Lost Skies is a skyfaring indie survival game that somehow manages to have better web-slinging than most Spider-Man games

Lost Skies takes about 40 minutes to go absolutely bonkers, and it does so with practically no warning about what's coming. I'm slicing up a fallen tree into lumber, piling up the pieces in my inventory, when I suddenly realize that the mile-long floating island I've been operating on until now is quaking. At first it's barely noticeable, but it starts to get more and more drastic, the rumbling building in volume, until it feels like the entire airborne continent is at risk of tearing itself apart – and then the leviathan appears. Thundering over the lip of the island emerges a flying behemoth, somewhere in shape between a jellyfish and a sea turtle, covered in mossy stone plating and declaring itself with a concussive roar that splits the sky.

The beast puts me in shadow, eclipsing the sun, moving at such a speed despite its size that it'll be a distant speck in moments, and in my bewildered panic I have no idea what this thing is or what I'm supposed to do about it. But some ideas are too bad to resist, and I doubt I'll get another chance soon. I snatch up the hookshot I found earlier, slap it to my wrist, take careful aim at the creature's gargantuan tail and fireeeeaaaaaaaAAAAAAAGHH!

A second later I'm gone, dragged behind Rayquaza through open sky like a tin can behind a speeding wedding car, trying to reel myself in even as I swing to avoid being splattered across the asteroid belt we're rocketing through. I can't say I've mastered life at high altitude yet, but sometimes a learning curve ends up taking you over the horizon – and beyond it.

Mr Blue Sky

Lost Skies, which entered Early Access a few weeks back, is an expansive survival game set on a network of floating islands a la Skyward Sword, with the idea being that to live players will have to master that most perilous of elements: the Y-axis. You start off clambering around on every single cliff, wall and vertical surface like you're in Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, then the hookshot and glider come into play, and before long then you're building huge airships for long-distance flight that wouldn't have been out of place in Tears of the Kingdom.

So we're three-for-three on modern Zelda homages, to say nothing of the ancient tech left from prior civilizations, but in reality I think Lost Skies is closer in spirit to Subnautica. This is a game about navigating an element unfamiliar to you – in this case, open sky rather than deep sea – and harvesting resources to better navigate and research the remains of what came before. Sometimes that means kicking through grass to find dry reeds you can weave into cloth, sometimes that means shooting at robots from the deck of your flying pirate ship before doing a HALO jump onto the back of a flying whale.

It's a game where long periods of peace are punctuated by sudden, startling action and stress, but while I'm always excited to commandeer flying vehicles in any game, it was the grappling hook that turned out to be the unsung hero. I don't use hyperbole when I say it may arguably be better at web-swinging than even the most recent Spider-Man games, downplaying the instant gratification and emphasizing better understanding of momentum and where to anchor yourself.

Sometimes I'd swing ineptly and flatten my nose against a tree trunk, other times I'd cut a perfect arc through open air, curling acrobatically before firing a fresh grapple at the peak of my ascent to swing again. You can even use it to retrieve distant objects or throw around enemies: slamming them into the ground or attaching yourself to flying foes for a free ride, wildly firing a pistol with your off-hand at the same time.

These are the kind of experiences that make Lost Skies worth it, those organic yet cinematic moments where your own wit finds purchase on the game world and something magnificent emerges. That being said, I did find a few gripes: the survival elements can be a little dreary when you're in the aforementioned reed-scrounging stage, and it's definitely a game that could afford to go deeper, not just wider.

Once you're fully set up and reliving The Edge Chronicles (who gets that reference these days?) the game loses momentum a little, but that's what Early Access is for, isn't it? Right now there's a phenomenal foundation for further development, and I'm excited to see where Lost Skies gets to in the future. If nothing else, I'm excited to have another go riding the leviathan's tail – hopefully this time without eventually braining myself on an errant flipper.

Lost Skies is out in Early Access on PC. For more recommendations, head on over to our Indie Spotlight series.