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Latest Updates from Our Project:
Loftia Beta Playtest - Launching on April 22nd! 🎉💛
9 days ago
– Mon, Mar 23, 2026 at 06:08:27 PM
Hi everyone! Today we’re excited to share that Loftia’s Beta playtest will be launching on Apr 22nd, 2026 at 2pm PDT, fittingly on Earth Day! 🌍
All Kickstarter backers (both Alpha backers & Early Access backers) will have full access to this Beta!
It feels incredibly surreal to be reaching this milestone, and our team has been working super hard to deliver the best Beta possible. We can’t wait for everyone to experience the world that we’ve been dedicating these last few years to building. To celebrate, we’ve prepared a Beta teaser video below to showcase a first look at our new district, the Gridfall. We can’t wait to see you there! 💛
🔑 How to access Beta: This will be a closed Beta playtest for all Kickstarter backers, Loftia Partners and giveaway winners. There is currently no option to purchase or sign up for Beta keys at this time. Many of our Loftia content creators will be running giveaways soon and we’ll be providing links to those once they’re live! We also encourage everyone to wishlist Loftia on Steam as this is the best way to support the game and help create more playtesting opportunities in the future.
For playtesters, a Beta redemption page will be made available on our website by the end of March, we’ll let everyone know once it’s live!
🎥 Beta sharing, creating content, and streaming: There will be no NDA for the Beta! You’re welcome to stream, create content, and share your experiences in Loftia freely. We're hoping to grow more awareness about Loftia and we really appreciate your support in helping us reach more people around the world!
🌏 Additional Beta details: We’ve put together an official Beta page on the Loftia website. Please check it out for the full details on the Beta, including available platforms, support status for controllers/gamepads, languages, and more.
Check out the Beta FAQs page within this Beta website section if you have any questions about Beta. If your questions remain unanswered, please comment below or ask in our #questions channel on Discord.
💌 A note about timing: We originally aimed to launch Beta in Q1 2026, and we want to be transparent about why this shifted slightly. Last month, our long-time hosting and infrastructure partner, Hathora, unexpectedly announced they were shutting down their services. That meant we needed to move quickly to a new infrastructure provider.
This required additional work from our engineering team to update backend systems, test stability, and make sure the game is ready to support a larger number of players. We did our best to stay on the original timeline, but taking a little more time here gives us a better chance of delivering a more stable Beta experience. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
🌟 What’s next: Stay tuned as we’ll be sharing more details in the coming weeks, including: - What’s included in Beta, and the state of various features - Community events that we’ll run in the leadup to the Beta launch - Adding more questions to the Beta webpage FAQs - please drop your questions in #questions and we’ll add them to the site!
Thank you for being a part of this journey for us for the past few years and supporting our journey. We can’t wait to see you in Loftia soon! 💛 - Mic, Martina, Eric, and the rest of the Loftia team
💌 Devlog #17: New Sitting Feature, Farming Improvements, and New NPC! 🪑🕹️👀
17 days ago
– Sun, Mar 15, 2026 at 10:58:58 PM
Hi Loftians! Welcome to our first devlog of 2026! 🎉
The start of the year has been incredibly busy for the team as we’ve been deep in development preparing Loftia for our upcoming Beta playtests. While that means we’ve been a little quiet on devlogs since December, a lot has been happening behind the scenes! In this update we’re excited to share some of the progress we’ve made over the past few months and give you a look at what the team has been building for Beta.
Before we dive in, here are some updates:
🌟 Beta timelines:
We know many of you are eagerly waiting for the announcement of our Beta playtest dates, and we’re excited to share them soon! Right now the team is working hard on running extensive internal testing around stability, serverload, and overall performance to ensure a good experience for everybody, even when there are many thousands of people all in the world at once.
Alpha backers might remember our first Alpha playtests in December 2024, where we ran similar large-scale tests with the community. As we prepare for Beta, we’re doing the same internally to identify bottlenecks and fix system bugs that appear under heavier player loads.
These tests take time, but we’re making strong progress and getting closer to finalizing the build. While we won't be confirming the the exact Beta dates in this update, rest assured that the announcement is coming very soon.
🐳 Plushie Shipments:
Last month, our plushie manufacturer Bears For Humanity began shipping Loftia’s Whale Turbine plushies to backers around the world. At this point, all countries except Canada have been dispatched. Canadian orders ship from their U.S. warehouse, which is currently navigating some newly introduced tariffs. Once that process is resolved, shipments to Canada should go out soon, and Canadian backers should begin receiving their plushies over the next few weeks. We’ll keep everyone updated as soon as we have more news.
We’ve loved seeing all your plushie photos in Discord - it’s been amazing watching everyone welcome their whale turbines home. This was our first time creating physical merchandise, and we learned a lot along the way. Thank you all for your patience while we worked through the logistics, and we hope to create more cute plushies in the future!
Some plushie photos from our community!
Now let’s get into the development updates, starting with something exciting…
🪑You can finally sit in Loftia!
The long-awaited player sitting feature is finally officially in! You can now relax on public benches, sit on furniture in your own house, or have a cozy picnic with your friends. 🧺
As simple as that sounds, getting this to work in a multiplayer world is tricky. Since Loftia’s server needs to stay authoritative over every player’s position (so no unexpected zooming or teleporting), syncing a character’s exact sitting spot and rotation required a lot of fine-tuning.
The team had to handle everything from auto-positioning your character at a chair, syncing animations across the network, and preventing edge cases like sitting through tables or facing the wrong direction. It’s one of those “small” features that makes the world feel more alive, but takes a lot of engineering effort to get right.
You can also sit on pillows and mats on the ground, which means you can set up picnics and find unique spots to relax in.
Take a moment to relax with a friend. We’ve placed benches in great vantage spots around the districts, where you can sit back and enjoy the view.
Now excuse us while we spend 20 minutes sitting by the water, watching the clouds roll by ☁️
🌾 Farming improvements
During Alpha, there were three important pieces of feedback:
Players found it hard aim
It was unclear how long crops take to grow & when they need watering
The UI felt obstructive and clunky
So, we’ve been making a few focused changes going into Beta:
1. Crop growth is now detached from the daily cycle. Instead of progressing with each in-game day, crops now grow based on real elapsed time. If a crop takes 20 minutes to grow, it will take 20 real minutes, independent of time of day changes.
2. Crop needs are now made explicit. When players are near their farm plots, both growth duration and crop watering needs are surfaced directly in worldspace UI. This way, you'll always be aware of the specific needs of your crops and what you need to do to make them grow.
3. Planting and watering feel more precise. We’ve added tile markers during seeding and watering to improve targeting accuracy. Animations have been shortened and adjusted to better support repeated use as well, so farming feels responsive without losing its physical rhythm.
4. Contextual UI Visibility
The farming UI only appears when the players is close to the crops, and if a seed bag or watering can is equipped. This means that the farming UI won’t disrupt the aesthetic of your island when you’re not in farming mode.
When watering can is equipped:
When nothing is equipped:
We’re also adding a Shipping Bin to the neighborhood, so you can sell crops immediately after harvest, instead of running back and forth between islands and the city.
Some early rough concepts of our Shipping Bin! We’re exploring a classic wooden box design paired with a robot
Overall, these updates are about improving clarity and flow. We want farming in Beta and beyond to feel easier to plan around, smoother to repeat, and simply more enjoyable to grow and harvest. Like many features, this is subject to further iterations and improvements after Beta as we gather feedback from all our playtesters! We can’t wait to hear everyone’s thoughts once they get a chance to experience it.
🚡 Airtram destination UI upgrade
Previously, we planned to have different ports across Loftia City, each leading to a different district. In testing, we found that having multiple teleport spots made navigation less intuitive and more confusing than we expected. Players had to remember which port went to which destination, adding friction to a feature that should feel straightforward.
Screenshot of the current Airtram Station
We’re now consolidating this into a single Airtram that acts as the main departure point for all districts. This gives players one clear mental model: if you want to travel, you go to the Airtram. It reduces spatial confusion and makes the city easier to read, especially for new players.
This shift lets the UI do more of the orientation work. The destination screen presents districts in a clear, readable list, highlights your current location, and handles locked destinations in a controlled way. Travel becomes a single, repeatable flow: approach the Airtram > open tab > choose destination. The new UI makes it easy to see where you are and where you can travel next:
Current destination
Next destination + Hover
Locked destination
🌏 Community projects UI update
As an MMO, we want Loftia to actually feel like a world players build together. That’s why we’re developing Community Projects - server-wide objectives where players collaborate to unlock new areas, construct buildings, or activate new gameplay features.
As part of building this system, we’ve started defining the UI that supports it. The contribution screen is designed around two key ideas: what the project is, and how it’s progressing. The project name, stage, and description sit at the top, while progress indicators and total community contributions are displayed clearly so players can immediately understand how close the project is to completion.
When a project finishes, the UI shifts into a clear completion state, highlighting the finished project and revealing any Community Rewards that have been unlocked.
This current pass focuses on establishing a strong UI foundation for Community Projects, ensuring that collective progress, personal contributions, and project milestones are all easy to understand as the feature continues to evolve.
Sneak peek of the Community Project UI
Artifacts concepts
A while back we asked you all for nostalgic item ideas for the Salvaging District on our Instagram… and you guys delivered!. So many of your suggestions hit us right in the childhood, thank you for sharing your core memories with us 💛
Artifacts can be dug up within the underground tunnels of the Salvaging District, and they vary in quality, which ultimately controls their rarity. The quality of artifacts ranges from “bad”, “good” to “perfect”, and it’s all up to sheer luck. Artifacts can then be donated to be displayed in the Museum, but we’re also exploring the option to display them in your home as well.
Here are some early concepts we sketched up based on your suggestions, inspired by some of your favorite toys and gadgets like tamagotchi, iPods, and blind-box-style dolls. Designing them brings a lot of fun and it's so hard to choose just one. Let us know which one is your favorite!
Early artifact concept explorations for the Salvaging District
👀 New NPC?
We’ve got a little sneak peek for you 👀 There's a few new people moving into Loftia City…
Adventure Scout
Adventures are our cozy take on "dungeons" in other classic MMOs. But instead of slaying monsters, they're all about teamwork, puzzle solving, and exploring beautiful islands that might change each time you play. This NPC will be the one accompanying you on those Adventures, showing you everything you need to know before heading out to the island.
We imagined him as a fearless adventurer with a dazzling white-toothed smile. And we took inspiration from charming, chivalrous characters like Rozanov from Heated Rivalry, Captain America, and Bolin from The Legend of Korra. So, what should we name him? Let us know in the comments below!
We also have another NPC coming your way, and we’ll be revealing her on our socials soon! Some hints: 💃🕶️🔋
🌱 Community Corner
We've been running heaps of fun community events in the past few months, including Bingo, Karaoke, and Wheel of Loftia, and it’s been wonderful seeing both familiar faces and lots of new Loftians joining in!
We’ll be hosting more events in our Discord as we head toward Beta, so if you haven’t joined yet, come hang out with us!
Some of the great feedback we've getting on our events. Come join!
All of the above is just a small snapshot of what we’ve been working on behind the scenes. Our team is locked in on delivering our Beta build as quickly as we can, and we're truly starting to feel the excitement, nerves and anticipation as things become more finalized by the day! As always, thank you for your patience and support as we focus on development - we're always striving to deliver the best gaming experience we possibly can. We're so excited to see you in Loftia agian soon!
Until next time, Loftians — see you in the skies! ☁️✨ Loftia team 💛
Bug of the month:
We accidentally made the water in the Hanging Gardens swamp-colored...someone tell Shrek he can move in now
Devlog #16: Final update of the year! Thank you Loftians 💛🎉
3 months ago
– Thu, Dec 25, 2025 at 03:58:34 AM
Hi Loftians!
Welcome to the final devlog of the year! 2025 has been an incredible year for us, and we're so grateful to have spent another year developing Loftia with this amazing community. Thank you for your support, encouragement and patience as we continue to bring our cozy world to life ❤️
2026 is truly going to be the biggest year for us, and we can't wait for Loftia to be finally released to the world. We hope you're just as excited as we are!
But before we jump into the new year, let's take a look back at this year, and also dive into some of our new development updates! 🥳
Museum reveal!
Today we're really excited to reveal that there'll be a museum in Loftia! This is something that many of you have wanted in the game for a long time, and something that we've really wished for too. While it wasn't part of our original scope of features, it became a feature that really made sense in the context of the Salvaging District and the wider game loop.
In short, the museum will be one of the "community maintenance" spots in Loftia that the community can work together to upkeep and maintain. The more artifacts and contributions that are made to the museum, the better the space will become. What's also unique is that instead of feeling like a big institution, Loftia's museum is more like a cozy, retro attraction built out of carefully collected "junk" from the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s. It's packed with nostalgic throwbacks that will have you reminiscing on your childhood.
Early concept explorations for the museum
These are our early 2D concepts that we're excited to bring to 3D soon! A lot of the fun comes from how the space is designed: glass displays filled with old artifacts, dusty tech, old posters and gadgets... all the things that make you go "wait, I forgot this existed". The displays aren’t tied to the exact items players donate, they’re more like snapshots of what people could find out in the world. We’re also experimenting with whether we could swap out which item shows up where each time the level loads, just to keep the Museum feeling fresh every visit. We can't wait to show you the 3D model of the building once it's complete!
Salvaging District: Level Design & Blockout
The Salvaging District has been in full “lego brick” mode recently, with all the pieces we’ve been prototyping for the past few months finally being snapped together into an actual city space you can explore.
A big part of this phase has been making the district readable and fun to navigate. We spent time deciding where key buildings should sit, how door placements guide you, and which paths naturally pull you toward important spots. Although most of the parts are still very much raw, you can already feel the district starting to feel like an actual neighborhood!
In-engine Salvaging District blockout - everything you see here is a placeholder!
At the same time, we’ve been tuning the Salvaging District questline alongside the blockout. This has been our densest questline so far, almost double the size of the Hanging Gardens quests and full of new NPCs and gameplay moments. Getting it to play smoothly meant constantly bouncing between the story, the level layout, and the way players move through the space. We’ve got a first pass of the core quests working, NPCs placed, resource areas set up, and cutscenes blocked out. Now we’re in that phase of tweaking the “feel” of each step and making sure the district supports the story we’re trying to tell. Once the blockout feels solid, we’ll start layering in all the details that make Loftia… well, Loftia.
What some of our quest design boards look like - mapping story beats, player flow, and gameplay moments
Park & Concrete Jungle Concepts
While the Salvaging District blockout is taking shape, our art team has started exploring what all the little corners of the Salvaging District could feel like. Our 2D artists Alcy and Jimmy have been bouncing ideas back and forth nonstop. Jimmy’s been helping shape the park area and the concrete jungle, figuring out how greenery, salvaged materials, and little sparks of Loftia’s vibrancy could blend together in this dense part of the city.
We’ve also been exploring different directions for the concrete jungle, the tall-skyscraper area where a waterfall cuts through the space and overgrowth slowly takes over. This direction leans more into nature reclaiming the city, with vines weaving through old structures, pockets of forest tucked between buildings, and that dramatic “vertical oasis” look we’ve been wanting to try.
Concept art explorations for the Salvaging District’s park areas and concrete jungle
Adventure props in 3D
Last time we shared the concepts for some of our Adventure props, and since then, our 3D artists May and Silvia have been giving them extra love and turning them into full 3D models. It's always such a satisfying feeling seeing something that started as just an idea or a tiny sketch transform into an actual object you can walk up to in-game.
Radar prop model (WIP)
Wildlife feeder prop model (WIP)
Beacon prop model (WIP)
Seismic sonar prop model (WIP)
Once a model is ready, our tech artist Matias jumps in to figure out how we bring it to life. "Implementing" sounds like the final step, but in reality this is where we have to back back to the model and break it apart so that animations can be applied to specific parts.
For example, anything that moves — like the little fan on the Seismic Sonar — can’t live in the same mesh as the rest of the model. Matias needs those pieces separated so they can spin, wiggle, bounce, or react when players interact with them. So instead of one neat model, we end up with a whole bunch of tiny parts behind the scenes, each with its own job.
Early VFX pass for adventure props
A lot of these props also have lights that turn on in a specific order when they’re “active.” To keep this performant, we use some clever material tricks: each mesh has custom data baked into it so the game knows which pieces should glow, in what order, and which parts aren’t lights at all. Think of the radar prop — the lights around its base come alive one by one in a little sequence, and all of that is controlled through these tiny bits of data painted into the mesh.
It’s a surprisingly detailed process for props that look simple from the outside, but this is how we make them feel alive in-game. More of these Adventure props are on the way, and we can’t wait to show you how they look once they’re fully hooked up and animated!
Pet rigs and animations
We know you've been waiting for this for a long time, and so have we - we've finally started bringing pets to the game now! The pet models have been sitting in our project for a while, and even though they look adorable, they don't have the proper rigs and animations for them to truly come to life. And now we finally have the time and bandwidth to do them justice!
While the design team experiments with quests and features involving pets, our animator Steven has been busy with rigging, adding invisible skeletons inside each model so every part can move, bend, and wiggle the way it should. We now have a bunch of animations for the Alpaca and baby Penguin: they react when you pet them, do tiny happy dances, and can run toward you when they spot you from afar. We’re working on our capybara, baby duck, and turtle next. What other pets do you wanna see do a happy dance?
First animation tests bringing our pets to life
We also recently shared a pets video on Instagram to start the conversation with you, asking what matters most to you when it comes to pets in Loftia, and we've received so many great suggestions already. Feel free to share your ideas in the comment section!
Player emotes
After sharing our video on emotes earlier this month, we got so many fun suggestions from you all, so we’ve been adding more emotes into the game! Your character can now lie on the ground for stargazing, give themselves a little hug, do a big stretch, and even break into a tiny shuffle dance. We still want to add more fun emotes, especially ones you can share with friends, so what other emotes would you love to see in Loftia?
UI/UX updates
Our UI/UX team has been polishing many UI screens, and the game is starting to feel so much more alive and put-together now!
Player interactions
We finally replaced the old placeholder basic circles with a new interface that actually feels like part of Loftia. It’s cleaner, way easier to read, and feels way more natural now when you walk up to another player and interact with them.
Updated player interaction UI, now it feels cleaner and more natural
Player customization
We also gave the player customization tab a full makeover. The layout is more cohesive with the rest of the menus, and we’ve added tons of new ways to tweak how you look. You can finally move and zoom in on your character to get a closer look, and we’ve also added more control options for things like gliders. Hair color now uses a HSB (hue, saturation, and brightness) picker too, which gives you way more freedom to get the exact shade you want!
A close look at the new customization tab!
Friends panel
The Friends panel also got a great refresh. You can now see more information about your friends, manage everything more easily, and there’s a lot more room to express your personality. It feels friendlier and more like “you,” which is exactly what we wanted.
Next up, we’ll be working on the Adventures and House customization UIs! We’re really keen to give those parts the same love with smoother layouts, cuter interactions, and a more cohesive feel across the whole game.
Refreshed Friends panel UI, with more room for personality (still a WIP with further changes pending)
Community Corner
As we head into the end of the year, we've been hosting some cozy community events like Drawftia, baking streams and our "Light Up the Server" Discord event to celebrate the holiday season. These have been such a sweet way for everyone in our community to unwind together! If you haven’t dropped by yet, come hang out with us on Discord and spend the rest of the year cozying up with the community!
End-of-year community events. Come hang out with us on Discord!
In celebration of our pet feature kick-off, we also hosted a week-long pet photography challenge where we posted a different pet prompt everyday!! Thank you to everyone who shared amazing pictures of their pets, we love each and every one of your fur babies (and scaly babies too), and it's clear that our community has the cutest pets ever!
Here's a round up of all the adorable photos posted 🐶🐱💛
You can see all these cuties in our #submissions channel on Discord!
And here's some pets from the team!
And that’s a wrap for this devlog! This year has been exciting and overwhelming in the best ways, and we're closing out this year super proud of what we’re shaping together, and so excited for what’s coming next. Next year is going to be our biggest year ever, with both Beta and Early Access happening, and we can't wait to share Loftia with the world! Thank you for cheering us on, and for giving Loftia so much love.
Happy holidays, wherever you are! We hope you get to enjoy some slow days, warm food, and time with the people (and pets) you love!
Until next time, Loftians — see you in the skies! ☁️✨
Loftia team 💛
Bug of the month:
When fluffy becomes too powerful (send help, our GPU is begging for mercy)
💌 Devlog #15: First look at the Salvaging District, Adventures and more! 👀🌱
5 months ago
– Wed, Nov 05, 2025 at 06:56:48 PM
Hey Loftians! 🤗 Welcome back to another devlog!
To kick things off with a bang... here's a very first look at our Salvaging District!! This is our high level concept art for the district, which captures the creative vision and theme we're going for. We're so excited to be finally sharing it with you all!
This district is inspired by big urban cities around the world: a concrete jungle with towering skyscrapers and busy roads.
If you zoom, in, you'll notice lots of small details and maybe even a few Loftia easter eggs that we've hidden amongst the buildings 👀 You can read more about everything below!
But before we dive into the devlog, we would like to say thank you to everyone who's shared their excitement regarding the news of our upcoming Beta tests! We're so grateful for everyone's patience as we continue to work hard to build Loftia. More information regarding Beta playtest dates, Steam keys for Nintendo players and other details will be announced soon! If you haven't seen it yet, we posted a new update regarding Loftia's timelines in our previous post here.
📍 Our first games convention!
One of the highlights of the past month has definitely been something that we've been dreaming of for years... having a booth at a games convention! Not just one, but two conventions in October!
We attended PAX Australia and Dreamhack Atlanta as exhibitors this year and had the amazing opportunity to demo our game to thousands of people who came by the Loftia booth! It was so incredible being able to chat face to face to so many players and gather their feedback in real time as they played the game.
The highlight was definitely meeting so many wonderful people from our community - some of you who had come to the conventions just for Loftia! This event was such a big reminder of why we're building Loftia in the first place, and we want to thank you all for making our first convention experience such a special one 💛
We managed to record our PAX experience and have posted our first vlog on our YouTube channel here!
A little throwback to our time at PAX and Dreamhack - with tired feet, full hearts, and so many lovely memories 🥹
Now let's get into the nitty-gritty of our development updates! 🎢
🛠️ Design deep dive: Salvaging District
After kicking off early concepting for the Salvaging District last month, we’ve moved into a more structured design phase. Our team’s been knee-deep in design, running brainstorm sessions, defining feature sets, and mapping out how this new district will actually play.
a lil’ peek at our chaotic-but-beautiful Miro board
These are some of the key questions that guided us through this phase:
What specific features does this district need to feel distinct?
What kinds of tools will players use here?
Are we introducing any new mechanics or twists on existing systems?
How do we keep this area feeling social and community-driven?
What activities or side loops are we building on top of the salvaging core?
Answering these questions has helped us outline the gameplay structure of the Salvaging District, like how players will gather and process new materials, and what kinds of interactions they’ll have with NPCs and each other.
At a high-level, we've started shaping our vision by taking inspirations from places like Shanghai or New York - two iconic cities that have a blend of both old and new. We want this district to feel like a modern day metropolis that has been lovingly patched up after a natural disaster, not quite an apocalyptic wasteland, but definitely not a pristine city either. As a player, you'll be able to explore through the urban jungle, discover interesting artefacts and turn trash into treasure - maybe also uncover some mysteries along the way!
On the visual direction of this district, we've been drawing from a mix of industrial, solarpunk, and urban renewal aesthetics - as you can see in the concept art we shared in the beginning. Think scaffolding, patched-up facades, improvised tech, overgrown rooftops, and bold, mismatched color palettes.
We're still working on the level design and set dressing of the district though - so what other landmarks, buildings, and iconic features should this district have? Let us know!
🚢 Adventures
And while the Salvaging District has been a big focus this month, we’ve also been exploring another major part of Loftia’s world that we're all super excited for — Adventures!!
Adventures are our version of cozy MMO “dungeons” or “raids.” But instead of slaying monsters, Adventures in Loftia are about teamwork, puzzle-solving, and exploring beautiful islands that might change every time you play.
An early look at how our team’s been exploring the design and narrative structure behind Loftia’s Adventures
We’re currently in the exploration stage of this feature, figuring out the core rules and experimenting with how these missions come together. The idea is that players can hop onto the Adventure Ship from one of the city districts, travel to these islands, and complete a series of time-based challenges like collecting resources, solving puzzles, and testing your teamwork skills along the way.
Early concept exploration of Adventure ship
Each Adventure will be slightly different: some might include tricky platforming sections (which we call gauntlets 👀), while others focus on open exploration, resource gathering, or mission-based objectives. It’s still early days, but we’re having a lot of fun designing these systems and imagining the kinds of challenges you’ll take on together.
So… what kind of Adventures would you love to see in Loftia? More cozy scavenger vibes? A race-against-time parkour run? We'd love to hear your thoughts.
🎈Adventure Objective Props
To kick off development on Adventures, our art team has also been exploring what some of the objective props might look like - the interactive spots players will find scattered across adventure islands.
Each of these props represents a mission that players can take on. And we wanted these missions to feel purposeful and give a sense that you're actually helping the world become a better place overtime. Here’s a look at some of the mission types we’ve exploring:
🛠️ Build the Seismic Sonars: Use your hammer to help construct seismic sonars that measure activity on nearby floating islands. Each one takes a few solid swings to assemble.
🔋 Energize the Beacons: Power up old beacons with your battery to light the way for other travelers. Watching the beacons glow again brings a lovely sense of life returning to the island.
🐦⬛ Free the Trapped Birds: Use your pruner to cut away tangled nets and set the birds free. In a world of floating islands and open skies, we wanted to make sure the birds of Loftia stay safe.
📡 Redirect the Antennas: Some objectives will ask for teamwork! You and another player will need to coordinate to re-align antennas and restore communication between islands.
🪶 Rescue the Castaway: Every now and then, you might stumble upon a stranded Loftian waiting for a lift back to the city. A quick chat, a helping hand, and they’ll be on their way back home with you on the Adventure Ship.
We’ve been working hard to make sure these moments feel connected to Loftia’s wider world - cozy, hopeful, and rebuilding what’s been lost. Here’s a peek at some early concept sketches 👇
Adventure objectives props concept
🪩 Zipline Animation
We’ve also been giving some extra love to one of our favorite new traversal features, the ziplines! 🪩
On the animation side, we've been refining the whole movement system to make it feel a lot a lot more dynamic and real. Now, when you’re gliding along a zipline, your character won’t just stay perfectly still, they’ll wobble and sway as they ride, giving that sense of motion and speed.
You’ll also notice a new lean-forward pose when pressing forward to accelerate, adding that extra bit of energy when you’re zipping through the city. It makes a huge difference in how dynamic the game feels.
We’re still fine-tuning the timing and transitions, but it’s already starting to feel super satisfying to play with, and we can’t wait to show you how it looks with the final sound pass (Nigel’s working his magic on that as we speak 👀).
Also, shout-out to everyone who gave feedback on Nigel’s sound design video over on Instagram/TikTok earlier! Huge thanks to everyone who voted on their favorite sound effects and shared their thoughts! It’s been super helpful for the final tuning pass.
🎣 Meet Kassim
We've asked you to help us name our new Biotechnologist NPC on social media and Discord a while ago, and out of all the amazing suggestions, the winning name was Kassim! The name Kassim means "provider of knowledge" and is commonly used across parts of Africa. This name meaning fits him perfect as he's dedicated to restoring balance to Loftia’s ecosystems through biology, research, and innovation in sea life conservation.
In the last few weeks we've also officially brought him to life in 3D! Here is our 3D model and idle animations for Kassim:
Now that you’ve officially met Kassim, what kind of personality do you think he has? Is he the calm, analytical type who quietly observes everything, or the enthusiastic scientist who could talk about his research for hours? We’d love to hear your thoughts! And please let us know what kind of quote he should have 👀
💬 NPC Expressive Animations
Lately, we’ve been diving into something that brings Loftia’s world (and its people!) even more to life, with NPC expressive animations! 🌼
We’ve been exploring different body poses and gestures that NPCs can use while chatting with you in-game. Instead of standing still, they’ll now react with subtle movements like nodding, shrugging, clapping their hands in excitement, or doing those adorable little anticipation hops when they’re happy to see you 🥹
The goal is to make every conversation feel more natural and lively without needing full cutscenes. It’s part of a lightweight emotion system that connects their voice lines, animations, and even small stylised effects (like exclamation bursts or sweat drops 💧)
Testing out expressive poses for our NPCs! Which one's your fave?
And next up, facial expressions! 👀 We’re working on adding eyes, brows, and mouth movements to match each emotion, so Loftia’s characters can react in many different ways. What kind of expressions would you love to see on Loftia’s NPCs?
👓 Player Accessories
One of our favorite parts of Loftia is letting you express you, so we’ve been working on adding even more ways to personalize your Loftian!
We’re starting with glasses, the first of many upcoming accessories 👀 From classic round frames to chunky statement shapes (and even a cheeky eyepatch), you’ll soon be able to pick the look that fits your vibe.
We’ve also got a bigger customization update on the way, where you can mix and match accessories to make your Loftian feel uniquely yours. So let us know what other accessories would you love to see in Loftia?
A look at some of the new eyewear options players can choose from!
🧭 UI/UX Ovrehaul
Our UI/UX overhaul is still going strong! Over the past month, we’ve been focusing on structural updates across several parts of the game, from the main Game Hub to various feature-specific UIs.
The Game Hub is essentially Loftia’s central menu system, home to everything from player profiles, progression, and collections, to customization and friends, and more. We’ve been working on refining its structure and navigation flow to make these screens more intuitive and easier to explore. That includes clearer layout hierarchies, consistent patterns across menus, and smoother transitions between different sections.
Polishing up the Loftia interface ✨ menus, customization, and a little extra love for every screen
Alongside that, we’ve also been iterating on different UI designs for minigames and quest tracking, fine-tuning how information is displayed during gameplay so it’s clean, readable, and responsive.
All of these updates work together to make Loftia feel more cohesive and polished, every screen connecting seamlessly as part of one unified world.
🌻 Community Corner
We've had a really busy couple of weeks with our community - with many competitions, events, live-streams and activities taking place on both our social media and Discord server! 💛
Fan Art Competition 🎨
Our annual Fan Art Competition has officially wrapped up, and it’s easily become one of our favorite yearly Loftia traditions. This year’s theme focused on the Salvaging District, and we received many submissions showcasing a different takes on the new district we're building.
Huge congratulations to our top 10 artists, and a big thank you to everyone who participated in the event! 🎉 Our winners will have their art featured in Loftia’s upcoming digital art book, and everyone who participated will receive an exclusive in-game Artist Bucket Hat as a thank-you gift!
💪 September Fitness Challenge
September was all about getting moving, both in-game and in real life with our first-ever Fitness Challenge Month!
Fitness Challenge Results!
We had 31 teams and 112 individuals joining in, logging over 2,700 total activities. That includes 1,900+ physical activities (from daily walks to morning stretches) and 800 reading activities, as part of our focus on both body and mind wellness.
A quick look at the Loftia Fitness Challenge stats!
Beyond the numbers, the best part was seeing everyone lift each other up, sharing progress updates, encouraging words, and moments of real reflection. And that’s exactly the spirit we hoped for when we created this challenge, we’re so proud of every single person who took part 🌻
🌕 Pebble Moon Festival & World Mental Health Day in October
October’s been an extra special month for our server because one of our favorite community traditions made its return: the Pebble Moon Festival 💫
This year, the server was split into districts and members from each district had to collaborate through cozy challenges like Bingo, Trivia, Meme and Art contests. We even held an end-of-month Halloween live-stream called the Cursed Pebble Stream where our artists drew increasingly cursed pebbles based on your suggestions in chat!
Alongside all the fun, we also took time to focus inward for World Mental Health Day. We hosted a Stamp Rally where players answered wholesome, self-care themed questions to collect stamps, joined group meditation sessions, and shared infographics and safety plan templates for mental wellness.
Our team also participated by slowing down for half a day to engage in our favorite hobbies and chill activities. Some of us spent it outdoors in the sun, while others stayed home to reed, tend to plants, spend time with loved ones, or relax with some cozy games.
Some cozy snapshots from our team’s self-care time 💚
Moments like these remind us that Loftia isn’t just a game about building a better world, it’s also about making space for care, connection, and balance in our own lives too 🫶🏻 We truly really believe that taking care of yourself and the people you love is just as important as any adventure you’ll go on in Loftia 🫂
That’s all for this devlog! ✨ We hope you enjoyed seeing what’s been happening behind the scenes, and as always, we’d love to hear what you think! Drop a message, share your thoughts, or just come hang out with us in the community. Thanks again for being part of this little world we’re building together 💛
Until next time, Loftians - see you in the skies! ☁️✨
Loftia team 💛
Bug of the month:
Loftia fact of the day: Did you know that Pebble runs a secret pizza shop underneath the Salvaging District?
Loftia's Timelines: Beta playtests and beyond 🌱💫
5 months ago
– Sun, Oct 26, 2025 at 09:58:01 PM
Good timezone, Loftians! 🤗
It’s been an incredible journey as we continue Loftia’s development, both for those of us on the team, and all of you in the community. We hope you’ve been enjoying the ride as much as we have! We’ve made so much progress this year - we started off with multiple rounds of Alpha playtesting, and received a ton of super valuable feedback from all of you, both positive (a lot of positive!) and constructive. We’ve been hard at work addressing this feedback alongside continuing to introduce new districts and features to the game. 🔨
Community screenshot from our Alpha playtests (submitted by: Captain Luffy)
We've had a bunch of other big wins this year, including releasing our Hanging Gardens trailer, receiving the "Best Upcoming Game" award from Steam's Cozy Family & Friends Festival, and secured additional funding that is allowing us to make Loftia even bigger and better (whilst ensuring that creative control and the heart of Loftia's vision remains fully with our team!). It's also allowed us to expand our development team to 32 people, and all of us are pouring our hearts into building the next major Loftian district, the Salvaging District, as well as many new features including the much-awaited Community Projects, Adventures, and more.
With all this work underway, we’re now ready to share some updates about our timelines. During our Kickstarter in 2023, we estimated our target Early Access date for December 2025. Early Access will be the moment that Loftia becomes publicly playable. As a team we’ve given these timelines a lot of thought, and after careful deliberation we’ve made the decision to introduce a new milestone, our Beta playtests, to run in Q1 2026. This Beta will be made available to all Kickstarter backers, including Early Access backers.
Our Early Access will follow the Beta, and the updated timeframe for it is around mid-year 2026. We’re still finalizing the exact dates and duration of the Beta playtests and more precise timeframes around Early Access too. We’ll share more information as soon as we can, and you can expect Beta-related details at the beginning of the new year.
We had 2 key reasons for making these updates to our timeline:
We want to launch the best possible version of Loftia, and the funding we recently received has allowed us to aim for a level of quality and fun for the game that we couldn’t have achieved before! With this new funding, we have the opportunity to make Loftia even better than we first imagined. That means taking a little more time to reach the level of polish and fun the game deserves. Funding helps us get there, but it doesn’t replace the time, care, and creativity needed to bring Loftia to life. We truly believe the improvements will be worth the wait, and we're excited to show you what’s coming.
Additionally, when Phase I of our Alpha playtests ran in December last year, we received feedback from many of you in the community, as well as internally from our team members, that the timing coincided too closely with the holiday season. This meant that players felt a need to choose between playing Loftia, and spending valuable holiday time with their families. It also meant that our development team had to work during the holidays to continuously monitor the servers and fix bugs that popped up, pulling them away from their families.
This wasn’t a decision we made lightly. We spent a lot of time reflecting on what would be best for both our community and our team. In the end, we believe that taking this extra time will result in a version of Loftia that’s more polished, more fun, and truer to the world we’ve all been building together.
We’ve also got some updates to share about Loftia on the Nintendo Switch. With the recent release of the Switch 2, many of you have asked about our plans. The short answer is: Loftia is still coming to Switch 1, and we’re working hard towards bringing Loftia to Switch 2! But since Nintendo hasn’t yet made Switch 2 development kits readily available for indie studios like us, we’re still in the process of securing dev kits and obtaining official confirmation that Loftia will be on the Switch 2. We’ll keep everyone updated on this as more news rolls in.
Our plan is to bring Loftia onto the Switch (and hopefully Switch 2 too) as soon as possible upon entering Early Access. In fact, we’ve already started work internally on our Switch port. 💪 Through this process, we’ve learned there are a very large number of requirements and approvals Nintendo places upon games before they’re allowed onto the Switch. So, it will take at least a few extra months post-Early Access before we're able to launch Loftia on the Switch.
We want to make sure that everyone who supported us in the Kickstarter and requested the Switch version still receives access to Loftia as soon as possible, at Beta. So, we’ll be granting a Steam Key to Nintendo Switch backers too, so you can play on your PC or Mac whilst we complete the Switch certification process.
Community screenshot from our Alpha playtests (submitted by: Ark)
We'd like to express our heartfelt thanks to all of you for your patience as we take the time to make Loftia the best that it can be. You’ve heard this many times before, from us and probably from other developers too; but the process of making games is very difficult and unpredictable even as it is incredibly rewarding. As an indie studio developing an ambitious MMO as our first title, we’ve encountered and overcome so many challenges already, with no doubt a bunch more ahead of us.
We’ve learned so much from this journey and are eternally grateful to all of you who have been cheering us on. In more ways than you could imagine, we wouldn’t be where we are today without you, so from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for coming along with us on this journey and placing your trust in us. We’re working super, super hard to get Loftia into your hands as soon as we can.
Thank you again for your support and we'll be sharing more updates soon, - Mic, Martina, Eric, and the entire Loftia team
