Early Access & The Future of Lost Skies

What this episode is about

Lost Skies has launched its early access, attracting significant attention from major streamers and players, despite encountering common early access bugs. Within its first 24 hours, the game achieved nearly 3,000 concurrent players, maintained a mostly positive review rating on Steam, and climbed to the 16th spot in the new game sales rankings, indicating a promising start and a growing community.

Key takeaways

• Lost Skies' chaotic launch proves early access is the new circus—streamers juggle bugs like pros.
• 3,000 concurrent players in 24 hours? Clearly, 'abandoning ship' is a popular strategy for survival.
• Player-mapped islands show community creativity thrives: who needs an instruction manual when you have chaos?
• Farming in the sky? If crops can explode, we might just redefine 'growing pains' in gaming.
• Steam ratings suggest bugs enhance charm—maybe they're the game's hidden Easter eggs waiting to be discovered.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Adam (Guest) · 8 min speaking
• Sevetta (Guest) · 1 min speaking
• Luke (Guest) · 1 min speaking
• Tom Jackson (Guest) · 1 min speaking
• Oliver (Guest) · 1 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 3:00: Q&A, Worlds of Drift, Adam/Control, Discord
2. 3:00 – 6:00: Worlds of Drift, Discord
3. 6:00 – 9:00: Discord

Notable quotes from "Early Access & The Future of Lost Skies"

• Oh, the turret spawned. And even Pyroynical, who for his yes sponsored stream, farted around for 30 minutes, made a ship literally shaped like the letter E, then proceeded to put his helm.

  about Pyroynical · at 0:27

• And content have also been released by the devs, aside from the mention that the previous owners of Worlds of Drift will receive their 20% discount on early access through the…

  about Worlds of Drift · at 2:32

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Adam/Control — Person · Host (Q&A discussion host, referenced) · 1 mention · first at 2:53
  Introduced as the community manager who hosted the dev Q&A and handles major Discord communications for Lost Skies.
  And May 2nd. But additionally on their latest Q&A video, they had a big discussion hosted by Adam/Control, the community manager who makes all of the major Discord posts for…
• Pyroynical — Person · Referenced streamer (sponsored stream example) · 1 mention · first at 0:30
  Cited for a sponsored stream that humorously showcased early-access chaos/bugs and player error, illustrating launch-day shenanigans.
• Sevetta — Person · Referenced expert (game dev Q&A panelist) · 1 mention · first at 2:58
  Named as senior producer participating in the Q&A, representing production priorities and scope management for features.
  Discussion hosted by Adam/Control, the community manager who makes all of the major Discord posts for Lost Skies with Sevetta, the senior producer, Luke, the lead game…
• FanFan Co-C Carnage — Person · Referenced streamer (early access player) · 1 mention · first at 0:11
  Used as an example of a large streamer playing Lost Skies during the first 24 hours and enjoying the concept despite bugs.
  The first 24 hours alone, having some pretty large streamers playing the game, including but not limited to FanFan Co-C Carnage, who seemed to really enjoy the game concept despite some clear bugs that you would expect in early access.

Products & tech

• Worlds of Drift — Product · Referenced work · 4 mentions · first at 2:36
  Mentioned as a previous game by the same developers, with some features influencing Lost Skies.

Places & events

• Q&A — Event · Key argument · 1 mention · first at 2:51
  Discussed as a source of new information and developer insights about Lost Skies.
  The latest Q&A video, they had a big discussion.

Sponsors

• Discord — Company · Sponsor · 3 mentions · first at 2:58
  Mentioned as a platform where the developers communicate with the community and gather feedback.
  And May 2nd. But additionally on their latest Q&A video, they had a big discussion hosted by Adam/Control, the community manager who makes all of the major Discord posts for…

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 So, in case you haven't heard, Lost Skies has officially released an early access to the public. And we've already been seeing some interesting results in the first 24 hours alone, having some pretty large streamers playing the game, including but not limited to FanFan Co-C Carnage, who seemed to really enjoy the game concept despite some clear bugs that you would expect in early access. We're pulling it. We're pulling it. It takes two, baby. It takes two. What? Why did the head fall? What are you doing? Oh, the turret spawned. And even Pyroynical, who for his yes sponsored stream, farted around for 30 minutes, made a ship literally shaped like the letter E, then proceeded to put his helm and sails on the wrong way. It's just look, man, it's just spinning. I don't know how to fix this. Like, I I can't I mean, okay, kind of on me to make a giant E for a bit. Kind of on me. while not realizing it for 10 minutes

0:52 straight, forcing him to fly his ship sideways to the next island, where instead of reading the very large instructional keybinds that outline exactly what to do to fly, he freaked out, crashed his giant letter E into the bottom side of a sky island, breaking off his sails. Have you ever seen ships sails in your life? Oh my god. Oh my god. We lost the sail. We lost the sail. We're sinking. We're sinking. We're sinking. then abandoning ship and left it to fly away into the abyss. But I mean, what can you really expect? All jokes aside, though, from the early access launch day hiccups of bugs and shenanigans that you would typically expect with Lost Skies, things have actually been doing relatively well.

1:36 Taking a look at Steam DB ratings on day one, Lost Skies hit a peak of just under 3,000 concurrent players and currently holds a mostly positive review rating on Steam out of 178 reviews at the time of recording this and currently reached the number 16 spot in the top sellers list for new games coming out. And with this major influx of new players, we've already had some people personally map out the entire world layout in the first region of the game down to their exact associated island names referenced from the Lost Skies Island Creator, which for reference is the free tool that people can use to design their own sky islands that can be put into the game that you actually play. Now, in addition to the big drop, there's a bunch of new islands for you to try out. Both deves and player made ones as well. most notably Shattered Peak, Thieves and Retribution, the data research facility, and many,

2:28 many more. Now, with the notice of the EA drop, a few new bits of information and content have also been released by the devs, aside from the mention that the previous owners of Worlds of Drift will receive their 20% discount on early access through the 1.0 build. They've also added an additional 10% launch discount, meaning that the player can get up to 30% off the game between now and May 2nd. But additionally on their latest Q&A video, they had a big discussion hosted by Adam/Control, the community manager who makes all of the major Discord posts for Lost Skies with Sevetta, the senior producer, Luke, the lead game designer, as well as Tom Jackson, the principal game developer, and Oliver, another designer of much of the enemy AI like mantas that we see in the game. or one of the most notable mentions that we had in regard to possible future plans, including adding planter boxes for farming down the line,

3:21 which the player could use to generate crops or other items for buffs. And they mention while it's definitely achievable, it comes down more to what players indicate they want to see in the development pipeline and how that fits into the scope of what their vision for the game is. as personally I would like to see not only a utilization of planter boxes in the sky ships possibly kept alive with colored UV lights or some kind of kit or setup method whatever they choose to go with. But it would be cool to grow strange or rare alien-like plants that generate materials that could be used for maybe weaponry. Maybe some plants generate poisonous chemicals that can be mixed with bullets or cannon shells to add new mechanics of damage to boss fights or enemies that we are battling in the skies or even just on our personal weaponry. Or maybe some plans generate reactive compounds that make ammo types more explosive. You

4:14 know, in the same way you would think of gunpowder. But again, it does all come down to what Luke is planning for the vision of the game as we move forward. Although I would guess since farming has been a highly voted on addition in the Discord thread for the last few years, we can definitely expect it to come in some capacity after 1.0 at some point along the pipeline. Aside from this, the devs have also addressed the current state of plans regarding new regions and weather walls. As some of you may likely remember from Worlds of Drift, created by some of the old world guilds, like the Cardinal Guild, for example, the original world structure used to be formatted in many pockets where even in some of the starting regions of the game, you would have region 3's sand walls touching the beginning areas and some of the storm walls and wind walls to other areas nearby. And kind of using this reference, Luke mentions that they

5:03 are still heavily working on and experimenting how they want to introduce each new area, especially since now that there is new passive cloud rock loot formations to consider into the standard world boundaries, as well as we have the roaming harbinger bosses. All of which have never existed in Worlds of Drift, but now have to be considered when thinking about how the regions should be structured. Now, personally, when thinking about this, you could definitely look at structuring the world in massive rings, for example. However, this comes with its own downsides of spreading some regions too thin that are now exponentially increasing in size and volume for each new area. Hence why something similar to what Worlds of Drift had definitely makes sense. But depending on how the interactions between segmented weather walls will play out with the new bosses, as I would imagine personally, they likely want the

5:52 bosses in each area to get somewhat bigger and more dangerous as you progress to each new region of the game. So, when it comes down to what they end up actually doing for the world layout, they really need to make sure they have laid out exactly how they want the endgame entities to look since they likely will all function as dependent variables of one another. The next Q&A topic they covered and what I would consider to be one of the most interesting questions from the community is quote, "Will there be hoverboards or some kind of skating mechanic that allows for sliding along the ground?"

6:25 Now, this is a topic that primarily was addressed toward Tom Jackson in terms of feasibility since the player is physics driven and he worked on much of the physics and was of course the father of the island creator. as stated by him, there is nothing technical that could stop this from happening, but that it comes down to whether it fits into the lore, art, and visual design of the game. I'm I'm in good company with this community. That's a really cool suggestion. This is right in my we wheelhouse, though, man, cuz like the the play is completely physics driven, even when you're just normal locomotion.

6:58 So, there's no there's nothing technical that could stop this happening. It's just does it fit in with the law? I mean, it'll be like art and visual effects. Like, oh, yeah, we we make flight floating ships. I don't think it's a stretch to be like, can I have a floating board? Hey, look, if the game goes bananas and we suddenly go, oh, we've got infinite budget, then absolutely, we'll get that hoverboard straight away. Get a few more artists in. So, that's like 100% confirmed then. Yeah. Is that what we're saying? No, but I'm saying that it would be a lot of fun. Yeah. They're going they're going to clip that.

7:29 Yeah. Yeah, that's fine. Although while it seems they have indicated that it's not a feature that easily fits into the style of the game, they certainly love the idea where in addition to this, I know there have been countless threads of players in the Discord making plans to eventually mod this into the game as well. And I know that the devs have been very vocal about the fact that they have no issues with players actually modding the game at all. So certainly this is something that could happen regardless of whether devs actually decide to go through with implementing it. The next big topic they focused on was heralds. In particular, answering the question, will there be more Herald bosses in some areas than others, or is there just one big bad per area, where it was indicated by Oliver, the current plans regarding the Harbinger/Herald bosses, is to have essentially one big bad/ major region

8:21 boss, each with their own special attack types and looks that set them apart from each area, as well as other mention plans depending on the size and scope of the game. down in the pipeline. So, these things are very much subject to change and have only been mentioned from what I can tell in passing, which would have smaller heralds with either less attacks available or reduced attack damage that roam between the islands more freely, which respectively reflect the feel and possibly vague similarity of the attack patterns of each region boss that you would encounter. while also mentioning that aside from just the Herald skyship combat, Oliver has been working on many of the different sky encounters, which I briefly said before, which are regions of land that are not quite islands, but they are possible collections of skyrock formations that will have loot for you to collect and find while likely being guarded by

9:14 enemies. So, it gives you that option if you want to engage in that sky encounter and take the risk to just get some extra loot while you're out there. And one of the last but most interesting questions that the devs addressed here is quote, "Will we find out what is that city in the sky, clearly referencing the giant thing in the sky that we see when we actually do play the Lost Skies early access game?" Where Luke mysteriously mentioned as we play more that secrets will be revealed, but he does confirm that early access may give you certain hints as to what that thing in the sky might be. Um, yeah, it's good that people are noticing it. Um, it's not there by accident. Um, but to to dulge more, uh, famously, as I don't like to say too much, that that secrets will be revealed if you play through the story of Lost Guys, I can confirm that early access does give you some clues and hints as to what what might what that

10:06 might be and why it's there. As we know, many of the different data pads are scattered all across the islands by community creators and dev islands, which give hints into the nature of the world. we may be able to find out more about the lore and history of the game world as we continue to find out more, which I myself am still actively going through right now to try and eventually figure out myself. So, I will give you guys an update if I do find out any more information. But regardless, a ton of stuff was divulged from the hour-long Q&A. And while those are the main highlights, I'll be sure to post more about what's going on regarding the game as we continue to move forward, as well as other snippets of info that the devs may or may not leak as they have in the past or share as we continue to go through 1.0. So, I'm curious, what kind of features do you guys want to see in Lost Skies? In case you guys haven't

10:56 already taken a look, do consider becoming a YouTube member to help support the stuff that I do on this channel, as any small amount truly does make a major difference in allowing me the time to make more of these videos. Regardless, thank you guys so so much for watching and like always, have a beautiful rest of your day, boys. Peace.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Early Access & The Future of Lost Skies"?

Adam (Guest), Sevetta (Guest), Luke (Guest), Tom Jackson (Guest), Oliver (Guest).

What is "Early Access & The Future of Lost Skies" about?

Lost Skies has launched its early access, attracting significant attention from major streamers and players, despite encountering common early access bugs. Within its first 24 hours, the game achieved nearly 3,000 concurrent players, maintained a mostly positive review rating on Steam, and climbed to the 16th spot in the new game sales rankings, indicating a promising start and a growing…

What is mentioned in this Adrift episode?

7 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Q&A, Worlds of Drift, Adam/Control, Pyroynical, Sevetta, FanFan Co-C Carnage. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Early Access & The Future of Lost Skies"?

The episode runs 11 min; the transcript is about 2,199 words in 15 timestamped sections.

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