Game: Echoes of Elysium
Developer: Loric Games
Publisher: Snail Games USA
Genre: Airship Survival RPG
Update: Tempest — out now
Platform: PC (Steam)
Players: 1–6 co-op
Adds: Rain, wind, rebalancing, QoL
⛈️ The Tempest update is live for Echoes of Elysium, adding long-requested rain and wind effects to Loric Games’ airship survival RPG — plus a rebalance of thrusters, sails and weight, and a run of quality-of-life fixes.
📖 We’ve Already Reviewed This One
Echoes of Elysium came through our reviews section earlier — you can read
our full Echoes of Elysium review here for the complete picture on the clockwork survival RPG this update is building on.
Rain doesn’t just look wet. It makes your ship heavier.
Echoes of Elysium is a survival RPG that moved the whole genre off the ground — you build airships instead of bases, and everything you’d normally do on foot happens in the sky instead. The new Tempest update from Loric Games and Snail Games USA adds the one thing a flying game was conspicuously missing: weather.
And it’s not set dressing.
Wetness Is a Physics System
💧 Rain Interacts With Your Ship Directly
This is what separates Tempest from a weather filter. Precipitation now affects the ship and everything on it:
• Wet ship pieces and stored items gain weight and drag — flying through a downpour genuinely degrades your handling
• Certain stations become inoperable if they’re soaked through
• Your ship and its contents carry a wetness status while it rains, and dry out once it passes
• Each biome runs its own separate weather cycle and event rate — this isn’t one global rain timer
Most survival games treat rain as atmosphere plus maybe a temperature debuff. Here it’s routed straight into the system the entire game runs on: weight.
That’s the smart part. In a game where your ship’s mass determines how it flies, making water add mass means weather changes your actual capability rather than just your visibility. A loaded cargo run through a storm is a materially different proposition to the same run in clear skies.
The per-biome cycles matter too. Because each region has its own rate of weather events, where you choose to operate becomes a weather decision as much as a resource one.
🌧️ Rain
Adds weight and drag to wet components and cargo, and can knock certain stations offline entirely.
💨 Wind
Stronger and more variable than before, with sailing against the current now carrying real consequence.
🗺️ Per-Biome Cycles
Every biome has its own weather cycle and event rate, so conditions are regional rather than global.
☀️ Drying Out
Wetness is a temporary status — get clear of the rain and your ship sheds the extra weight.
It Forced a Rebalance of Everything
⚙️ Thrusters, Sails and Weight, All Retuned
Here’s the detail that proves Tempest isn’t cosmetic: Loric have rebalanced thrusters, sails and weight around the new wetness and wind systems.
You don’t retune the three variables your flight model depends on for a visual effect. That rebalance is the clearest signal available that weather now reaches deep enough into the game to change how ships should be built — and existing designs may well need revisiting.
Wind gets the same treatment. It’s described as stronger and more variable than ever, with new visual effects making the current legible so you can actually read what you’re flying into rather than guessing why you’ve slowed down.
The Quality of Life Fixes Are Genuinely Useful
🔧 What Else Changed
• Encumbrance preview — the ship encumbrance bar now shows the weight that will be added if you build something, and how much will be removed if you destroy something
• Better tooltips in build mode and on stations, now including weight and speed details
• Scrap metal piles no longer spawn underground
• Music and sound effects improved, tweaked and tuned throughout
The encumbrance preview is the standout there and pairs neatly with the weather work. In a game where weight governs performance, being able to see the cost of a build before committing to it removes a genuine source of guesswork — and it matters considerably more now that rain can add mass you didn’t plan for.
If You Haven’t Played It
Echoes of Elysium is set in Elysium, a world where ancient mechanisms sit alongside serene skies and, less serenely, soul-powered clockwork beasts. You design and build airships that function as your base of operations — transporting supplies, crafting materials and fighting off an armada of adversaries in aerial combat.
It supports up to six players in co-op, and the core pitch remains the clearest summary of it: everything you’d normally do on the ground in a survival RPG happens in the sky instead.
✈️ Airships
🏕️ Survival
🔨 Crafting
🤝 6-Player Co-Op
⚙️ Clockwork
⚔️ Aerial Combat
Who’s Making It
⚓ Loric Games
Developers of Echoes of Elysium, and clearly still actively supporting it — Tempest addresses features the community had been specifically asking for.
🐌 Snail Games USA
Publishers of Echoes of Elysium, also behind Dead Party — the four-player co-op zombie defence game from Radiation Blue we covered recently.
The Tempest update is live now. If you’ve bounced off Echoes of Elysium before, weather that materially changes how your ship handles is a reasonable excuse to take another look.
For more gaming news and reviews, check out our reviews section.
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