Hello everyone!
We hope you are doing well! On our side, everything is good and we’ve been busy!
As you may know, we just finished a big marketing period with the release of an update to our demo and a new trailer. Of course, the biggest news of all still is the Early Access release date: Early 2024.
If you didn’t read our last devlog, you should! A lot of nice things happened for us in the beginning of the year!
So, what’s new?
First, we welcomed two new talents in our growing team: Simon as our second developer, he will focus on multiplayer development and Anthony as our 3D Environment Artist Intern. Anthony’s work really shines and his textures are simply gorgeous!
Then, we are now on Tik Tok & Youtube short. We’re going to try to post regularly but be patient with us, we’re just getting started :) Don't hesitate to like and follow for more Aloft shorts!
The Photo Contest is over and let me tell you, we have some very creative talents in our community. It was a real blast to look through all the pictures, but judging them was tough! We’re going to do a Tik Tok recap with the pictures so stay tuned!
In the meantime, here are the winners in the 4 categories :
Best Base:
Yutapo
Best Photo :
OrchideeFan944
Best Tiny House :
Professor Muddles
Most Creative :
Yonack Dreven
While the Photo Contest might be over, our community members are sharing stunning screenshots of what they are creating on Discord. Please feel free to do the same :)
To fit the short format of Youtube, we did a short version of the trailer. Let us know what you think about our huge leviathan in the comments ;)
The last, and most recent, piece of news is amazing: we were lucky enough to win the Ubisoft Indie Serie grand prize! In addition to the prize money, we will receive support from Ubisoft, something truly invaluable. We’re really happy to share this night with Lucid Dream Studio, who won the second prize, offered by the National Bank of Canada. You should check out their newest project, Biomorph, it’s really cool!
What a day to be part of the Indie community!
Now, what are we working on?
As you may know, some islands in the game are corrupted by dangerous fungi. This corruption won’t only attack the players, it’ll target the animals as well! Jeremy, our VFX artist, is currently working on the creeping effects of this corruption on the creatures. For the occasion, we wanted to share with you the artistic evolution of the sheep. The wool can look a bit thin at the moment, but it’ll grow over time in the game to be super fluffy!
Corruption, animals and corrupted animals aside, our team is moving forward on a lot of projects:
Concept Art - Kenzie
Kenzie has been working on the alchemy concept for the last weeks.
You already know that, in the game, you can build a base, fly your own island, grow your own veggies… A new, cool, feature will allow you to develop your alchemy skills!
We can’t spoil everything yet because there is so much new cool stuff coming, but here is the concept art for the terrarium!
3D art - Mary Jane
We were waiting for these for a while now!
Though that’s the case in the current version of the demo, inventory will not be infinite in Aloft. Fortunately, you will be able to decorate your home and organize your inventory with the new chests.
Nico, our game designer, showed them in exclusivity during a Twitch Stream. He is live most Fridays at 3 pm EST. Join us! It’s fun to chat with you live and share exclusive stuff. The Discord server is by far the best way to know if a stream is coming.
Character customisation - Calvin
Character customization is a feature that many of you requested and so Calvin modeled all the different faces in 3D. The final system will have a lot more options such as body types, skin colors, hairstyles and much more!
Animal animations - Emma
Emma is currently animating the upcoming animals.
Every Thursday, we do a review session internally and everybody shows what they are up to. Emma’s presentations have been SO cute and this is one of the reasons:
VFX - Jeremy
We’re so thrilled to see the VFX coming to life with Jeremy's work!
The team is growing, every week we can see the game getting better and better. It’s a really rewarding feeling. One of the first VFX that Jeremy worked on is the Fungi fighting effect! It is still a work in progress but we can promise that the combination of sounds and VFX will have an impact. We will show it to you soon.
Sound Design - Kyle
It's so exciting to share Kyle's work for the first time. Sound adds something so special, so relaxing to the game, we think it fits the environment incredibly well, but we will let you be the judge of that. Tell us what you think!
What’s next?
As we announced in the previous devlog and in our trailer, we’re aiming for an Early Access release at the beginning of 2024.
Manuel, our CEO, and Felix, our Producer, will be at GDC to meet with the professionals of the gaming community.
Are you going too? Join our Discord to let us know!
2023 will be mostly about development and growing our community but we’ll give you details when the time will come.
Cheers travelers 💫
