Sky Base Venus

Sky Base Venus is a colony simulation set in a floating research station in Venus’s upper atmosphere. You manage the station, balance its buoyancy, mass and altitude, and pursue its research mission while preparing for support from Earth to diminish amid political turmoil. To survive long term, you need to make the colony self-sufficient and can expand it into a larger operation.

Life above Venus

The station harvests and processes resources from Venus’s atmosphere. You use them to meet the colony’s needs and manufacture goods, including oxygen, water and plastic products. The game draws on research suggesting that a crewed station could float at altitudes of 50–61 km.

Managing the colony

You decide whether to buy machines for harvesting resources or purchase the resources themselves. Research projects can demand many resources for significant rewards, or cost less while yielding less. Resources shipped from Earth are especially expensive, so you need to budget carefully.

Available research projects are randomized, and their feasibility, duration and cost can differ between playthroughs. You may not know a project’s time or cost at the outset, leaving you to weigh its risks against its potential rewards. Disasters, equipment failures and randomly determined design defects—whose effects may persist—create further challenges, while Earth-based sponsors can also change their priorities.

Altitude and logistics

Choosing the station’s altitude involves trade-offs: higher altitudes provide more solar energy, while lower ones allow the station to carry more weight. You can order equipment and goods from Earth, but shipments can only travel during realistic transfer windows and may take over 100 Earth days to arrive, so planning ahead helps prevent shortages.