Aloft News

April is here, yay! We couldn’t be happier to see a glimpse of Spring coming. Winter can feel is long in Canada.
To celebrate the (almost) end of this season, here are some pictures of our beautiful city of Montréal under the snow! The second one is the view from one side of our office :)



Anyhoo, our road to Early Access in 2024 is still ON!

As we mentioned in our last announcement, Manu and Felix were at GDC 2023.
It was a hectic but fascinating week. They met with many people from our industry and came back with a lot of advice, propositions, new ideas and hand made delicious fortune cookies!


We are currently stepping in a new Milestone. This means we are wrapping up the previous one with a new build, and therefore…

We will keep you updated on our Discord, of course!
Stay alert and tell us in the comment what you are waiting for the most.


Also, Nico, one of our game designer is live on Twitch almost every Friday at 3 PM EST.
We usually repost them on our Youtube Channel. We already have 6 of them uploaded so far, so feel free to check it out! A lot of exclusive information is in these videos, especially on the 5th one where Nico is revealing a part of Aloft’s future!

Finally, we posted two Tik Tok in the past week. We would really appreciate if you could support us there too!



Let’s start with Simon, our newest addition to the team because he is working on what everybody is waiting for: THE MULTIPLAYER! 😏



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
As you can see the other players are giant grey Tic Tacs. Should we keep it this way? How great will it be to play with a bunch of Tic Tacs on floating islands?
More seriously, in this video, the multiplayer mode may look ‘’functional’’, but we have a long way to go before it is fully operational. We will keep you posted when it is available and testable!




[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
We wanted to show you this very cool spyglass, the concept is made by Kenzie, 3D modeled by Mary-Jane and finally implemented by Max.
How could you be a sailor without a super cool spyglass?
If you watch carefully you can find a clue on a new very exciting feature Max is working on. ! Can you guess what it is? 🔎




Our talented concept artists keep amazing us with these new ideas for decoration. We are really eager to see how you’ll use them in your own house.




We showed you the Terrarium concept art in the previous devlog, you can now see the progression.
The purpose of the terrarium is to grow different strains of fungi to aid in your research to find a cure to corruption. After crafting fungicides, antidotes, and cures on the research table, you can test them on the fungi grown in this terrarium. This will generatesamples that allow you to continue your research.




Anthony is focusing on storage containers, here is an example of flax storage. There will be generic storage options, but we wanted players to be able to use resource storage as a decoration element as well!



Calvin is still working on character customization options! He recently finished modelizing bodies. It is important to us to have various body shapes so players can identify to their ingame avatar.



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
After the cute Sheep, it’s time to animate the Pheasant!
Nico had a little fun (more than that maybe) with the pheasant animation and made it a 10 hour loop…to ‘’Around the World’’. We hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we did 😂




[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Hot air columns are currently in the demo. At first, they were a placeholder, quickly made by Max when we didn’t have a VFX artist. Now we can improve them thanks to Jeremy!




[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Sounds are going to be a big part of our game. Nature has a specific, deep and layered soundscape and here Kyle worked on the sound of the rain changing while entering a room.





A lot of online festivals are around the corner Indie Life, Day of the Devs, OTK, Wholesome Games, Indie 3, Future of play… We applied to all of them hoping to be selected. Online festivals are a great opportunity for nice visibility. Finger crossed :)

Like always, if you don’t want to wait for another devlog to hear from us, feel free to join our Discord.

Besides that, the team stays focused, organized and has eyes on the prize!

Cheers travelers 💫




Don't forget to Wishlist & follow us, it really helps ! Thank you!

[h2]Hello Friends, [/h2]

[h3]We're so excited that our CEO Manu & our Producer Felix are going to Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco![/h3]



[h3]GDC is the game industry's premier professional event, championing game developers and the advancement of their craft.

It is the perfect occasion for our Indie Studio to meet many gaming industry professionals and talk about Aloft's development.

[h3]We have to thanks La Guilde du jeu vidéo du Québec for this fantastic opportunity! [/h3]

We will keep you posted on the outcome![/h3]

[h3]Don't forget to join our Discord so you can follow the development of the game 💪[/h3]

[h3]Cheers travelers 💫[/h3]

[h2]Hello Friends,

This week again, Nico will be live on Twitch.

Date 📅: Friday, March 17th

What time ⌚: 3PM EST

[h2]👉 Live Twitch 👈[/h2][/h2]



[h3]Feel free to join us! [/h3]

[h3]In the first part, he will play the Demo and then, Mary-Jane, our fantastic 3D artist will join him to talk about the 3D models of Aloft 🤩[/h3]
[h3]
We'd love to chat and answer your questions.[/h3]

[h3]Don't forget to join our Discord so you can follow the development of the game 💪[/h3]

[h3]Cheers travelers 💫[/h3]



[h3]👉 You can find the previous Dev Streams on our Youtube Channel [/h3]

[h2]Hello Friends, [/h2]

[h3]At 3 PM EST today,
our Game Designer Nico will be live on Twitch 📽️[/h3]

[h2]👉 Live Twitch 👈[/h2]



[h3]Feel free to join us! [/h3]

[h3]In the first part, he will play the Demo and then reveal information about the future of Aloft 🤩[/h3]
[h3]
We'd love to chat and answer your questions.[/h3]

[h3]Don't forget to join our Discord so you can follow the development of the game 💪[/h3]

[h3]Cheers travelers 💫[/h3]



[h3]👉 You can find the previous Dev Streams on our Youtube Channel [/h3]

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!

[h3]So, what’s new? [/h3]
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 :

[h3]Best Base:[/h3] Yutapo


[h3]Best Photo : [/h3] OrchideeFan944


[h3]Best Tiny House : [/h3] Professor Muddles


[h3]Most Creative : [/h3] 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!



[h3]Now, what are we working on?[/h3]

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:

[h3]Concept Art - Kenzie [/h3]
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!



[h3]3D art - Mary Jane [/h3]
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.



[h3]Character customisation - Calvin[/h3]
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!



[h3]Animal animations - Emma [/h3]
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:


[h3]VFX - Jeremy [/h3]
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.

[h3]Sound Design - Kyle [/h3]
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!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]What’s next?[/h3]
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 💫