As is the case with many games inspired by Studio Ghibli, concerns about the state of the environment sit squarely at the heart of upcomingsurvival crafting sandbox gameAloft.Itssky islands orbit a fearsome hurricane and are plagued with fungal corruption, making sure that concern takes front and center.
Environmentalism is a hot topic in gaming. That’s not a particularly new trend, with games likeSuper Mario Sunshine,Final Fantasy 7, and evenSonic the Hedgehog(particularlySonic CD) being venerable classics of gaming. As climate anxiety has grown, though, so too have the ways games tackle the topic. Recent titles likeHarvestella,FloraMancer, andTerra Nilhave dedicated themselves to discussing the subject, and it was something that weighed on the minds ofthe philosophical writers ofThe Talos Principle 2.
InAloft, Astrolabe Interactive is aiming to take a humanist, proactive approach to the problems facing both its soaring fantasy and the real world, studio CEO Manuel Bergeron said in an interview with Game Rant. Investing the player in that environment as more than a piece of the gameplay loop was important to convey the kind of stewardship Bergeron hoped players would find.
We took a lot of inspiration from Studio Ghibli stories, and how everything relates to nature and war, the struggles of our time. They focused more on climate change and nature, and that’s how we decided to lean into an experience that was about the environment.
The way that environmentalism plays out inAloftis twofold. First, the end goal both in the currently available demo and the Early Access release of the game coming in 2024 is reaching the heart of a raging hurricane, overcoming the storms and other extreme weather events along the way. The second element is a fungal corruption spreading through the sky islands, even impacting massive Titans that serve as late-game world bosses–acorruption that needs cleansing likeHaven.
For that to mean more than agameplay loop, Astrolabe realized they needed to really invest players in the world they were restoring, Bergeron explained. This was accomplished by certain design choices, from focusing on volumetric and powerful weather effects to dynamic sound design. The team also gives players the option to lay and rest anywhere, so they can take in the world around them and contemplate its beauty and their place in it. Sounds are duller indoors, clouds roll across islands like dense fog, and monstrous storms swirl around the hurricane at the heart of the game’s world.
Obviously, if you are in the sky and around a hurricane, you would expect to be able to feel the weather and to feel the environment. For us, it was really important to experience it and feel the strength of nature. There are a lot of things to make it like a feel-good space and a place where you actually want to protect this environment.
That, Bergeron hopes, will help players form a sense of stewardship toward the environment that will be reinforced through the game’s narrative and lore. While he was understandably hesitant to say anything specific aboutAloft’s story, Bergeron did say that the fungal corruption was a result of people in the past using techniques and technology not unlike the players. It would be possible to let the corruption spread again through neglect or even cause it through certain actions.
By progressing through the game, corruption that once needed cleansing through combat can instead be taken care of with alchemical items. The gigantic Titans aren’t meant to be slain, but healed. Like in the aforementionedHaven, players driven to heal a world by their investment in the cozy experiences they had in its environment can find long-lasting solutions using the same technology that caused the ecological disaster to begin with. And that approach is intentional, even core to Astrolabe’s message.
Our goal with this game is that players will have some space to create the same errors of the past, but also learn from that. Not everything is traced in front of them and linear. We want them to learn and maybe learn a different way to approach survival games…
With over 100,000 people wishlistingAloftso far and thousands already playingthe “early Early Access” demo on Steam, Astrolabe has no shortage of people willing to have that positive impact when the game enters Early Access in 2024.
Alofthas a demo currently available and enters Early Access on Steam in 2024.
