by an airship we adore piloting. But behind the label, it is a survival and crafting game of the most classic kind, one that harvests pristine nature instead of repairing a damaged world. And for something called Solarpunk, that is quite a contradiction.

The context

Developed by Cyberwave and published by rokaplay, Solarpunk releases today on PC, PS5, Xbox Series and Switch 2. The project has been sitting in wishlists for over two years, carried by a demo that got the like-named community talking. The idea: a world of floating islands bathed in light, where you build, farm, automate and explore aboard your own airship, alone or in co-op. On paper, the dream of everyone who saw that famous yogurt ad become, against its will, the symbol of an entire aesthetic. In practice, it is more complicated.

The gameplay

Let us start with the core, because that is where everything happens and where everything slightly stalls. Solarpunk is a survival-craft. You arrive in a lush environment, you chop trees, you pick up rocks, you cut down bushes for their berries, you assemble a workbench, then tools, then a house. If you have touched a single game of the genre in the last decade, you know the tune by heart, note for note. The loop is solid, readable, never unpleasant, but it invents strictly nothing.

The problem is not that it is generic. The problem is what it says. The very first action the game asks of you, in a title named Solarpunk, is to destroy the nature around you. Cut, smash, extract. You harvest a pristine, welcoming world the way you would empty a pantry, where the solarpunk imagination rests precisely on the opposite idea: restore, regenerate, repair a devastated land. Imagine starting on an industrial wasteland to clean up and turn green again, with machines you only allow yourself to exploit once they have become truly clean and ethical. That is the game we were waiting for. It is not the one we got.

What saves the whole and almost justifies the purchase on its own is the airship. Here is the one real idea that sets Solarpunk apart from its hundred competitors. Leaving the ground, reaching the floating islands, watching the world open up in three dimensions: there is an intoxicating promise of freedom here, and the first minutes at the controls have something magical about them. The catch is the piloting. The controls are the kind that "will probably click if I put a few hours in", heavy and unintuitive at first, to the point you hesitate to invest the time needed to tame them. When you sell your aircraft as selling point number one, making it a chore to handle in the first hour is a regrettable misstep.

The other pillar is energy. Sun, wind, water: you install panels, you run cables, you automate watering your plants, gathering resources, fishing. It is the part closest to the announced spirit, and the most satisfying once the network starts running on its own. But it stays rudimentary compared to what an Eco offers in ecological modeling, or a Timberborn in resource management. Here, nothing ever forces you to balance your impact on the environment. You are not encouraged to be sustainable, you are encouraged to optimize. Green technology is decoration, not a gameplay constraint.

Building, for its part, does the job without dazzling. You lay foundations, you raise walls, you grow the wood you need to build, and the pleasure of planning your plot is very real: setting a greenhouse by the water, tracing your cables, watching your house rise plank by plank has that hypnotic little quality that makes you look up and realize it is suddenly two in the morning. It is the famous Factorio effect, nap edition. In co-op, it takes on another dimension, and that is probably where the game is at its best: splitting tasks, one on crops, another on energy, a third off exploring a distant island by airship, exactly the kind of quiet session with friends Solarpunk is built for.

It is worth saying, because everything we hold against the game at its core takes nothing away from one thing: it is pleasant. Harvesting is satisfying, the loops click cleanly, and there is real comfort in losing yourself in this world with no stakes and no threat. Several players sank hours into the demo alone without noticing, and you understand why. The issue is never that Solarpunk is unpleasant. It is that it is ordinary where its name screamed the opposite.

Last fundamental gripe: the pacing. The start is slow, slower than the genre average, and you have to hang on before the interesting systems unlock. For a cozy game that is not a dealbreaker, we are not here for adrenaline, but combined with a loop seen a thousand times, it demands a patience not everyone will have.

The story

There is barely any, and it is a deliberate sandbox choice. No grand narrative, no characters, no dramatic arc: just you, your island, your airship and the urge to build. That is perfectly legitimate for a cozy survival game, but it robs the game of a golden opportunity. A narrative thread about rebuilding a world would have given meaning to the whole loop, and incidentally reconciled the game with the word on its cover. As it stands, the world is pretty but mute.

The technical side

And yet, how beautiful it is. It is the first thing you notice and the last you forget. The art direction, all pastels, soft light and rounded silhouettes, evokes the best Studio Ghibli landscapes run through a cozy-game filter. Floating islands hung in a milky sky, flowering meadows rippling, sunsets over the water: there are shots where you stop just to look. Controller in hand, it is a genuine visual treat, and on this ground the game keeps all its promises.

The audio is much the same: soft pads, rustling wind, lapping water, a discreet soundtrack that never tries to raise its voice. It is exactly what you want from a game built to decompress, and the day-night cycle, with its bluish nights and orange dawns over the meadows, adds further to the contemplative charm. On the pure relaxation proposition, Solarpunk is faultless: it is a place you want to stay, even once you have understood that the substance would not match the surface.

On the finish, it is more uneven. We noted that little parasitic zoom effect when you start then stop a sprint, a visual detail that quickly grates and tires the eyes over time. A few crafting recipes and certain controls would also benefit from being more intuitive: it took us a while to figure out how to make more sticks, which is hardly the peak of complexity. Nothing broken, but the polish is not quite at the level of the gorgeous scenery.

Verdict

Solarpunk is a competent, gorgeous and restful cozy survival game that could have been so much more. Everything is there to make it a little digital garden you return to with pleasure: the mood, the colors, the airship, the promise of solar automation. But the game settles for ticking the genre's boxes without ever daring to be what its name announces. It harvests nature instead of healing it, it decorates instead of engaging, and it leaves Terra Nil, Timberborn or Eco to truly carry the solarpunk ideal. For cozy-craft fans after a new pretty, peaceful sandbox, it is honest value. For those who came for the word, it is a polite disappointment.

Beautiful as a promise, hollow as a slogan: a pretty survival game that forgot to become its own.