I probably wouldn’t have bothered with Solarpunk if it hadn’t been for my buddy Scopique talking about his low-key annoyance with -punk being added to the end of random words these days. It became a kind of running joke. So when Solarpunk hit Game Pass I knew I had to take it for a spin.

Solarpunk is a survivalbox-like [how’s that for convoluted] game that is about as un-punk as a game can get. It’s a “cozy” game with (as far as I know) no combat and not even a narrative, really. The first 1 to 2 hours is bog-standard crafting game. Find sticks and rocks to make rudimentary tools. Use them to harvest more sticks and rocks and make a workbench. Use the workbench to make more complicated things. We’ve done it a thousand times. Solarpunk handles this fine; in particular I like that you don’t have to pick stuff up. You chop down a tree and it falls over then poofs into wood that teleports into your inventory. Makes harvesting quick and easy.

The hook in Solarpunk is that you’re on a floating island and ‘your’ island doesn’t have all the materials you’ll need. So you build a Research table and start researching new technologies and pretty soon you’ll have an air ship that you can fly to other floating islands to collect different resources. The range of your first air ship is pretty limited but presumably you’ll expand that over time, or maybe build a series of “Air Ship Docks” on islands that you can then hop across.

There’s also, apparently, a heavy emphasis on automation as you get a little further in. There are drills to bring up ore, sprinklers to water crops and… I dunno what else. Watering crops is a major hassle until you get that sprinkler, but on the other hand they grow really quickly. Every time you harvest you get seeds so you can replant. Similarly felled trees yield saplings that you can (and should) replant.

There’a a food and water system and the game throws a lot of hints at you early to start growing berries, which I did. Berries fill your food meter and a little of your thirst meter. Water comes from rain catchers that you build. There’s a pond on my starting island but the water isn’t safe to drink. I dug a well but it, too, yielded water not save to drink. Eventually I think I’ll learn how to boil water (why would I have to LEARN that? I have fires!) to make it safe, but so far rainwater and berry hydration has been plenty for me. I honestly don’t know what happens if your food or water runs out since it hasn’t happened to me yet.

There’s also a nice building system so you can build yourself a house and all that, and there are lots of decorating blueprints and such. If you’re into that sort of thing.

I’ve only put maybe three hours into Solarpunk so far. I have done nothing solar-related, punk or otherwise, so far. I’ve been burning wood for energy. Is that punk?

But so far, I’m enjoying it as a chill crafting game. I guess I need to start calling these crafting/building games instead of survivalboxes since there’re no enemies and no combat. Solarpunk is available pretty much everywhere, I think. It’s $22.99 on Steam and on the Playstation, Switch 2 and Xbox stores. On Steam it is sitting at Very Positive with almost 1,900 reviews.