Voyagers of Nera News

Hello, amazing Voyagers - Michael / Spacenorth here, back with some thrilling development and playtest updates!

[h3]Playtesting and Clips![/h3]
We just wrapped up our most ambitious playtest to date, and it’s been an incredible ride! We opened our doors to over 400 players, making this our largest testing group ever. It was incredible to see so many of you exploring, crafting, and surviving in the magical world of Nera. Players racked up a lot of hours in our little demo, with our most engaged spending 10+ hours building and crafting!

But that's not all – we also gave the green light for anyone to stream during this playtest. Watching your adventures unfold in real-time has been nothing short of amazing. Your enthusiasm, creativity, and real time fails have truly brought our game to life in ways we never imagined! TisSarahBarah - IT'S NOT IN HERE

[h3]Feedback[/h3]
The flood of clips and feedback we've received has been absolutely phenomenal. Here are some highlights that had us grinning from ear to ear:

• Your reactions to awakening spirits and augmenting your spirit companions were priceless. ToriPareno - I have a bird now!
• Seeing players take on and defeat the stone golem boss was epic. TacticalPotato and Zombaekillz
• And skimming! Watching you zoom across the water on your crafted Skimmers was a joy - it looks like you're having as much fun surfing with them as we had creating them. miirorttv - first time skimming!
  

[h3]A Heartfelt Thank You[/h3]
We can't say this enough – thank you, thank you, thank you! Your participation, feedback, and sheer enthusiasm are why we wake up in the morning. Every bug report, every suggestion, and every moment of excitement you share fuels our passion to make this game the best it can be.

[h3]Looking Ahead[/h3]
Now that we've caught our breath from this whirlwind playtest, we're diving into our next phase of development. Here's what's on our plate:

• Bug-Fixing: We've got roughly a zillion reported bugs to prioritize and tackle - thank you to everyone who reported these!
• Iteration and Polish: We’ve got great feedback to help us refine major features including work on hunger and thirst, building content and UX, what spirits do for you and more.
  
• New Horizons: We saw a lot of appetite for some new features that we are working on like the next biome, more seafaring content, and more spirits!
  

[h3]Screenshot Contest - Cast Your Vote![/h3]
Last but not least, we're running a screenshot contest showcasing the incredible bases and moments you've created during the playtest. Head over to our Discord and the #screenshot-contest channel to cast your vote for your favorites. We’ve been loving the creativity!!


And if you haven’t yet, we hope you’ll wishlist the game and share it with your friends and communities - it helps us out a ton.

Thanks again for being part of this journey with us. Your support and passion make all the late nights and coffee-fueled bug-fixing worth it. We can't wait to share more of Nera with you soon.

Until next time!

- Michael and the Treehouse Team


P.S. Don't forget to join us for our next livestream this Thursday at twitch.tv/VoyagersOfNera where we'll dive deeper into some of the amazing moments from this playtest!

Hello all Voyagers, Michael / Spacenorth here to share some cool new stuff going into Voyagers and info about an upcoming playtest where you can stream and record videos!

It’s been an action-packed chunk of development focused on one of the most unique parts of our game: spirits!

From the moment you wake up in the world of Nera, you will have a friendly Spirit Companion to guide you and help you. As you learn new recipes and gather rare, magical ingredients, you will craft Elemental Runes you can equip to your Companion to change it’s type. Evolve it from the Mana Wisp into an Elemental Type that empowers you with a unique buff!


Spirits are hidden throughout the world, hopefully far away from the ravenous monsters of the Deep. As you explore our first biome, the Embrace, you may discover them in a Dormant state, waiting to be brought out of their slumber. Bring them back to the living Spirit Anchor that serves as the heart of your base and awaken them by re-infusing them with magic.


To thank you for building a spirit sanctuary and protecting them in this dangerous land, these Spirits will help you in a variety of ways! Fire Spirits boost your kilns and let you refine ore faster, Earth Spirits lend their ancient knowledge to unlock a mighty new shield recipe, and the right Water Spirit will teach you how to craft the Skimmer from our first trailer.

(Screenshot from our early playtester NexusCupcake!)

This is just the start of how we want exploration, finding and rescuing magical spirits, and growing more powerful to all intertwine and make for a unique experience in Voyagers! Playtesting has already been absolutely critical to helping us improve these features and how they fit into the core loop of the game. Getting real feedback from real players have helped us improve the pacing of the experience, create more exciting and juicy rewards, and make the spirits themselves more unique and compelling to encounter.



Our next playtest on September 25th will also be our biggest yet - we’re planning on adding a few hundred new players. We’ve been playtesting quietly so far, but we also want to open the door to streaming, recording video, and sharing screenshots during this playtest. So go ahead and make videos, stream to your community, share with your friends! (Don’t forget to tag us @VoyagersOfNera on all platforms!)

If you’ll have fun joining an Alpha playtest and sharing your feedback with us, sign up here: https://bit.ly/VoyagersofNeraPlaytest

If you’re a creator excited to give feedback, get in touch with us using this link: https://bit.ly/VoNCreator

Thanks so much for tuning in to our latest dev blog. We have our next stream this Thursday at 5pm PT on our first ever Twitch stream! I will leave you now with screenshots of some awesome stuff players have made in our most recent playtest. Cheers!

- Michael and Treehouse Team

(SO: Header screenshot by our community member: Nexuscupcake!)

[hr][/hr]

Divinekomedy's super base More awesome shots from NexusCupcake

Hello all Voyagers, Michael / Spacenorth here to talk about the latest on the game.

First, I wanted to share some game level-updates. We’ve been seeing people ask for more specifics about our launch timeline as we get closer to the end of the year. Unfortunately, as some have guessed, Voyagers of Nera is NOT going to be ready for Early Access in 2024.

This is not the result of a specific problem or delay. Actually the opposite - development has been progressing well and the frequent playtests, player feedback, and iterations have helped us improve the game in leaps and bounds. But this process is also giving us better info on just how much work it will take to deliver a game that stands out and that we are proud of. So we are shifting our expected Early Access date to mid 2025, which we fortunately have the budget and resources to do. We are also reducing the player count for the game from 16 → 10 for performance reasons given the scale of world we are building.

Lastly, we are continuing to ramp UP the amount of playtesting we are doing. We’ve said this a few times, but player feedback has been incredibly meaningful for our team. Not just for making the game better more quickly, but also for our satisfaction as developers - seeing people light up when they play even the rough builds of our game is our best source of motivation! We will have more specifics in the coming months, but we plan to grow our playtester group rapidly starting with our very next playtest.

Please sign up if you would like to play and give us feedback on an upcoming alpha build. :)

Now, on to the cool new game content!

[hr][/hr]
Christina (World Design Director) and Kyle (Senior Environment Artist) from the Treehouse team recently shared the evolution of the first biome in Voyagers: the Embrace.

This space is named the Embrace because this whole set of islands formed around the chest and arm of a massive, stone colossus. This long-dead, magical titan was an Ancient - one of the protectors of magical spirits in this world that ultimately fell to the creatures of the Deep.

The Embrace did not leap out as a fully-fledged idea. It had much more humble beginnings, starting as simple MS paint sketches about the layout and flow of a player’s experience through this space. Fortunately, some concept art from Mitch (Creative Director) made it much more thematic!


A lot of design work, playtesting, iteration and art passes later (not necessarily in that order), we have an exciting island archipelago to explore full of monsters, caves, and spirits in need of rescue. And, of course, the remnants of the Ancients in their beautiful, tragic glory - wherever you are in the biome, you can always see its chest, arm and other pieces in their final resting place. Find traces of its fading magic, explore the stone ruins it left behind, or even build a base in the palm of its hand!


In Voyagers of Nera, we want to create a mysterious, magical ocean world for players to explore and the Embrace is just the beginning. We’re excited to show you lots more as we get deeper into playtesting and development. :)

That’s all for now! Our next dev stream is this Thursday at 5pm PT in our Discord, so join us if you’d like to see a bunch of recent changes and awesome bases that players have been making. Otherwise, see you at our next dev blog in two weeks!

- Michael and Treehouse Team

Hi Voyagers! I’m Michael / Spacenorth, back once again to share the latest about Voyagers of Nera!

Ever since we released our trailer and after every single playtest, we get a ton of questions about the theme and setting of the game. What is Nera? Where did these mysterious ruins come from? Who are we in this world? In today’s dev blog, we’d like to share some answers!


Nera is an old, primoradial ocean world brimming with magic that was a home for countless nature spirits. These spirits were protected by a race of shepherds and caretakers, massive stone golems that were simply called the Ancients. It was their duty to protect the spirits and to craft a home for them.


Unfortunately, the magic of the spirits drew the monsters from the Deep - terrifying creatures that lurk in the darkness, living in the bottom of the oceans where the light does not reach. They hungered for the magic of the spirits and invaded Nera, consuming all the magic they could find. The spirits that survived were driven into hiding and the peaceful Ancients were destroyed, leaving their colossal stone remnants as ruins scattered across the oceans.


Although they were destroyed, the power of the Ancients did not disappear. Over hundreds and thousands of years, as their stone ruins were reclaimed by the world around them, their magic began to reform into new living beings, called Echoes. These beings are who we play as in Voyagers of Nera - humans born from long-dead magic returning to the world. As Echoes, we can connect with the dormant remains of the Ancients and we share the same bond that they once had with the spirits of Nera.



It is also our purpose to succeed where the Ancients failed - we must seek out and reawaken the spirits of the world, push back the monsters of the Deep, and rebuild Nera as a haven.

If you want to learn more, our Creative Director shared even more details and art from the game at our last dev stream!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
And, to plug it as always, there’s tons to see in the game if you sign up to playtest!

That’s all for this update - see you in our Discord and at our next dev stream this Thursday, August 22nd at 1700pm PT, where we’ll be talking about the Embrace, the first biome of the game!

- Michael and the Treehouse Team

Ahoy Voyagers! Michael / Spacenorth here again to share the latest news on Voyagers of Nera!

Over the last couple months, we’ve been putting a lot more work into one of the most critical pillars of the game: sailing through a magical ocean world.

From the very start of the game, you will see mysterious islands and distant biomes that you will one day visit. We think one of the best part of all survival crafting games is getting to see a new world, and that’s an extra important part of the fantasy in our game. You’re here to sail boldly into the unknown, ready to reveal what this magical ocean world has to offer.



Naturally, in Voyagers of Nera, all of these places to visit, from ancient ruins deep underwater to the remnants of long-gone stone behemoths to massive oversized mangroves are all separated by big stretches of dangerous open ocean. Sometimes these trips are serene and relaxed, and other times they’re deadly - you’ll have to skillfully sail, skim, and scrap to stop your ship from sinking! We went into some more detail with a quick look at combat mechanics in our most recent dev stream - here’s the link if you want to see more!



Lastly, thank you so much for all the new playtester volunteers. We nearly doubled our playtester pool since our last dev blog and we can’t tell you how much we appreciate your interest! If you haven’t signed up yet, it’s not too late: SIGN UP HERE. And if you didn’t get into this playtest, don’t worry! We are playtesting every few weeks and can’t wait to get more players into the mix and hear your feedback.

That’s all for now - hope to see you in our Discord or at our next dev stream this Thursday, August 8th at 5pm PT!

- Michael and the Treehouse Team