Aloft is a sky survival and building game developed by Astrolabe Interactive and published by Funcom, set on a world of floating islands suspended high above the clouds. It entered Early Access on Steam in October 2023, inviting players to carve out a home on a sky island and reshape it into a wind-powered flying vessel capable of crossing the open sky.
The core of Aloft is the tension between building and exploring. Your home island is both your base and your ship. You plant sails, chart a heading with the wind, and sail toward new islands to scavenge materials, fight island bosses, and push back the spreading fungal corruption that threatens every landmass in the world. Combat is hands-on, crafting runs deep, and no two islands are shaped the same.
Aloft is built for co-op, with sessions supporting up to eight players on the same flying island. Crews divide the labour naturally. Some build and tend the base, others glide ahead to scout new islands, and everyone fights when the corruption pushes back. A private dedicated Aloft server keeps the world running even when no one is logged in, so the island stays exactly where you parked it and your crew can reconnect at any time without waiting for a host to come online.
Aloft is in active Early Access development with a roadmap covering expanded biomes, deeper crafting, and additional boss encounters. The modding scene is still forming, but server operators have meaningful control out of the box: corruption spread speed, day/night cycle length, player capacity, resource respawn rates, and world generation seeds. All of these settings are exposed in the server config and editable from the PingPlayers control panel without any manual file editing.
Aloft is not a resource-heavy game compared to large open-world survival titles, but co-op sessions benefit from consistent CPU performance during island navigation and boss encounters. NVMe SSD storage keeps world saves fast and reduces data corruption risk on unexpected restarts. DDR5 RAM handles the active island simulation smoothly. For most crews of four to six players, 4 GB is comfortable; larger groups or longer sessions exploring many islands benefit from the 6 GB tier.
| Server type | RAM needed | Players | Recommended plan |
|---|
| Small crew | 2 GB | 2-4 | 2 GB plan |
| Standard group (most popular) | 4 GB | 4-5 | 4 GB plan |
| Larger group | 6 GB | 6-7 | 6 GB plan |
A private dedicated Aloft server gives your crew full control over the experience: corruption spread speed, world seed, resource respawn rates, day/night timing, and player slots. The world stays online 24/7 with a persistent state, so explored islands stay explored, stored items stay where you left them, and the sky map builds up over time regardless of whether the whole crew is active.
Hosting an Aloft server on PingPlayers removes the common friction points: no port forwarding, no host hardware bottlenecks, no need to keep a personal machine running. PingPlayers includes high-frequency CPUs, automated backups, 24/7 real human support, and an integrated Ping AI assistant that helps configure world settings, troubleshoot connection issues, and keep your server running without digging through config documentation.
