Hello everyone!
I’m happy to announce that Lakehopper will release into Early Access on March 30th!
I’m so excited to be able to share the game with everyone. There’s a lot more to build, and I’m thrilled to have everyone joining me on the journey!
In addition, there will be an open playtest available until March 23rd.
Feedback and bugfixes for the playtest can be submitted in the Steam Discussions forum! This will give you a chance to try the game out, and help me prepare the game for the full launch.
What is Lakehopper?
Ultimately, Lakehopper is the game that I want to play. I’m a huge fan of sandbox flight sims, but I sometimes struggle to set my own fun goals with so many possibilities. It also feels a little underwhelming when a flight ends, and the world and your plane “reset”. I also really love a lot of more casual flight games, with simpler flight models and lots of really fun game mechanics. But I often miss a more complex and engaging flight experience in those games, including the consequences of poor piloting.
I looked around and didn’t see much of what I wanted: A grounded, general aviation focused flight sim with a complex flight model paired with interesting game mechanics to motivate decisions, in a world that continues to exist after a flight ends, complete with rewards and consequences for how that flight went! So that’s what I’m building. A flight sim that challenges your piloting skills, surrounded by a game and rich, persistent world to challenge and reward the player, with the primary goal of making the flights you make and how you fly them matter.
Lakehopper’s Development So Far
I started Lakehopper back in June 2023 as a solo hobby project after making this 3D modeling “doodle” of the plane. As you can see, the futuristic design of the engines predates the game even existing, and honestly, I can't tell you why I made that creative choice.
I wondered if I could get it flying in a game, not realizing I’d already bitten off more than I could chew. Nevertheless, by the end of that summer, I had a working prototype with a floating, flying plane, and put the project aside for a time.
In November 2024, the spark reignited and I was able to fully commit to making Lakehopper the immersive game I knew it could be. Over the next year and a half, I worked full time on the game. I improved the physics systems for flight and water interaction, created a terrain system, the basic jobs system, developed the part assembly and maintenance systems, and much more. Most of my focus so far has been building out the core systems, paving the way for expanding the available parts, planes, jobs, destinations, and in general adding more to explore and more interesting decisions to make.
Current State of the Game
Right now, you can have fun in Lakehopper, assembling the plane, flying packages between different locations, doing occasional maintenance, and exploring the wilderness.
The last three months have been purely dedicated to making sure the current features of the game are polished and relatively bug-free. I’ve got high standards for myself and want to ensure the game is fun to play and immersive from the start. The open playtest will help me be certain this is the case, and find any issues I’ve overlooked as the game’s solo developer!
What’s next?
I’ve got a lot of things I want to add to Lakehopper, many of which don’t exist in the game at all at the moment! Early on, I’ll be focusing on adding new game systems, and refining and expanding existing ones. There is some new content I’ve planned to add sooner rather than later, such as a new plane, some new parts, and a few new locations. Once I have all the major game systems in place, my focus can shift to adding more and more content and fleshing out the world of Lakehopper. I don’t have any set timeline for when any of this will happen, but exciting things are in the game’s future!
Thanks for joining me on this journey!