As the old saying goes, you might wait forever for a fantasy-inspired Minecraft-like to finally arrive—and then, seemingly out of nowhere, two land at once. Just a few months after Hytale made its big splash following near-cancellation, Enjoy Studio’s sandbox survival RPG Everwind is now ready to move into early access. What sets it apart, though, is a standout element: airships. That naturally leads to the bigger question—can air travel make everything better? Would FIFA feel even more thrilling if the goalkeeper appeared on the pitch right at the start of the match? Would I find Tetris more satisfying if a small figure in a dirigible dropped blocks from above? Some of those ideas may never get clear answers, but I do think Everwind shows real promise by weaving airships into a foundation made from familiar building blocks.
Even so, the familiar core is unmistakable. Everwind is a sandbox survival game focused on scavenging and crafting, taking place in a procedurally generated world built from breakable voxel blocks. You can hit objects, grow crops, collect seemingly endless items, and use them to power machines that convert your older goods into brand-new ones—so you can fashion weapons, armor, tools, furniture, and more. If you’ve played Minecraft even casually, you’ll already be comfortable with the basics. Visually, it leans into a muted, slightly medieval fantasy style that also brings Hytale to mind. And honestly, it looks great: beyond simple block textures, the environments benefit from strong lighting and lots of decorative touches—dense greenery, varied animals, and everything from boars and wandering birds to lobster-like creatures carrying barrels for shells. When I spotted the capybaras on my starting island, I was genuinely thrilled.
And yes—islands. Another major difference in Everwind is the world itself: a vast ocean scattered with islands that stretch far into the horizon, with some being huge, others much smaller, and—thanks to the game’s airship theme—some that rise dramatically into the sky. It reminds me of Wind Waker, with a hint of Sea of Thieves mixed in, and it feels fairly distinctive for a title inspired by Minecraft.
Still, my time with Everwind didn’t kick off smoothly. After walking through the fundamentals of crafting and combat (echoing Hytale’s approach—Everwind also tries to pull players deeper into fights by encouraging strafing, parrying, blocking, and more), the real excitement arrived: raiding a crashed airship so I could build my own. The workflow starts by scanning parts with a magical compass to uncover their blueprints. To get flying, you’ll need a cockpit, an energy generator, a wooden engine, and a balloon, and then you move on to collecting whatever materials are required to craft them.
Unfortunately, my tutorial island didn’t provide the right scraps. That left me stuck in a frustrating loop, trying every possible route to finish my ship and get airborne—until I finally resorted to something desperate: building a small boat and sailing to the closest island, hoping for anything that could help. Then, just after I fought off spiders, I ran into an adorable creature that immediately chose to explode. Later, I learned that the missing scraps hadn’t vanished at all—they’d simply ended up tucked away in bushes back on my original island. So while I was stuck for about an hour, the blame wasn’t entirely on Everwind; it was mostly on me. By that point, every ship component I had managed to craft was gone for good—after I died earlier and the parts were dropped far, far away, they despawned permanently. With no realistic way to gather enough scraps to rebuild everything again, I had to start over.
The upside to all the tinkering, though, was that I spent less time staring up at the world from above (that part came later) and more time digging into Everwind’s other sandbox features, which hold up well as a base. The stamina-driven combat isn’t especially complex yet, but it’s still a step beyond aimless button mashing, and the crafting system does manage to spark the familiar kind of addictive collection loops that tend to pull players in. On top of that, the game’s world generation seems capable of creating land areas that encourage you to explore. Up close, they’re clearly attractive once they’re decorated with environmental details—but from a distance (something I had plenty of time to observe while watching the horizon), their silhouettes stay just as interesting thanks to their distinct shapes. For instance, in one direction I could see an expanse of pink mossy rocks, its abandoned industrial towers cutting sharply against the sky. On another island, small stone huts sat clustered behind low hills, while farther off a third location featured something lighthouse-like rising high above the coast.
Eventually, when I finally got my new airship working—at that stage it was little more than a fragile wooden platform carrying the essential machinery—I was able to set out for real. Flying in Everwind is simple: set your speed, raise or lower your altitude, then steer as needed. The problem is that, at least early on, it’s also painfully slow. You’ll want to upgrade your ship’s core several times before the improvements to maximum speed, size, and height start to feel genuinely meaningful. Still, slow movement isn’t automatically bad. Many games have proven that relaxed travel can be fun, but in its opening phases Everwind doesn’t fully deliver that experience, largely because there’s not much to grab your attention as you trudge forward on a straight course.
Until you get close, the blocky islands don’t show much character, and the ocean—empty of life—looks like little more than a flat sheet of blue. Even with the standout nighttime skyboxes, featuring enormous ringed planets with cracked surfaces hanging above, there just aren’t many distractions, especially when your airship is still basically a flying plank. I’d guess that co-op play could reduce the feeling of repetition, and there’s also mention of aerial combat—but I haven’t explored either yet. I’m also not fully convinced that Everwind’s procedurally generated islands feel different enough right now, or interesting enough, or rewarding enough—beyond biome changes and a handful of landmarks—to make the long trips feel fully justified.
That said, despite the early rough patches and the clear potential for improvement, I still had an unexpectedly enjoyable time. As I traveled from zombie-infested woodlands to sandy stretches lined with palm trees swaying in the breeze, I found myself slipping into the calm pace of its sky-based exploration. Discovery kept pulling me along, all while I watched everything from that elevated viewpoint. I still have questions, of course. For example, will the finished game offer a clearer overall structure and a stronger narrative direction beyond the brisk tutorial phase? Even so, there’s clearly the foundation of something genuinely compelling here. And with “at least a year” of early access still to come, Everwind has plenty of room to grow. Plus, airships. That has to mean something!