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Devlog #16: Final update of the year! Thank you Loftians 💛🎉
5 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! 👀🌱
7 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 🌱💫
7 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
Sustainable Whale Turbine Plushies are ready to ship! 🐋🎉
9 months ago
– Wed, Sep 17, 2025 at 01:38:23 PM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
💌 Devlog #14: New Trailer, New Hairstyles and New Social Features!! 🌸🏐💇♀️
9 months ago
– Thu, Sep 11, 2025 at 08:25:10 PM
Hi Loftians! 🌱
Welcome to another new devlog. We hope everyone's been well since our last update! It's been incredibly busy over here in Loftia land, and in the past 2 months our team has cooking up brand new content and features, scaling up the team further, and pushing out a brand new trailer for Loftia. That's right...
Our new Hanging Gardens Feature trailer is officially here! 🌿🌸
If you haven't seen it on our social media yet, we recently dropped our brand new trailer of The Hanging Gardens, a whole new district that's floating off to the side of the main Loftia City, and it’s packed with lush forests, winding paths, secret caves, fishing spots, and cozy corners to explore. We’ve been quietly building it in the background for months, and we’re so excited to show you how it all fits together.
These are some of the new systems and features you'll find here:
🍓 Community Farming, where you’ll team up with other players to grow crops that benefit the whole city
🧪 Research Stations that let you help NPC scientists study and rehabilitate aquatic species
⛏️ Cave Exploration, yes, real caves! Full of rare materials and hidden secrets
🪣 Contribution Bins to support communal projects and unlock shared rewards
🎮 Don’t Drop the Ball, a chaotic mini-game that’s already become one of our team’s faves
🧢 New outfits with Farmhouse, Mushroom, Fishing, Bamboo and Enchanted themes
🛋️ New furniture collections made for Bamboo groves, seaside vibes, and woodland cottages
You’ll also be exploring brand new areas like:
🌸 The Grove, the central hub of the Gardens
🎋 Bamboo Forest, a shady forest full of mystery and winding paths
🐠 Fishing Village, a cozy dockside hangout for aquatic lovers
💧 Central Lake, calm on the surface, full of life underneath
🌲 The Overgrowth, a hidden, overgrown zone full of rare finds
A peek at all corners of the Hanging Gardens 🌿
There’s a lot packed into this new district, and we hope this trailer is able to give a first taste of what to expect here! We also want to give a shoutout to all our Loftian content creators who have created some amazing videos of our new features revealed in our trailer. We wouldn't be here without the support of everyone in this community! 💛
Epic Online Services x Loftia x Hathora! So the other exciting thing that happened recently is that we were featured in an article on the Epic Online Services blog post!! Yep, it's super surreal seeing Loftia on the Epic website, and we're so thankful to Hathora and Epic for making this happen!
Building a massive online world like Loftia is super challenging as a small indie team, but leveraging Epic Online Services and Hathora has not only made it possible, but easier to do so. The full blog post goes into detail on our backend architecture, how we plan to scale server costs, and how we tackle some of the technical challenges we face! Go check it out here!
Stop Killing Games Movement: Building Loftia to Last Now before we jump into all our updates, we also wanted to share something close to our hearts:
The Stop Killing Games movement has gained lots of momentum in the past couple of months. It’s sparked a lot of important conversations around game preservation, especially for live online games like Loftia, and we thought it was important for us to join that conversation too.
Therefore, we've posted a blog post that lays out our plan for keeping Loftia playable for as long as possible. As players ourselves, even in a far-off future where we might not be around to run it. 💛 Thank you to MMORPG for covering this in their recent article!
Now let’s get into what we’ve been building lately 👇
New chaotic lil' social toy - Don't Drop the Ball 🏐
You may have seen this little ball bouncing in the trailer or on our social media videos, but today we'd like to give you a proper behind-the-scenes look at Don't Drop the Ball, the new social feature we've added to Loftia.
Don’t Drop the Ball gameplay showcase
We've been calling it a "social toy", which is basically our version of casual MMO mini-games that don't tie into the main game loop in any way, they're just there for fun. Similar to the Club Penguin snowball fights! But it's also a feature that can be enjoyed completely solo.
⚙️ How it works
Launch a ball into the sky
A glowing ring shows where the ball will land
Rush to the landing spot before the ball hits the ground
If you make it? The ball bounces again, a little faster
Then try your best to keep the rally going for as long as you can!! Reaching higher scores will also unlock cool new skins
If you are playing with others, they can also throw in more balls to add to the fun! 👀
The ball’s path is never quite the same. Every bounce chooses a new landing spot based on a bunch of factors, and we’ve made sure it never gets too predictable.
✨ How we designed it
From a technical side, we didn’t want the ball to be a fully simulated object, that would’ve been a lot heavier on the server. So instead, the ball’s movement is calculated through sequences and timestamps, with each bounce generated server-side and synced to players.
But the coolest part is that we're making the landing spots follow a pattern based on a golden spiral search algorithm. Basically, it’s a way to evenly and efficiently cover the available ground, so every bounce feels organic but fair. We test multiple spots at each bounce and choose the one that’s unobstructed and reachable, no bouncing onto rooftops or the tops of trees (unless… 👀)
Debug view of how the ball picks its next landing spot
We also do a bunch of checks to make sure the next landing spot:
isn’t too steep or sloped,
sits within walkable area,
and doesn’t overlap with buildings or tight spaces.
It might look like a simple game, but getting it to feel right has taken a lot of iteration. We’re still tweaking things like bounce speed, placement radius, and multiplayer collision to make sure the game feels smooth and fun with any number of players.
🎨 Unlockable skins & progression
As you rack up higher hit counts, your ball will also upgrade to new visual effects, cute cosmetic skins.
Guess how many bounces are required before these ball skins are unlocked!
We’re also planning more ball designs, customisation options, and maybe even different game modes down the line. And we’d love to hear your thoughts! What other chaotic (or cozy) mini-games do you wanna see in Loftia? 👀
Character feels more alive with eye movement tracking 👀
One of the more consistent bits of feedback we’ve gotten since the Kickstarter campaign has been that the characters feel a little… lifeless. And we do agree. So we’ve been quietly working on something small but surprisingly impactful: eye movement tracking.
Testing how characters track the player with their eyes
At its core, the system is pretty simple. When you’re near another player or NPC, their character will now subtly look in your direction. They won’t stare you down or follow your every move, just enough motion to make them feel present. And it’s made a huge difference.
🔧 Getting the eyes to feel “right”
But what we expected to be a quick polish feature turned into a bit of a rabbit hole. Stylised characters can be tricky: too little movement and they feel static, too much and it gets... weird.
Here are a few things we ended up tweaking:
Tracking delay – If eyes snapped instantly, it felt robotic. We added some delay to make it feel like your character is noticing something.
Offset between eyes – Perfectly symmetrical pupil movement looked unnatural, so we gave each eye a slight variance to mimic real-world “micro-imbalance.”
Tracking strength – Eyes don’t follow a target completely. Instead, they lean toward it. This helps avoid the full “staring into your soul” effect.
Idle reset – After a while, eyes smoothly return to a neutral position to keep things from feeling stiff.
🛠️ What’s next Right now, eye tracking works with nearby characters and certain interactions. But we’re planning to expand this further to include:
syncing with emotes (yes, your character will soon make eye contact while dancing 💃)
eye movement during idle animations
and later on, layering this into a broader facial animation system.
It’s one of those changes that might go unnoticed when it works, but is very noticeable when it doesn’t. And while it’s still evolving, we’re really happy with how it’s starting to bring Loftians to life. What expressions you'd like to see in Loftia? Let us know!
Your fave NPCs got that post-Alpha glow ✨
Some familiar faces in Loftia have been getting a bit of a makeover lately! Kun, Hazel, and Pebble have all had visual updates to better match the world around them, and they’re looking real good now.
🌷Hazel’s updated look (before ➝ after) 🌷
☕️ Kun’s updated look (before ➝ after) ☕️
🍪 Pebble’s updated look (before ➝ after) 🍪
We’ve been refining their models, polishing their textures, and making sure their designs feel more expressive and distinct. We've also started adding animations and emotes to bring them to life even more.
Early look at a Pebble animation in progress
Got any emotes you’d love to see them do? A grumpy Pebble stomp? Hazel doing a dramatic gasp? Let us know!
Full hair stylist mode! 💈
Over the past month, our 3D character artist Alex has been focused on modelling Loftia’s new hairstyles into 3D! That includes hand-sculpting full forms (instead of layering texture strips), refining the hair shader to support volume, and definition while staying consistent with Loftia’s art style. It’s a time-consuming process, each style goes through sculpting, retopology, texture work, rigging, and in-engine testing before it’s ready.
Current hairstyles in Loftia, which one’s your fave?
On top of that, we’ve started designing a new batch of hairstyles inspired by solarpunk aesthetics. These styles pull from practical, future-forward looks like braided undercuts, short crops with clean lines, and asymmetrical shapes that feel both efficient and expressive. They're built to reflect the spirit of solarpunk: thoughtful, low-impact, and a little bold.
Sneak peek at our new solarpunk hairstyles ✨ Which one should we add first?
We’ll continue expanding this library over the next few months, and if there’s a specific style you want to see, let us know or drop a reference in our suggestion channels in Discord!
Your home now feels more like home 🏡
We’ve given your island’s signpost a much-needed upgrade! The old version was... fine, but pretty generic, and we knew we could do better, especially since it’s one of the first things people see when they visit your home.
Our new design is based on real timber signage with proper support beams and hanging frames. After finalizing the concept art, we modelled the new version in 3D and got it in-game, with cleaner proportions, a proper wood texture pass, and improved readability for names and custom text.
Old vs. new signpost design
It’s a small change, but one that really adds to the sense of home and ownership. We’re excited to keep adding little touches like this to help your island feel more personal and lived-in. Even more options will come soon! But for now, we hope your new signpost helps your place feel just a little bit more you.
Beehive station 🍯🐝
We’re expanding Loftia’s farming loop with a few new additions, and one of the first on the list is the Beehive.
Early concept art of the Beehive station
The Beehive is a new type of processing station that runs on top of our Simple Processing UI system. Functionally, it’s designed to take in flowers and gradually produce honey over time. It’s a small but satisfying addition to farming that gives players another reason to grow different crops, and introduces a gentler, slower-paced loop with a cozy payoff.
Visually, the Beehive is made to feel natural and decorative, something you’d actually want to place on your island, not just a mechanical station. It’s modelled to look like a DIY-style hive box with stacked wooden frames, so it fits more seamlessly into player spaces.
In-game 3D model of the Beehive station
Some key design goals for the Beehive:
Keep it lightweight, using our existing processing systems to avoid added complexity
Deliver a clear, intuitive interaction: feed flowers → wait → get honey
Allow for visual expansion with swappable skins in future updates (possibly doubling as island decor?)
Capture the fantasy of keeping bees without it becoming a major gameplay system
Early look at the Beehive VFX, work in progress and still being refined 🐝
This feature is currently in development and will be joining the game alongside other updates to the Hanging Gardens farming loop, like tree planting and trellises, but we'd love to hear about what you feel missing in Loftia's farming!
Hot Air Balloon Caller redesign 🎈✨
We’ve updated the Hot Air Balloon Caller, and the new version is a whole lot cuter looking!! The old version was functional but lacking personality. So we redesigned it from the ground up to better match Loftia’s playful and handmade feel.
The new caller keeps the same role, letting you summon the balloon for fast travel, but now features a soft timber base, and a giant pink paw button for triggering your ride (because why not make it fun?). It feels way more playful and intentional now.
Around the caller, we’ve added little details to bring the space to life, like coiled rope and a fluttering fish-shaped wind flag that helps give the whole landing zone a bit more motion and atmosphere, to make the caller feel like it belongs in a world that values DIY engineering and cozy design. It now lives at the base of the balloon platform and actually feels like a part of the system, not just a temporary placeholder.
New hot air balloon caller at the platform base 🎈
Flower pots & floral decor 🌼🏺
As we continue developing the Hanging Gardens, we’ve been expanding how flowers can be used in the game. Previously, it could be used for crafting and dyeing, but now we’re now adding a new way to interact with them: decorating your space.
Flower pots you can place and decorate with 🪴
This month, we’ve been working on Flower Pots, a simple, placeable item that lets you display individual flowers in your home or on your island. You’ll be able to interact with it, choose a flower from your inventory, and have it sit proudly on display.
This feature will create visual variety and personalization without adding more farming complexity. Whether you want a cozy corner filled with daffodils or just one dramatic rose on your windowsill, it’s up to you.
Here are the flowers available so far, we’re looking forward to seeing how creative you get with your floral arrangements 💐:
🌹 Rose
🌷 Tulip
🌼 Daffodil
🌸 Pansy
🍀 Oxalis
🌺 Cosmos
A peek at the flowers available for your pots! Which one will you plant first?
We’re planning to expand this list over time, so let us know what other flowers would you love to see in Loftia?
UI/UX Overhaul: Still going strong 🧩
A while back, we shared that we were deep into a UI/UX overhaul, and that work hasn’t slowed down. In fact, it’s become a lot more structured behind the scenes.
Since Alpha, we’ve been reworking Loftia’s UI across four main categories:
Player-related UI: HUD, chat bubbles, notifications, and popovers
Tutorials & guides: A separate visual style from gameplay UIs
Station UIs: Crafting, processing, and functional interactions
Tablet UI: Inventory, quests, tools, daily tasks, and more
To support Loftia long-term, we’ve also been restructuring how we approach UI design overall, creating shared visual foundations and technical systems that will make it easier to add new features and scale for future updates. This includes breaking UI down into its foundation, visuals, and technical sides, things like layout, navigation, and controls, so every element can be cleanly built and maintained going forward.
Why are we doing all this?
💡 MMO scalability: We want to be able to support more features and systems over time without redoing everything from scratch.
🗂️ Better organization: Categorizing and standardizing UI helps us design faster and make it easier for players to learn and navigate.
🛠️ Smoother UX: Reducing friction and making every UI element feel more intentional and consistent.
Here’s what we’ve tackled recently:
✅ Polished the Research Station and Contribution Bin interfaces
✅ Updated the Biofuel Station UI
✅ Continued revamping Station UIs, which we’re using as the main visual/style reference
✅ Rolled out new NPC dialogue windows with cleaner structure and flow
A refreshed look for the new station and dialogue screen
Sound plays a huge role in making Loftia feel alive, and this month, our sound designer Nigel has been out and about, collecting new recordings to build up the ambience for the bamboo forest and skytram cut scenes.
He's been capturing everything from real bamboo creaks and rustling leaves to wind textures and distant environmental echoes. All the tiny sounds that make a place feel real. Some of the gear was even tucked between giant rocks for the right acoustic bounce (don’t worry, we got it back).
These recordings are now being cleaned up and layered into our in-game soundscapes to create more grounded, textured environments. Bamboo forests will sound more peaceful, immersive, and tactile. And you'll definitely feel the elevation and movement of the sky tram the next time you ride it.
We’re continuing to build out ambience across Loftia, slowly giving each area its own sound identity. Which part of the world are you most excited to hear with full ambience? 🎧
Field recording hits different when you’re in the bamboo forest
Community Corner 🎨☕
One of our favourite parts of working on Loftia is getting to build this world with you, and this past month, the community's felt more connected than ever 💛
We created a new #hello-dev-team channel in our Discord, if you’ve ever been curious about the folks behind Loftia, the ones designing the islands, shaping the UI, or obsessing over the perfect shader settings, this is where we’re sharing a bit more about ourselves. Come say hi, learn who’s working on what, and maybe pick up a fun fact or two along the way!
We also hosted a super fun guided drawing session focused on optical illusions. It was relaxed, chaotic, and somehow turned into a collective spiral of shading madness. 10/10 would doodle again!!
Earlier this month, we ran another cozy Study Café with our UI artist Erika, who gave us a peek into how Loftia’s UI is designed, with plenty of laughs and adorable concept art (made just for the session). The vibes were so good we’re already planning a part two… and maybe even a cursed Pebble drawing stream?? 👀
The August Fan Art Competition has officially wrapped as well, and once again we were blown away by everyone's art!! It’s always such a joy to see how each of you bring your personality and imagination into Loftia, and the Salvaging District theme really brought out some stunning ideas.
We saw so many creative takes on what upcycling and reimagining could look like in this part of the city. Some of you drew out whole market stalls with hanging lights and plants peeking through old junk. Others went for more gritty, post-industrial vibes, leaning into rusted textures and layered materials. Seeing how you all interpreted a place we’re still in the middle of designing ourselves is so awesome and really helps us stay motivated.
Stay tuned on our Discord to see who the winners of the comp are!
A look at Fan Art Comp submissions!
Coming up:
💪 A month-long Fitness Challenge in September, where you’ll team up and work on your mental and/or physical wellbeing!
All the event info (prizes, submission timeline, and rules) is live now in our Discord, check #events to jump in!
If you haven’t joined the server yet, now’s a great time! And if you’re already in there, we’ll see you in the events channel real soon!
That’s everything from us this month! Thanks for sticking around and catching up with all the little (and not-so-little) things we’ve been working on. As always, thank you so much for being part of this journey. We’re so grateful to be building Loftia with you together! 💛
Until next time, Loftians - see you in the skies! ☁️✨
