Alpha is here!
almost 2 years ago
– Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 03:57:06 PM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Loftia
Created by Qloud Games
Find your new home, contribute to the community, and embark on adventures, together! For PC, Mac and Nintendo Switch.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Alpha is here!
💌Devlog #10: Loftia's New Trailer and Steam Wishlisting Page!!! 🎬✨
almost 2 years ago
– Wed, Dec 11, 2024 at 03:41:20 AM
Hi Loftians!!
Exciting announcement: Loftia's Steam wishlist page is now LIVE with a brand new trailer! 🥳 This is a huge milestone for us as launching our Steam wishlist page as been on our to-do list, and we've been working on this new trailer for a while! This new trailer unveils our new Neighborhoods feature, which we've been keeping a secret until now. Click below to check it out! If you can take just a moment to wishlist on the Steam page, it would be a huge support, because it'll help get Loftia in front of many more people all around the world! 🤗 (even if you already backed, you can still wishlist and it will still be helpful!)
In the Neighborhoods 🏡, you can connect your personal floating island to others, forming a small community with a shared hub in the centre. Within this community, you can allow other people to visit your home, decorate together, farm together, or even host fun, social activities! What's even more special is that you can either form a Neighborhood with your existing friends, or choose to be matched with completely new players - giving you the chance to make new friends. We're so excited to see all the friendships and communities made through this feature, and hope this will make our cozy MMO even more social and fun!
Loftia Steam Wishlisting Party! 🌳
To celebrate this big milestone, we're hosting a special wishlisting event to gather as many wishlists as we can in the first week! Every wishlist makes a difference, helping us reach more players and earning more visibility for Loftia on Steam. So for this event, we'll be working together to grow our virtual wishlist tree! Every wishlist will help grow our tree, from sprout to fully grown, and if we hit our major wishlist goal we'll be gifting all our wishlisters an exclusive "Steam" themed in-game hat! Additional stretch goals will also be available for us to achieve, which will unlock even more community awards! 🎁
Here's how you can join:
- Wishlist Loftia on Steam
- Share our Steam page with friends and family members
- Join our Discord (if you haven’t already!) to connect with other Loftians and join in on the fun
- Watch as the Steam Wishlist Tree grows as the number of wishlists goes up!
This event will run for a week, until December 18th, so let's work together to achieve our wishlist goal and grow our tree! 🌳 Everyone who is part of the official Loftia mailing list will receive the rewards from the event, so make sure to both wishlist and join the mailing list if you haven't already - you can do so from the event page on the Loftia website.
Now let's dive into our dev updates for this past month! 🎢
Community farming 👩🏻🌾🌾
From the very beginning of our gamedev journey, we knew we wanted farming to be a fun, social activity that can be shared with many players together. While multiplayer farming already exists on player islands and Neighborhoods, we wanted something that players could do with the wider community. It took us some time to think of ideas, and after a few iterations we're excited to show a preview of our Community Farming feature!
You’ll team up with friends to plant, water, harvest, and deliver crops as quickly as possible to earn points. The pace is fast, the stakes are high (okay, not that high—it’s still cozy). Everything’s faster-paced than regular farming—seeds come from dispensers, crops grow at lightning speed, and it’s a race against the clock. It’s the perfect mix of fun and frenzy, and we’re so excited to see how you’ll tackle it! We took a lot of inspiration from Overcooked and It Takes Two, where players have to co-operatively help each other achieve the goal.
But what's the purpose of the Community Farms? Well in addition to being a fun mini-game that can be enjoyed with both friends and new players, Community Farms act as a very important source of crops for the districts of Loftia! Your hard-work won't be wasted, as all the crops you help grow will be distributed back to the city - feeding Loftia's sustainable, circular economy.
And here's a little snippet of our Community Farming gameplay! Please note that all the art assets are currently placeholders. Let us know in the comments how you feel about this exciting new feature! What would you like to see, what references from other games does it remind you of, and you think we should take inspiration from?
And here's a little snippet of our Community Farming gameplay! Please note that all the art assets are currently placeholders. Let us know in the comments how you feel about this exciting new feature! What would you like to see, what references from other games does it remind you of, and you think we should take inspiration from?
Fish species! 🐡🐟
As some of you may already know from our Instagram reel, we're working on Loftia's fishing system! Fishing is a staple in many cozy games, but we wanted to put an eco-friendly twist on fishing in Loftia. Instead of fishing for food or profit, you'll be helping protect endangered species! We're exploring ideas like collecting fish for research, relocating them to safer waters, or even teaming up in groups to help with migration or hatching events.
Some species that we already have in mind include:
- The Leafy Sea Dragon
- The Red Handfish
- The Umbrella Octopus
- Splendid Poison Frog
Let us know what other species we should include!
DIY paints! 🎨
Allowing players to express themselves creatively is an important focus for us, and we love the idea of players being able to re-color furniture, clothing and cosmetics however they like. Which is why we've designed a new color customization system using flowers! Starting in the Hanging Gardens, you’ll be able to turn flowers into organic paints and use them to customize everything—furniture, clothing, tools, even your house!
How does this work exactly? Well you'll start by finding colored flowers in the Hanging Gardens. These flowers will mainly exist as primary colors, such as red, blue, and yellow. While you can just throw these into the Paint Maker and paint your items in these primary colors, the fun part is mixing your own shades of colors by using a Flower Mixer! This will involve a little color theory in the beginning, which we will help you out with, but over time you'll be a color master 😎
For example, mixing:
Red Flower + Yellow Flower = Orange Paint 🍊
Blue Flower + Yellow Flower = Green Paint 🍀
Red Flower + Blue Flower = Purple Paint 💜
You can then put these flowers into the Paint Maker to produce your desired shade! It doesn't stop there, though. As there will also be black and white flowers out in the wild which will allow you to achieve lighter or darker shades.
Red Flower + White Flower = Pink Paint 🌸
Black Flower + White Flower = Grey Paint 👽
Blue Flower + Black Flower = Navy Paint 👖
The color combinations are endless, and it'll just be up to you and your creativity! We've already concepted designs for our Flower Mixer and Paint Maker below, and would love to know your thoughts on this new system 🌼🎨
Let us know which design is your fave!
Community Highlight 🌱
We wanted to take a moment to celebrate all of you. Last month’s Pebble Moon Festival was one of the biggest events in our Discord, and it was such a joy to see so many of you get involved, make friends, and share your creativity.
Whether it was the stunning Autumn photos, the cozy art pieces that warmed our hearts, or the memes that cracked us up - these are the moments that make Loftia feel so special, and we’re so grateful for the incredible community we’re building together.
The event also involved some friendly competition between our three districts, and we're so proud of everyone for helping their district earn points! Congratulations to the Tech District for coming first and being the winner of the event! Huge shoutout to the everyone else in the Hanging Gardens and Salvaging district for participating and making this event super fun. If you missed out, don’t worry—we’ve got plenty more fun community events planned for next year. We can’t wait to see what you’ll create next!
That’s all for this update! As always, thank you for being part of this journey with us. We love hearing from you, so don’t hesitate to share your thoughts, ideas, or feedback!
With love,
Loftia Family 💛
Bug of the month:
When that fountain water hits just right
Hey Loftians! It's time to finalize your surveys!
almost 2 years ago
– Wed, Nov 20, 2024 at 10:38:19 PM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
💌 Devlog #9: Airtram stations, sound effects and new salvageables! 🚡🌤🌿
about 2 years ago
– Wed, Oct 16, 2024 at 07:09:15 AM
Welcome to another dev update, Loftians!! 🎉
It's been another busy period for the team, and we thank you for your patience on this new devlog! We've been hard at work continuing to design and flesh out more of Loftia (of course!), and our team has continued to grow in size as we bring on more expertise in areas such as sound design and animations.
While a ton of our workload has been testing and refining the core loop of the game, we've also continued to work on Loftia's game design, pump out more art and beautiful environments, and code out new features during this time - which we'll be diving into below!
As a small announcement, we'll be closing pre-orders of Alpha keys on October 31st (11:59pm PT), so if you and your friends would like to purchase any additional keys, make sure to get your orders in soon!
Now without further ado, let's dive into these updates!! 🎢
Farming! 🥕
First up, here's a first look at some farming gameplay! When we started developing Loftia, hydroponic farming was an innovative, solarpunk form of farming that we were super excited about. But there's just something so relaxing and satisfying about seeing your soil plots bloom with ripe crops, and then harvesting them - and so the early stages of farming as a player within Loftia will still begin with traditional soil farming! 🌾
As you all know, we've been working on finalizing our basic batch of crops in the past 2 months, and they've turned out exactly as we hoped. Here's a snippet of farming gameplay from our recent internal playtest. Please note that farming animations like harvesting and planting are still in development and will most definitely be undergoing further revision!
Actions like placing your soil plots, planting seeds, watering, and harvesting are feeling smooth and satisfying - but we're still toggling with the speed and movement of all the actions so that they feel great.
Some other features we've implemented include drip irrigators to make your watering more efficient, which is showcased in our latest post here on social media. 👀
There's much more to farming that's still in the works - including the much anticipated Community Farms feature! Keep your eyes peeled, we'll have more information to share about all that soon.
Salvaging 🔨
Salvaging will play a key role in resource gathering in Loftia, allowing players to collect discarded items, materials, and objects scattered throughout the world for crafting, decorating, and donating. Since our rework of the salvaging process from simply interacting with nodes to now having tools used, like a hammer to actively swing and aim as you gather resources, we've been working hard to bring this mechanic to life by focusing on iterating animations, timings, and the feeling of impact. 💥
We’re currently refining the hammering animations, and we’d love your feedback. Below is a look at our current animation - how does the impact seem to you? Are the movements smooth and satisfying? Let us know your thoughts in the comments as we continue to improve this feature!
We’re currently refining the hammering animations, and we’d love your feedback. Below is a look at our current animation - how does the impact seem to you? Are the movements smooth and satisfying? Let us know your thoughts in the comments as we continue to improve this feature!
In addition, we've been working on adding more salvageable goods that you can find around the districts of Loftia. For example, an old TV like the concept below might produce resources like wires, glass, plastic and metal. This can then be used to craft solar panels, furniture, advanced tools and other items. ♻️
Similarly, tires can be recycled for its rubber, which can be used for an assortment of items!
Salvaging scraps isn't the only thing you can do while exploring the sky islands, though. Foraging for wild plants, mushrooms and other natural resources is also possible once you've crafted a set of pruners in the game, and the newest addition to our list of forgeable resources is bamboo!
Bamboo🎍is often considered one of the most renewable materials and is the fastest-growing woody plant. It can grow up to 3 feet in a single day (!) and can absorb significantly more carbon dioxide while producing more oxygen than many other tree species. When properly cultivated and sustainably treated, bamboo offers a great alternative to plastic and other non-organic materials.
In Loftia, you'll be able to harvest bamboo from the various bamboo plants found around the gardens and parks of the city:
New Airtram Stations 🚡
So a lot of people have asked us how island travel is going to work. Do we fly through the sky using a glider? Do we ride an airship? 🧐
Well today we can officially confirm that airtrams will be a major form of travel between islands in Loftia! That's right, we're talking about the airtrams that you saw at the beginning our Kickstarter trailer. Each district will have an airtram station that acts as the "airport" for you to ride the airtrams to get to another sky island, and what's exciting is that each airtram station will also be themed according to the district that station can travel to.
This is some of our initial concept art for these airtram stations - taking inspiration from real life airports and train stations.
This is some of our initial concept art for these airtram stations - taking inspiration from real life airports and train stations.
The airtrams themselves are called Les Oeufs, which is the French word for egg! Alcy, our 2D artist from France, who designed these airtrams, made them very egg-shaped, and we love how cute they look. You'll be able to ride in these little colored eggs and soar between sky islands - which is by far the most stylish method of travel in our opinion. 💅
Below is an early prototype of our station that connects our main Loftia city to our Hanging Gardens District. Each station will also feature an NPC who will guide you on your journey and equip you with the necessary travel gear.
What other features and/or decorations would you like to see in one of these airtram stations? Comment your ideas!
More Immersive Interactions! 🎶💥
One of our biggest priorities is ensuring we enhance your journey as a player and provide an immersive gaming experience through the music and sounds of life around you in Loftia. The team has been working hard at perfecting our watering can VFX to provide a realistic experience when you’re watering your crops while farming, as well as adding in new noises everyday to provide immersive interactions all around the city! ✨
We've been busy creating a ton of sounds that truly spruce up the player experience, and Loftia's environment and world. You’ll be able to hear the soft footsteps when you’re playing with your friends, the sounds of your hammer breaking down different materials as you go salvaging, cozy music as you craft items to decorate your home and more! Below are a few sounds you can expect to hear when you’re salvaging and farming, so keep an ear out for them!
Community 🌱
For those active on social media, we've also recently started posting on our Loftia Reddit account. Come join our Subreddit for fun activities like community votes on in-game clothing and furniture, cozy game discussions about our current fave cozy games, sustainability facts, and more!
Two weeks ago we also attended Tokyo Game Show in Japan! 🇯🇵 This was the first time we've attended, and the scale of the expo was just mind-blowing. This year there was a record 3000+ booths on the floor, with over 200,000 attendees over 4 days. It was awesome to see all the cool games and projects coming from many countries around the world, and we also had the opportunity to meet many passionate devs too. While we didn't have a Loftia booth on the floor this year, we're looking to the future, so you can expect to see us at some point in the coming years!
Lastly, we want to say thank you to everyone who submitted their dogs and cats for International Cat and Dog Day in our Discord server! 🐱🐶 Seeing everyone's pets is one of our favorite things ever, and we're so happy to be able to celebrate these two very special days with you all. Here's a collage of some of our community pets:
We have more fun events and activities planned for our community this month - including the Loftia Talent Show event where you can come watch some of your fellow Loftians show off their talents and help choose a Talent Show winner - so make sure to join our Discord server to come hang out with us and other Loftians! For discussions on all things related to cozy games, sustainability and what's upcoming for Loftia - join our Subreddit here!
Bug of the month 🐞
Don’t skip arm day, they said.
We also just wanted to share this adorable rendition of Moo Deng, Pesto and Hua Hua as Loftian residents - created by our 2D artist Felysia! We've been obsessed with these 3 cuties the past couple of weeks, and can't imagine a more fitting world for them to live in than our cozy, solarpunk one 🥰
Love from the Loftia Team 💛
💌 Dev Update #8: NEW NPC!! 🧋💛
over 2 years ago
– Fri, Aug 02, 2024 at 06:07:04 AM
Happy 1 Year Kickstarter Anniversary! 🥳🎉
Hello and welcome to another dev update Loftians! Can you believe it's been a full year, a whole 12 months, since our Kickstarter campaign? This time last year, we had officially launched our Kickstarter campaign, and at the time we were bubbling with feelings of excitement, nervousness and anticipation. We had been building up to this moment for more than half a year, over 6 months at that point and had poured everything we had into our Kickstarter campaign. As a small indie studio, it's not an exaggeration to say that the odds were stacked against us but we knew in our hearts that we were building something truly special. We were fortunate enough to find a community of supporters who shared our vision and we're so grateful to have achieved our fundraising goals with the best community we could have ever asked for. 💛
Since August last year, our small indie team has now grown to over 20 full time members, and we've had our heads down in development ever since. Building a game, much less an MMO, is one of the hardest creative feats to achieve - so we've definitely experienced our fair share of ups and downs. Over time we would love to share more about the business side of building a game in this industry, and economy, so let us know if you have any specific questions or topics you would like us to share!
For now, let's dive into some of the exciting features that our team has been working on throughout the month of July 👀
New NPC Reveal: Jun! 🧋
A new NPC has arrived in Loftia city!!
Jun works at Loftia's boba shop and he loves coming up with new boba recipes! Jun always makes sure to add a few extra toppings for his customers - so you might find some extra tapioca pearls or lychee jelly in your drink. If he looks familiar, that's because he's Kun's younger brother! Kun works at Loftia's Study Cafe, and together they're known to serve some of the tastiest beverages in the city. You'll be able to meet Jun (and maybe even work with him) at the boba shop and create some sweet treats with him. 😋
We would love your help in developing Jun's character profile, so please let us know if you have any suggestions for him! Here are some character traits and features we're looking to develop:
Jun works at Loftia's boba shop and he loves coming up with new boba recipes! Jun always makes sure to add a few extra toppings for his customers - so you might find some extra tapioca pearls or lychee jelly in your drink. If he looks familiar, that's because he's Kun's younger brother! Kun works at Loftia's Study Cafe, and together they're known to serve some of the tastiest beverages in the city. You'll be able to meet Jun (and maybe even work with him) at the boba shop and create some sweet treats with him. 😋
We would love your help in developing Jun's character profile, so please let us know if you have any suggestions for him! Here are some character traits and features we're looking to develop:
- Jun's likes and dislikes 🍓🌶🍣
- Jun's pet 🐰🐶🐹
- Jun's favorite boba order 🧋
- Jun's relationship with his brother Kun 🤗
- Jun's hobbies and interests ⚽️📚🎮
Share your ideas and suggestions with us in the comments below, and we'll work them into Jun's character!
New art assets 🎨
Last month we presented a few concept art sketches that we had designed for our cooking stations and tools. Well this month we've been working on turning them into 3D assets that can be used in game!
Cooking Station:
In June, we spoke about the sustainable cooking methods we’ve been researching and the innovative Smog Free Tower designed by Daan Roosegaarde which uses patented positive ionisation technology to produce smog free air in public spaces, allowing people to breathe and experience clean air. Inspired by this technology, we thought about how this concept of air recycling can be applied to smoke as well, which lead to the design of our very own smoke recycling cooking station. Our artists have been working on the 3D model of this cooking station and you can see the closeups below! This is where you’ll be able to cook up a storm of delicious treats!
Advanced Workbench:
We've also been developing an "Advanced Workbench", which is the upgraded version of the basic workbench. This one looks more high tech and snazzy right?
Tailoring Station:
We're also excited to reveal that we've been working on a tailoring station! You'll be able to build this station to craft and tailor clothes from a variety of different sustainable materials. Think banana leather, pineapple leather, recycled cotton, and more! What outfits would you like to craft first?
Tools and equipment
And as for our tools and equipment that we revealed last month, they've also been modelled in 3D and are now ready to be equipped in game!
Item Descriptions 💬
This month, our design department has been busy iterating on our core game loop and adding more flair to our item descriptions. Each item in Loftia is uniquely important and has its own story to tell, which is why we've spent time coming up with interesting, fun and sometimes witty descriptions for each one! Here's a sneak peak of some of our crop descriptions below 👀
🥕 Carrot: What's up, doc?
🥔 Potato: The "apple of the earth"
🍅 Tomato: Team Tomato
🥬 Lettuce: The staple of salads!
🧄 Garlic: Makes a popular bread...or vampire antioxidant
🌿 Basil: Lends a herbal, fresh smell to your food
🍚 Rice: The heart of Asian cruisine
🍉 Watermelon: Team Watermelon
👚 Cotton: One of the best materials for making fabric!
As a fun activity, help us come up with descriptions for these following items in the comments below!
🍞 Bread:
🍓 Strawberries
🌶 Chili Pepper:
Updates to UI ⚙️
This month we've also made some more updates to our inventory UI and station UI! This includes:
Multiple tabs for different types of items
Now you can neatly arrange your inventory and categorize your items accordingly so that they're easier to find! What other inventory UI features do you think we should add?
New player battery mechanic
All stations require power to operate, so we've added a battery slot in the UI so that you can start using renewable energy to power all your crafting and cooking needs! All you have to do is click on the empty battery slot and have a charged battery in your inventory to begin!
New UI icons
All our UI icons are 2D renders, and we've added a new batch to our collection this month! Can you identify what food and beverage items some of these are? 👀
Community 🌱
We've been running an Emoji Contest over in our Discord server this month, and there's a few days left to enter - submissions close August 5th! Winners will have their emoji added to the Loftia Discord to be used in the server on the daily. Not a designer? That's okay! You can still vote for your favourite emoji to win the competition, and community voting will remain open until August 8th! 🤗
We're also currently working on logo designs for the game studio behind Loftia called Qloud Games. For those curious, we chose the name Qloud Games for our indie studio as it fits Loftia's sky island setting. Players will be building a world amongst the clouds, and so we wanted our studio to match! The Q instead of C was just to add a playful twist! These are some logo designs we're loving, vote for your favourite below! ☁️
As always, thank you for being a part of this wonderful community, and we wish everyone a great month ahead!
Bug of the month 🐞
James and the Giant Tomato 🍅
Love from the Loftia Team 💛