Airborn: A sleek Unreal Engine 5 showcase awakens Airborn from hibernation

For a long time, the Airborn project by the German production studio of the same name was quiet. Now Airborn Studios surprises with a new showcase that inspires dreams and amazement, which combines the ambitious concepts of the project for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S with beautiful Unreal Engine 5 graphics.

“Airbørn envisioned a game set in a world of floating islands, steeped in steam/diesel punk technology, and partly inspired by a range of movies, comics, and other games.”

The artistic journey that gave the Berlin studio its name began even before the then much smaller team produced an Unreal Tournament 3 mod called Airborn in 2009 – more about it here – and developed into an artistic passion project. But day-to-day business and working on big titles like Overwatch, Fortnite or Ori and the Blind Forest put Airborn into a deep hibernation. But in 2019 the spring sun seemed to rise again and the team of old Airborn veterans and fresh newcomers picked up the project again with development on the recently released showcase trailer.

Aerial adventure rests on its roots

“Rather than confining ourselves to a single environment, we set out to create a vignette of scenes that would resemble a trailer, as this would allow us to show more characters, environments and set pieces. […] Anyone familiar with the old work should be able to recognize the new immediately without seeing our name attached to it. This is even reflected in the music, which has parts of the old theme woven into it.”

The studio received support from Funkeyz (rigging & animation), SkewSound (sound design) and Ian Dorsch, who was once again commissioned to compose the melodies.

How things will continue with Airborn is probably in the stars for the time being. If you want to find out more information, you can find here further background information on the title and its long history.