Altitude Alert: Lost Skies Soars to 1.0 Release, But Co-op Connectivity and Quick Early Access Exit Raise Concerns

London, UK – Bossa Studios’ highly visual floating island survival game, Lost Skies, officially launched its 1.0 version today, September 17, 2025, exiting a remarkably brief five-month Early Access period. The full release delivers a substantial content expansion—including new regions, bosses, and a major ship progression overhaul—but the celebratory launch is being tempered by several acknowledged technical caveats and a seemingly rapid transition that has surprised parts of the PC gaming community.

A Fast Ascent: From Early Access to 1.0

The journey of Lost Skies, a spiritual successor to the ill-fated Worlds Adrift, has been swift since its April 2025 Early Access debut. The 1.0 release is a massive leap in scale, fulfilling several core roadmap promises and fundamentally changing the game world:

• Expanded World Map: The initial single region has been dramatically expanded into four distinct regions, now featuring over 120 unique floating islands—a significant increase from the original 54. These regions are separated by new environmental barriers like windwalls and stormwalls.
• New Threats: The game introduces a new class of smaller, more frequent boss encounters known as Arbiters, alongside larger, unique Herald bosses for each new region, ensuring more dynamic and challenging sky battles.
• Ship System Overhaul: The central skyship crafting and progression system, a key feature of the game, has been reworked to ensure upgrades have a more meaningful and effective impact on performance and combat viability.
• Island Creator Content: The full release integrates a large volume of community-built islands created using the free ‘Island Creator’ tool, promising vast and unpredictable new areas for players to explore via the Steam Workshop.
• Full Wipe: All players, including Early Access veterans, will experience a full progress wipe to ensure a fresh start with the stable, balanced, and fully expanded 1.0 world.

Technical Turbulence: The Launch Caveats

Despite the substantial content, developer Bossa Studios has proactively released a list of known issues coinciding with the 1.0 launch. These caveats, primarily affecting the multiplayer experience, are a major point of discussion and caution for new buyers and existing players alike.

Critical Known Issues:

• Co-op Loading Bug: A significant issue reported is that attempting to invite or join friends using the native Steam overlay or Steam Friends list may result in the game becoming stuck in an infinite loading screen. Players are advised to use in-game invites as a workaround.
• Input Conflict: Switching between a gamepad and a mouse and keyboard can cause the crafting menu to become unresponsive, requiring a full game restart to resolve.
• Settings Drift: Some quality settings, notably for visual fidelity and cloud rendering, do not reliably reload upon re-launching the game. The team “strongly advise[s] to check these settings when re-launching” to ensure optimal visual quality, especially considering the importance of the sky vistas.
• Regional Boss Glitch: One of the new Arbiters (smaller bosses) cannot be fought online unless the host of the session is located in the same geographic region as the player. This severely restricts cooperative boss hunting across international boundaries.

The severity of multiplayer connectivity and input responsiveness issues raises questions about the readiness of the title for a full 1.0 release, particularly for a co-op survival game where seamless team play is crucial. This is compounded by the game’s price, which has launched with a 25% discount from its $24.99 standard price, a strategy often employed to drive initial sales volume.

The Worlds Adrift Shadow and Future Outlook

For Bossa Studios, the studio behind hits like Surgeon Simulator, this release carries extra weight. Lost Skies is their third attempt at the sky-faring genre after the highly praised but ultimately shuttered Worlds Adrift. The quick jump from Early Access to 1.0 suggests a strong desire to deliver a “finished” product and establish a stable foundation for ongoing development.

Looking Ahead:

The studio has already committed to expanding support beyond 1.0, including future releases on Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5, confirming that Lost Skies will be a multi-platform venture. For now, the success of the 1.0 launch will depend on how quickly Bossa Studios can address the connectivity and quality-of-life bugs and issues to ensure a smooth experience for the new wave of Steam gamers eager to build their ultimate skyship and explore the newly expanded, fractured world of the Atlas.

Survival game enthusiasts seeking a fresh take on the genre, blending high-flying exploration with deep base-building mechanics, have a massive new world to explore, provided they navigate the launch-day turbulence.