Skylorn: Bound Together Review

An open world built from parts

Skylorn: Bound Together arrived on Steam on 22 October 2025 from solo developer Rudolf Herdt, pitched as a co-op open-world action RPG set in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi fantasy world -- crumbling cities, mutated wastelands, and hostile machines left behind by failed magic-technology experiments. The store page promises a lot for a single-developer release: seamless two-to-three-player co-op with in-progress join and shared inventory, third-person combat blending shooting, melee, and magic, a skill-progression system with multiple specialization paths, crafting and weapon upgrades, hidden dungeons, and an estimated five hours for a single playthrough, priced at NZ$11.79.

Almost eleven months after launch, the game has exactly two public Steam reviews, and both are negative -- a genuinely rare signal, since even poorly-received small indies usually collect at least one sympathetic or mixed voice in that time. More striking than the split is how the two reviews independently converge on the same underlying accusation despite being written in different languages, at different times, and covering different specific complaints. The English-language review is blunt: "Scam, unfinished game," describing the inventory screen as "awful," the visuals as "using unreal assets" arranged as "just place boards with no real effect," NPCs that "don't move and don't say anything," and enemies that "can kill you within 3 hits" while "your weak gun doesn't do anything against them." The reviewer's closing line is unambiguous: "Its just an unreal marketplace asset game without any real designed. No thanks."

The second review, written in Traditional Chinese roughly a month later, doesn't repeat the first reviewer's claims -- it independently arrives at a similar conclusion through an entirely different, far more itemized list of complaints. That reviewer describes background music that switches abruptly and repetitively between tracks with no apparent logic; a crosshair reticle that serves no functional purpose, since ground items can simply be interacted with directly regardless of aim; early, easy access to upgraded weapons like a shotgun and sniper rifle along with ample ammunition, which the reviewer says makes the starting pistol and basic branch weapon essentially pointless within the opening stretch; decorative flowers, grass, and leaf clutter that remain visually dense even at the lowest graphics settings, actively hurting readability rather than adding atmosphere; quests the reviewer describes as meaningless busywork without clear purpose; and an equipment and inventory screen the reviewer found poorly laid out and confusing to navigate. The review's closing assessment -- that the game "looked like a Unity beginner's test project" -- is a pointed irony given the game is built in Unreal Engine, and the reviewer says they regretted the purchase.

It would be easy to dismiss either review in isolation as an unusually harsh outlier, but the fact that two reviewers, writing independently in different languages with no apparent overlap in phrasing or focus, both landed on "this feels like an assembled tech demo rather than a finished game" is the kind of convergent, specific evidence this site treats seriously even from a tiny sample. Neither review reads as vague frustration or a one-line dismissal; both cite concrete, checkable specifics -- the crosshair's non-function, the early weapon oversupply, the NPC behaviour, the inventory layout -- the kind of detail that's hard to fabricate and easy to verify wrong if it weren't true.

Steam's own achievement-tracking data offers a second, independent line of evidence, and it doesn't contradict the reviews. Of eight tracked achievements, the easiest -- finishing the tutorial -- sits at just 28.1% of the player base, already a low starting point for a game's most basic completion milestone. From there the funnel drops sharply: an underground mine milestone at 12.5%, three further story beats clustered around 9.3%, a gear-retrieval achievement at 6.2%, and two milestones -- a mutagen scrubber and an underground bunker -- sitting at exactly 0%. That shape is consistent with a small player base that largely stopped engaging within the tutorial and opening area rather than one working steadily through a five-hour campaign, though with such a small likely sample size behind these percentages, this review treats it as corroborating context rather than standalone proof.

Perhaps the single most telling data point, though, is what isn't there at all: Skylorn: Bound Together has published zero news posts on Steam since its release nearly a year ago. No launch-day announcement, no patch notes, no acknowledgment of the two negative reviews, no roadmap update -- nothing. For a solo-developed game accused in public reviews of shipping unfinished, silence of this completeness reads less like quiet confidence and more like abandonment, and it removes any benefit of the doubt this review might otherwise extend around whether reported issues have since been addressed.

It's worth being precise about what this review can and can't claim with confidence. Two reviews is not a large sample, and it's possible other buyers have had a more positive experience without writing about it -- Steam review rates are famously low, and silence from satisfied players is common across the platform. This review cannot independently verify every specific claim made by either reviewer, including the exact asset sourcing of the game's visuals. What it can say is that the available public evidence -- two detailed, independently-written, non-overlapping negative accounts, a steep achievement drop-off, and eleven months of total developer silence -- gives no reason for confidence and several specific, concrete reasons for caution, at a price point above many better-reviewed action RPGs covered elsewhere by this site this month.

Set against its own genre, the gap is stark. Other October 2025 action RPGs this site has reviewed this cycle arrived with rough edges too -- unfinished content, performance issues, thin meta-progression -- but each had a base of reviewer engagement, however small, describing what actually worked alongside what didn't, and in most cases at least some visible sign of a developer responding to feedback. Skylorn: Bound Together currently has neither: no positive counterweight to the two negative accounts, and no public sign the developer has acknowledged them. A shallow, unfinished-feeling game deserves a score that reflects that reality rather than the benefit of the doubt a five-hour co-op RPG concept might otherwise earn on ambition alone.

Verdict

Skylorn: Bound Together's pitch -- seamless co-op, third-person combat blending shooting and magic, a handcrafted post-apocalyptic open world -- is reasonable on paper, but the only two public accounts of actually playing it describe something considerably rougher: assembled marketplace assets standing in for real design, a nonfunctional crosshair, meaningless quests, and enemies that can kill in three hits while the starting weapon does nothing back. A steep achievement drop-off and eleven months of complete developer silence corroborate rather than contradict that picture. This is not a case where thin evidence should soften the score -- it's a case where the evidence that exists is detailed, convergent, and consistently negative, and the honest response is a harsh one.