Interview: Aloft Devs Already Have Years Of Content Planned

Sure! I’m Manuel Bergeron, CEO of Astrolabe Interactive and Game Director of Aloft. I founded the studio five years ago from my living room with a small team of motivated graduates like myself. While I initiated the design process and held the final say on numerous decisions, the majority of creative choices within Aloft were collaboratively made by the team.

Bergeron: The design for Aloft started during the pandemic, when we were all trapped inside, and everything was a bit bleak. We wanted to create a world that feels like going outside, feeling free again, and being empowered by having a positive impact on the environment. The idea of gliding through clouds in first-person or navigating the world with your flying island felt positive, vibrant, and enthralling!

Also, as an indie studio, it felt like a sound choice to build a game in the survival genre since it offers a development cycle that is really accessible for an Early Access launch and a good container to continue adding more content over years of development.

Bergeron: Aloft explores the concept of symbiosis, how people can learn to coexist with nature in a mutually beneficial relationship, and the terrible consequences when they don’t. We wanted to explore the passion and worries shared by the new generation of players, notably climate change, but in a way that would allow the players to be a positive force of change in the world.

Bergeron: The fact that you can sail any island in the game as a flying ship is quite unique in itself! We created Aloft with a positive design philosophy, where players are rewarded when choosing survival actions instead of being punished for not doing so. We also try to innovate to reduce typical frustrations in survival games, like inventory management, crafting, resource production, and stamina.

But our biggest innovations are probably related to our environmental vision; through the use of the symbiosis system, wind-powered energy, ecosystems that need to be taken care of, and positive animal husbandry, we change what used to be a genre about taking from nature to one that sees you thriving by giving back to it.

Bergeron: The community’s ideas inspire many aspects of the game. The devs have, and continue to, read and collect feedback from the community through our Discord server, playtest surveys, and socials. Some suggestions that are being considered include new meal recipes and animals, improvements to sailing, navigation, and quality of life updates.

Bergeron: The world of Aloft is fragmented and floating around a massive, eternal hurricane. You can fly through clouds, experience different weather, and chase the winds to sail faster and power your windmills. Leaves rustle in the soft winds, and the muffled sounds of storms raging outside make your indoor hobbies all the more cosy. We also try to keep the interface (HUD) as light as possible to limit the digital barrier with this experience.

The islands you encounter each have their own ecosystem, and some are corrupted by a dangerous parasite. Acting on fauna and flora, it’s up to the player to eliminate this corruption, heal the island’s ecosystem, and restore its natural balance. This teaches players how their actions can have lasting effects on fragile environments and how they can choose to restore them, for example, by planting a new sapling after cutting down a tree.

Bergeron: It’s too early to call a date for the 1.0 version of the game, but we already have years of content planned for Aloft! We’ve been updating the demo regularly within the last few years. As a result, some of our players have already put hundreds of hours into the game! We plan to keep that pace after the release.

Bergeron: We started development on Aloft with a small team of 5 in 2021; we are now 16 people actively working on this project.

Bergeron: There is a story that will be unveiled in the full version of the game: traces of others, knowledge to discover, and an end goal to pursue. However, we don’t expect to add quest logs and fetch quests in Aloft. The world, its story and secrets, are to be discovered and understood individually — you are an explorer in a new world, and it’s up to you to interpret its meaning.

Bergeron: The game was always made to be 100% controller-compatible, but we’d love to port it to consoles at some point. Some players have already enjoyed Aloft on Steam deck, even in this early stage of development. It looks promising for the future!

Bergeron: We have a ton of ideas for the game. Since its inception, Aloft has been designed with the intention to support more content for years to come, and we’d love to be able to do so.

Bergeron: If you want to try a unique survival game set in the clouds where you might just feel at home, Aloft’s demo is live on Steam right now! You can meet the team, exchange building tips with the community, and learn about the next things coming to Aloft on our Discord.