Traverse a vast and rich open world full of exotic technologies, relentless dangers, and many hidden treasures. Defend your inhabitants – and the kingdoms below! – from destructive attacks. Only daring leaders can reforge the Airborne Empire!

The unique lift, balance, and propulsion mechanics return, but a new foe has emerged: pirates upend the city’s tranquility, and players must defend their inhabitants – and the kingdoms below! – from destructive attacks. Only clever and daring leaders can grow and protect their homes, seek out and destroy enemy strongholds, and finally reunite the peoples of this world.

While exploring a variety of biomes, players find themselves deep in an open-world full of rich characters, dialogue choices, side-quests, and lost marvels. By helping the peoples below, they gain the knowledge to develop new technologies – including new lift, propulsion, and morale buildings. They’ll also gain access to better tools for defense – and offense – against the pirate threat; defense towers, cannons, and attack planes can be researched, upgraded, and augmented with the tools found by combing the world and unraveling its mysteries.

If players can manage the challenges along this adventure, they’ll find themselves the leaders of a sprawling sky city, with enough prowess to defend against any incoming threats. It shall be the capital of a harmonious empire – the Airborne Empire of legend – reforged under their banners.

Developer The Wandering Band announced that Airborne Empire will release on PC and Mac via Steam Early Access in 2024, and will remain so for about a year.

“When we launch into Early Access, the most important features of the game will already be there: building, researching, scouting, movement, dialogue, and more. The launch version has an enjoyable gameplay loop, but is still a bit bare-bones, lacking content and polish. We also plan to add more story features, including side-quests and more wonders to discover. Also, there are certainly still some bugs that will need to be ironed out.”

“The full version will have a bigger set of features and more content. We plan to add new building types, new biomes, new events/missions and expand the background story of the game. It will also be more polished, having gone through lots of testing and QA. We are also planning other Steam features such as trading cards and achievements. And finally, we're sure players will have lots of interesting ideas during Early Access which we will consider implementing as well.”

"Our community helped shape Airborne Kingdom, especially post-launch, and I can’t wait to work with them again on this follow-up," says studio co-founder Ben Wander. "Combat was the biggest requested feature of the last game, but I’m also excited about how much richer the world and story will be in Airborne Empire."

"I don’t like calling it a sequel!" says studio co-founder Zachary Mumbach. "It really sets a different tone – an adventure, like Indiana Jones. Call it city-builder meets RPG. It’s really its own thing, and I can’t wait to get players’ hands on it!"

"The fact that we’re building on top of existing code allows us to be much more ambitious with everything new we’re adding to this game," says studio co-founder Frederik Gareau. "It’s amazing to see the immediate impact of brand new ideas, and we’re re-shaping the game dramatically with each new feature."

Airborne Empire is in development for PC (Steam), scheduled for 2025