Following its early access launch earlier this year, developer Astrolabe Interactive and publisher Funcom have now released the Bloom & Blight update for Aloft. While this is not the first major update since the early access release (as we saw the Critters & Wonders and Puzzles & Pyrologics updates previously), it might just be the biggest, as it promises to shake up the game’s formula. This is in the form of the new tech trees, reworked restoration, and new corruption strains, among others.
One of the biggest additions in the new update is tech trees. While the game’s progression will still involve Knowledge Stones and Lost Anchors, instead of providing knowledge with no easy tracking options, these now unlock specific technology from a particular tree of tech.
The update adds three tech trees: Knowledge, Sailing, and Research. As their names imply, Knowledge is for machinery; Sailing for, well, sailing; and Research for cure-related abilities. Thanks to these tech trees, players will have an easier way of tracking and planning their tech that would suit their playstyle, making for more rewarding progression.
Along with the tech trees, the other big addition of the update is the reworked restoration. Now, islands will only track funga, flora, and fauna health. With this change, restoration should feel more appealing instead of just being mindless busywork.
With Bloom & Blight, players will also encounter Life Sapling islands that start in an unhealthy state. Players must then complete a set of mini-games to bring the island back to a healthy state. By doing so, players will be able to restore the Life Sapling and get a Dream Fruit. As a bonus, players will also get to open Wind Lanes, which function as fast lanes for getting to other islands.
The Life Sapling restoration mini-game loop is also tied to the tech tree progression. That’s because some parts of the tech tree require players to get Insight from Life Trees. These Life Trees can be activated by healing three Life Saplings in one sector. From the looks of it, this integration between the tech tree and Life Sampling mechanics should make for a compelling gameplay loop.
On top of these, the update also features new corruption strains: Sportox and Flogade. Players will also encounter corruption nodes in these new strains. Plus, nodes will be changed so that players will need to hunt down a couple of cores before they can attack the node itself.
With new corruption strains come new enemies. Sportox enemies have Spore Clouds that cause players to be Asphyxiated, while Flogade enemies can cause players to get Scorched. To face off against these foes, players will get access to new weapons, such as Windstone tools (which are more powerful than regular stone weapons), along with Serrated Bone tools that deal extra damage when a player hits a combo finale.
While these new corruption strains and enemies should give players more challenge, Aloft is still very much a cozy game. Thus, the developers made sure that players have various options to tune the difficulty of these encounters to their liking.
The update should add a more stable world generation system, meaning future content can be added to existing worlds, instead of having players create a new world for new updates. On the flip side, the update features an overhauled save system, meaning players’ current characters, worlds, and islands will no longer be compatible with the new version.
Finally, players can expect more big updates after this, but the release may slow down a bit as the developers work on getting the game to a complete launch status.
Aloft is available now on PC via Steam Early Access.