Thank you Bossa Studios for sending us a preview code!

Worlds Adrift is an online multiplayer game about people exploring a world in the sky. This world has some medium sized floating islands sprinkled around, but is mostly empty and full of sky. In Worlds Adrift, you can jump from island to island with ships. Ships are built by you, through the use of a "shipyard." But before we talk about that, let's talk about some basics in the game.

Worlds Adrift is a survival and crafting game. You craft things by finding resources in your world and scavenging them. But there are some other things you'll need in order to make most parts. Knowledge is the first requirement. Knowledge is gained by finding things in the world and scanning them with your Scan Tool. By doing this, you'll receive a certain amount of knowledge depending on the item. By gaining knowledge, you'll be able to keep that knowledge and use it towards unlocking objects such as engines, and wings, that you can use to build ships. And yes, you need both resources and knowledge to be able to craft an object.

You can research four classes for crafting: engines, swivel guns, wings and cannons. Each of these categories have several specific items you can research. Generally only the first item is necessary; the rest are sort of upgraded versions. In addition to learning how to make something, you can also find schematics in the wild on how to make them. These bypass the knowledge requirement and allow you to craft them without needing points. Some are rarer than others, with better benefits. Going back to the scavenging, you find these items in chests or storage crates hidden in the world. So I can get it out of the way now, you also get resources from the islands, such as ore from rocks or wood from trees. Now let's talk about my favorite part of this game: the world design.

Worlds Adrift is a semi-open world game. The islands are beautifully created, and have great detail, foliage and architecture. They feel empty, but yet in a way that makes you feel like it isn't. Anyone who's played games like Breath of the Wild understand what I mean. And while I'm not saying it's close to being as good as BotW, it still gives me a similar feel. Worlds Adrift also has a dynamic day, night, and weather system, which adds to the feeling of an alive world. The game has a mechanic where you can fly around the world with a sort of hook. It's like Spider-Man meets Attack on Titan, and it's so much fun to use. Combined with the big and tall islands I've found during my playtime, it's the most fun I've had with the game.

Now when it comes to the graphics... Worlds Adrift isn't the prettiest. It's not a horrible looking game, but it definitely handles its aesthetic better than its graphics. It looks pretty, but it also looks very low poly, like the world is made of clay. This creates a very smooth look that I don't really like. I understand it fits the "cartoony" aesthetic of games like Fortnite, but I just can't seem to enjoy that art style.

Story wise, there isn't much to this game. It's very vague and I'm not quite certain of it myself, so here's a short write up from Wikipedia: "The game hints that the floating islands distributed throughout the game were once part of a planetary crust, but a cataclysm shattered the planet, forming the islands that float through the atmosphere. The islands float due to an 'Atlas Crystal' that is embedded in the islands' impenetrable rock. Atlas crystals were minerals once mined by the ancient civilizations in Worlds Adrift, which can be used for its anti-gravity properties. A previous race that built the various in-game ruins is hinted at, but there is no contact between the players and their predecessors."

Moving on to the audio, this game isn't half bad at it. It creates an atmosphere of loneliness. The music is hollow, but can also create a sense of adventure. The sounds of the wind blowing, rocks cracking as you salvage them, trees making a... uh... what do you call the sound of a falling tree?

Now before I move on to the cons, I'll talk about the controls. And they're alright. Whether it's due to server lag or actual input lag, they just don't feel very fluid. Everything you do seems to have a bit of delay behind it. One thing I haven't mentioned yet, but will talk about more in the cons, is that Worlds Adrift is a physics-based game. What this means is that it tries to have "real" gravity, movement, speed and so on. Now coming from Bossa Studios, the company known for janky physics games like I Am Bread and Surgeon Simulator, this is to be expected. However, the problem is they are known for being mostly just janky, and this game is no exception.

I'm going to go about this systematically, in the order which I first talked about the topic. Following that, let's talk about gameplay. Personally I didn't enjoy this game's main mechanic, which is the shipbuilding and fighting. It feels a bit too shallow and complicated. You need to have knowledge for pretty much most shipbuilding techniques and parts, and I constantly forgot to scan things for it. Somehow I had an engine design already in my inventory, which for some reason wouldn't work until I built up some knowledge to create a power generator. I only found out about this through the wikis, as I don't remember any kind of tutorial for using these things.

In addition, one big part of this game is the multiplayer aspect, where you can find people in the world and fight or align with them. However, I've literally never seen anyone, nor any indication that people were even in this game. It felt more like a single-player game with servers than a MMO. This is mostly due to Worlds Adrift's incredibly small player-base, with a peak of usually 250 people, and an average of 130. Now, this sounds like a decent amount, until you realize that this is in a huge world with dozens of islands, maybe even hundreds. And to segment it even further, there are several different server regions, with their own worlds! So there may be only 20 people on at once in my server, in one of the dozens of islands. This gives you the feeling of a single-player game that hasn't been polished, or a multi-player game that's just too big for its own good.

The performance in this game is good; I got a very smooth picture at 1440p with high settings, but then again there isn't much graphically demanding content in this game. Server performance, however, I was disappointed with. Whether it was my connection or bad servers, I had a lot of lag spikes. Now, for something like a RPG or a shooter, this isn't awful. But when you're on a giant floating ship in the sky, and the game suddenly decides that the ship should keep going, but you shouldn't, as you fall to your death, losing the inventory you gained over the last 30 minutes, you might find it a bit annoying. Also, since I've started this review, I haven't been able to get back into the game. I would try to connect and lag out, or the servers would be down for maintenance. Maybe they knew I was going to be pretty critical...

When it comes to moral warnings, there isn't much to say here. There's no language, nudity or occult themes. You can shoot some enemy humans and creatures with guns, however there are only some minor blood splashes, and depending on what you shoot, not even red blood. I'm going to give this game a 5/10 on violence, as you can still kill enemy players you find in self-defense.

Now, I don't want to make this game seem all bad. Despite what I listed here, I still had a good time. Through the dropped connections, confusing mechanics and sometimes boring gameplay, this game still brought a smile to my face. The amazing design and beauty of this world made it generally enjoyable. However, I only really can recommend this game if you enjoy exploring on your own or have a group of friends to play with. I'd also like to remind you that this game is in Early Access, and is likely to only get better as time goes on, and I look forward to it doing so.

- Remington