New starting environment
- New starter island and reworked island cluster
- New progression of resources, crops, and animals typical of the wanted early game experience
- Demo area has been reworked to align with intended player experience and progression
Frescoes
- Repository of ancient knowledge and history that unlocks key technologies
Introduction to the Ecosystem Restoration mechanic
- Field Guide allows the player to evaluate the health of an island
- New ways for the player to heal and improve the health of islands: inoculating trees with mushroom (decomposers), planting wildflowers and trees (plant variety), removing hindrances, and adding animals
- Resources and areas can be locked if the island is not healthy enough, animals can’t be adopted unless their ecosystem is healthy
- Further ways to interact with the island ecosystem will be added later
New wilderness assets
- Wild seeds can be harvested from small plants and used to decorate your home with a variety of flora, as well as adding plant variety to restore island ecosystems
- Collect reishi mushrooms to craft bandages, and create inoculants to grow more mushrooms at the base of trees
- Elder trees are majestic trees that can’t be cut down - use them to fuel your creativity!
- Bugs like ladybugs and beetles can be found and collected - further ways to interact with them will be added later
Introducing rock salt and charcoal
- Rock salt can be found in caves and charcoal on burned tree stumps
- Coal was removed from the game as it didn’t support the ecological message of Aloft
New corruption assets
- New enemy: the Coward
- New corruption node with tentacles
- New "death" animation for the node
Weathered ruins & machines
- Hidden treasures, lost items, and new loot is scattered among those remnants
- Tools and cooking recipes can be found in ruins
Wrecks & anchors
- Shipwrecks and debris can be found scattered on islands
- Anchors are a new asset and form of discovery that unlock sailing equipment technologies
Sketchbook
- The sketchbook allows for the discovery of blueprints from ruins and wrecks
- Gather lost pages in ruins and scan objects with the sketchbook to learn new building blueprints
Improved VFX, SFX, and music
- New water shader and waterfall VFX
- New wind VFX (on islands)
- New SFX: building, farming, gathering resources, movement on different terrain, cave acoustics, pond and waterfall ambience, node, coward, sailing, glider stand, sewing table, sketchbook
- New music: loading screen ambience, fresco music/ambience, anchor music/ambience, ecosystem restoration, night time, combat
Glider stand
- Craft, customise, and equip the glider
- Further customization options and bonuses are not available yet
Sewing table
- Craft and customise your outfit and its colours
- Further customization options and bonuses are not available yet
Combat progression
- Monster variety advances with each node destroyed
Momentum system
- Skillful fighting and gliding is rewarded with momentum points, which gives the capacity to execute powerful manoeuvres
New cooking recipes
- Grind salt in a millstone to explore 4 new cooking recipes
Multiplayer
- Up to 8 players
- For the duration of Steam Next Fest
General improvements
- Partially updated UI (work in progress)
- Multiple quality of life improvements
- Multiple performance improvements
- Polished walking and running animations
- And many other improvements on the overall game, ranging from textures, assets, visuals, balance, gameplay, and user experience
Known issues
- Created characters can’t be deleted in the game yet, you need to destroy the file
- The game can crash after leaving the game in alt tab for more than one hour
- Character's model is misplaced upon interacting very fast with a helm after another user uses it
- Field Guide can show animals as being present on Islands which don't have animals
- Sometimes, no environmental music is playing in the world
- The player is able to override all the key binds with only 1 key
- The Research Table can be unlocked but the resources for it are not available in the first island cluster
- Food cannot be cooked in a Multiplayer session
- It is possible to go out of bounds while travelling with the glider
- Corner Roof pieces don't snap properly on Snap Mode - Automatic, use Snap Mode - Manual in the meantime
- Island icons are very small when interacting with the Table-Map for the first time
- Waypoints aren’t functional on the Table-Map
- Momentum bar UI is misplaced in the inventory
- The Pause Menu can be accessed while loading into Worlds
- The user's character is teleported to a specific spot when interacting with the Glider Bench
- FPS drops when a player joins the session
- Movement Key Bindings are not translated unless the user switches tabs after changing the Language
- Dynamic Resolution isn’t working as intended
- The Leaf Chest Piece has the wrong name and description
- Equipping new outfits while inside the Sewing Table doubles the player character model in 1st Person Mode
As usual for all demo updates, previous saves will not be compatible with the new version of the game. Additionally, players can access older versions of the game by going to Properties -> Betas -> Select the Beta you would like to opt into.
Bear in mind that those versions will no longer be supported and that you might encounter bugs, unbalanced, and missing features as those older versions do not accurately represent the latest progress.