Indie developer Treehouse Games' Voyagers of Nera, is a survival crafting game set in the vastness of the ocean. Players can play solo or team up with friends to base-build, hunt for resources, fight monsters and explore the ocean searching for new land. It's an ambitious maiden title from the studio, and one that it hopes will make a big splash in the survival crafting genre.
The Best War Games recently spoke with Treehouse Games' CEO Michael Chu to get an update on Voyagers of Nera as its about to launch into early access. Chu explained how survival crafting is as popular as it's ever been at the moment, and broke down some of the game's main focuses. This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Voyagers of Nera is About Shared Experiences
The Best War Games: Could you talk a little bit about some of the inspirations behind Voyagers of Nera?
"I spent a lot of time working on some brutally competitive games for the longest stretch—the likes of League of Legends. For about seven years, I worked on a ton of different things on that game. I also started the team that ultimately shipped Teamfight Tactics. A lot of the post-live work with that was related to the fact that we were losing tons of players, players who are really just here for a great time with their friends. So the challenge was, how do we change what the game is, so they can still play this game they love? Doing it in a way that's not so restrictive, in a way that doesn’t make them feel like they are risking their whole night every time they play with friends, and they screw up, leaving them with the feeling that they ruined their friends’ evening.
When I left to start a studio, I was very inspired by that. My co-founder is someone I've known since college. We actually built student game projects to break into the industry together, and games are how we stayed in touch. Games are how I've built some of the closest friendships in my life. I have a brother who's 10 years older than me, and that's the one thing we always had in common. That wake-up call, working on League, and seeing that happen on a global scale was crazy.
Games, as an everyday way to spend time with your friends, are not just for us nerds anymore. It's not just for us hardcore gamers anymore. It's now for everybody, which is so cool! From that end, we're like, let's build games that are really about creating that quality time with your friends so you can come in, have this adventure together, and have these shared memories together. And you may not even realize it at the time, but you come away closer with those people.
Months after we started the company, the pandemic started, which was awkward timing, but, man, it really made the case for us. We were going around pitching to raise money and start the studio. We met with all these people who, I don't think, really believed in games as a social way to connect. Then we talked with them later, and every person had a personal story about gaming during the pandemic. ’I played Valheim with my coworkers.’, ‘I played Among Us to stay in touch with my niece.’ Suddenly, I think everyone really understood how that could make a friendship. Voyagers of Nera came from that sense of hope.
There were a couple of needs that we thought of as ingredients of a hangout experience. Memorable moments with friends, shared goals, and a way to express yourself that opened up room for you to interact with each other. Anything you build is suddenly part of someone else's experience, right? That led us to survival crafting pretty quickly. And from there, we started to really think about what unexplored space is within the genre. In the early days, we were really talking about the idea of a road trip, a lot about that shared journey that you take, where everyone has their own dynamic. Someone's DJing, someone's in charge of snacks, someone's on Google Maps, but you are all on this journey together.
Ultimately, we ended up thinking about sea voyages. That feeling of standing on the shore and looking out, wondering what's out there, it's a universal kind of romantic feeling that we want to play up and bring into a magical world that really sort of rewards that, with something beautiful to explore, as opposed to gritty and dark. Because we want to open this up for more friend groups to really love this together. There are enough survival crafting games with zombies and cannibals, and post-apocalyptic settings. So we thought we would love for there to be something that is vibrant and beautiful, and much more aspirational in that way."
The Best War Games: How did you handle the balance between narrative and open-ended sandbox gameplay?
"That's hard because we're a small team. We're a really small team for a survival crafting game, and we really had to pick our battles. So I would say that, as far as a whole narrative storyline goes, we decided that's probably not the right route to take. World-building is different, though. We really wanted it to have a flexible structure. We thought, how do we build a place that's mysterious and ancient and beautiful but also a little somber? Then how do we set that tone and give players snippets and windows into what happened here and events that probably happened hundreds or 1000s of years before they arrived there? I have a friend who's telling me all about his Metal Gear adventure right now, telling me about hour-long cutscenes. And I'm like, it would take the whole team a month to build an hour-long cutscene. We can't afford that!
Instead, we decided to go for this sort of tone and feeling and emotion in the world. For example, there's this giant hand that's one of the first things you see. And this giant stone torso of this long-dead giant, which will hopefully get players wondering, how did that end up there, and who was that? Then we can slowly reveal that, through journals and these monoliths that you find, they are the last records of a dead race. We felt that this was informing a lot of the magical space we wanted players to explore, but also one we could actually pull off as a small team."
The Best War Games: What do you think makes Voyagers of Nera unique compared to some of its contemporaries in the survival crafting genre?
"We love survival crafting because it's such a flexible fit. You can play solo and have an amazing time. Someone else can join, hop right in, then drop out whenever they want. Someone can base build while someone else hunts monsters. You have all these different ways to contribute. You can stay online after your buddy logs off and build a beautiful base, build them their next set of gear, and they can log back on and be like, 'Oh wow, you did this awesome thing, thank you!' Even if it's just a way to be generous to each other.
For us specifically, we wanted to push and pull some of the different levers of that. One of the things that I think we really push for is the sense of shared exploration. This feeling of like, "Oh man, we're about to go into this dark zone. We're about to sail through this crazy, craggly, dark, monster-infested water to get to the next mile. We should probably prep for that. We should make that journey together.' That's like the next big thing for Friday night, when we've got all of our buds on.. To have that really sharp rallying cry that's really about exploration.
We want that to have a payoff, so the entirety of the world is handcrafted. We thought we could technically make more if we procedurally generated it, but we really wanted to nail this feeling of discovery. We want players to feel like exploration was so worth it. It was worth the journey that you failed twice, and to have that reveal that you can share with your friends. The other is on the base building side, right where we want it to be, sort of like building up this magical sanctuary.
Of course, you're going to be building a base. It's going to start with the cube that fits all of your stuff, but we hope, over time and pretty quickly, it turns into building this personalized, beautiful space. Actually making the base feel alive and watching as it's really evolving and growing with you and your friends. Feeling like you're kind of building that thing together, and it's coming alive and going from where it always starts, which is like practically a hole in the ground, to this big, beautiful village that you're adding to. You can all look back and be like, 'We built this thing together!' "
How Progression Works in Voyagers of Nera
The Best War Games: What role does progression play in Voyagers of Nera?
"There are a couple of core progression systems within the game. One of the first is that you're leveling up from the very first stick you pick up through every combat encounter, through major milestones of the game. You're constantly gaining XP and unlocking new knowledge nodes in a sort of skill tree. You might see this as pretty familiar to Palworld, or Conan Exiles, for example. But there's a big twist to that.
Everywhere you go in the world, there are these spirits in danger. Some of them are in hiding. Some of them are surrounded by crackling magic riffs, and monsters are hunting them. If you show up and you fight them off, saving that spirit, you can rescue it, and it gives you magical abilities that you can equip. It gives you new recipes that unlock things in your knowledge tree that you can't get any other way, and so that's a huge factor of progression. One of the first ones that you get is practically our tutorial spirit. It unlocks the ability to call a ball of lightning that you launch at enemies.
Others let you spawn an air geyser that you can ride up with your glider. Another one creates a pocket of air so you can refill your oxygen while underwater. They are very elemental, very different, and themed differently from biome to biome, but a huge part of unlocking your capabilities within the game. There's a lot more that we want to add. For example, we want players to be able to level up their spirit companions and things like that, we're going to hopefully be adding in future packs."
The Best War Games: How do you balance making the game challenging enough to keep people playing it, but also making it accessible enough so that new players can come in and feel comfortable pretty quickly?
"Honestly, this is sort of the pros and cons of this space. Survival crafting is having a moment right now. I think more and more people are realizing it can be such a flexible fit. Friend groups of all kinds are coming to realise like, we can always play one of these games together and have a great time. But expectations are getting higher. I think from that, some people love the grind, and some people hate it. Honestly, I think the best answer is to find an experience that fits a lot of the people who really have to carry the flag for the game, a lot of people who really love survival crafting.
I think that includes some of the grind and really earning that next structure, the next building, that next big benchmark, and that feeling like part of you is overcoming something. I think that does have to be part of the core balance of the game. Then, on the flip side, the way that we've approached that is that we've set server options so you can set multipliers on how quickly you gain resources, on how much damage you do to enemies, and on how much damage they do to you. If you only get to play for a couple of hours every week, you can make progress faster. You can just dial that up; there’s a lot of flexibility. It's about you, the player, having a great time. In this new world that you want to explore, if you want to tune it so it's more fun for you, then go ahead!"
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Voyagers of Nera's Art Style and Atmosphere Explained
The Best War Games: In terms of art style and atmosphere, how did you go about making sure that Voyagers of Nera is distinct?
"Man, survival crafting is getting so crowded. It feels like there's been an airship survival crafting game announcement every two months. It really has become so full, but we've been kind of relieved because the ocean side of things has really felt like it's not as common, because it's harder to do! Exploration is such a critical part of these games, and we knew we wanted to make that something really special in the game. When we were looking at that, we were like, we really want this to be a world you actually want to spend time in.
We wanted to be something that you or your friends wouldn't think twice about playing. We really wanted to run with this kind of relatable and romantic, aspirational space of this ocean world that you want to explore and wonder what's on the horizon, wonder what's under the water. That led us to a really different pool of inspiration. We looked at a lot of things like Sea of Thieves, Moana and Wind Waker for inspiration.
We have tried to create a more vibrant and warm space, but that being said, it still has its darkness. There are still monsters, there are still deep-sea serpents that are like three times the size of your ship, that stalk you and hunt you, which can create some pretty terrifying moments. We know it's a survival crafting game, and we have to deliver on those moments, but we also want it to be this warm, beautiful place that is filled with almost a sense of wonder as you're exploring it."
The Best War Games: On the flip side of that, was there a danger at any point that, because it's the ocean and it's so vast, the world would become a little bit too repetitive?
"That's such a tough challenge. Making the world handcrafted was a pretty intentional choice. I think it takes a whole other superpower to make the repetitive space super interesting. No Man's Sky is the obvious example of this, where it's just the industry standard for procedural generation. It’s bar-setting. For us, that's not what we're trying to build. I think building a more contained space that does feel varied and different is doable.
For what people want out of this adventure through this world, it is enough to succeed in that mission, as opposed to just sailing forever in any direction and having something pop up. But it's been a huge challenge, because a lot of our gameplay space is different from other survival crafting games. There's above the water and below the water, and a lot of how you reach that next piece of content is through sailing or surfing or swimming, and that was a massive design challenge for us to really build a plan around. We had to experiment with what feels good in terms of how you get from there to here to there. Why would you actually take a boat, versus take a skimmer, versus just take 20 minutes and swim from one biome to another? And how do we keep that interesting? Because even if you can technically do it, it might suck.
I think that's been a big challenge, and it took a lot of repeated play testing with our external play testers over and over again before we really found a good balance there. Based on feedback, we realized that at first, we didn't have nearly enough underwater content to keep this interesting. So, the next two months we spent building underwater content. That player feedback has been so huge. I think that's something that we've done that's really different, and I've been so glad for it. It's been really hard, but so rewarding. We've tested the game with external players every two weeks since April 2024. When we started doing it, we were like, 'Why did we decide to do it?' This is so hard. It's so much work! But we had so many players who were so excited to give us rich feedback. It really let us build real relationships and real deep communication and nuance.
We specifically looked to get feedback from people who are survival crafting diehards for this system. They’d be like, 'I like this system because it's more like my favorite game, but this other system I don't like, it's like this other system from this game, which really had these problems.' That's the kind of conversations we have on the team. It was such a game-changer. Multiply that over 1000s of people, over a year and a half, and man, that felt like it opened up so many doors for improving the game."
The Best War Games: Will there be ongoing updates or expansions planned to keep the world of Voyagers of Nera evolving?
"The way the game is set up, we think that's such a flexible fit. We are launching this on September 16 as an early access game. I think survival crafting is one of the places where players really look for that dynamic relationship with the developer, too. We're going to have three biomes that launch. It's going to be like, probably 30 to 40 hours of gameplay. So a pretty meaty chunk, but we want to add a lot more. We've got a lot of plans. We want to have at least five biomes by the 1.0 moment. Then, honestly, if things are going well, if people still have the appetite for it, we'd love to keep adding more, because really, it's adding these new spaces to explore.
Each biome is such a great package of content that players get. So, whenever we launch a new one, it will be a great time for players to dive back in. We totally want to lean into that and add more to the game. Really signal to people, hey, here's the time to come in and see this whole new space in the world. Each biome is super different. The first biome we call The Embrace, it's made up of tropical islands built around the fallen torso and arm of this long-dead stone Colossus. The second biome we call The Reef, and it’s made up of these giant towers made of coral reefs. The monsters there are like twisted coral that's overgrown and alive, and they spit poison at you, sort of monstrous creatures. There are air geysers everywhere, so you can build a glider, and it opens up the verticality of the world.
The third biome is made up of giant mangrove forests. Players will be sailing between the roots and climbing up into the trees to mine Amorite, which is sort of like Amber, if it were a metal ore. We want the biomes to feel super distinct from one another. It's such a fun way to explore new world-building, new enemies, new recipes, new spirits to rescue, etc. The biomes even follow elements, in our case, water, then wind, and then earth, so that's probably a sign that fire is coming up in the future!"
Treehouse Games Will Continue to Focus on Collaborative Experiences
The Best War Games: What lessons have you learned from your time at previous studios that you've taken with you into Treehouse Games, and where do you see the studio going in terms of the types of games that you go on to make?
"My co-founder and I came in humble and appropriately scared of how hard a startup is, how hard game development is, and we knew combining that would be extra hard. We have known each other for a super long time. I mentioned we were friends since college, working on student projects to break into the industry together, but we took pretty different paths after that. I went to big companies. I worked in the AAA space. I worked on giant multiplayer games, giant live service games. I worked as a product manager, on monetization, on new characters, on expanding IP, on system changes, and on launching whole new games like Teamfight Tactics.
For him, though, he's the Indiest of Indie. He started as an environmental artist. This is his fourth gaming startup. When we knew each other in college, he self-trained as a tech artist. He shipped games. Now as a designer and engineer, he's had to take over as CEO at his last studio, so he's really worked on more aspects of Voyagers than any other member of the team. We looked at each other's experience and realized there are so many things that we aspire to that come from the other side of the industry. For me, the fearlessness and the scrappiness of Indies, and that willingness to change and reconsider and be agile and respond to player feedback in a deep, meaningful way.
From his side, he saw these more thought-out plans, like this sort of production mindset and this long-term aspirational goal that really informs all these other decisions, and that led us to start Treehouse. Our team actually fits our partnership. Half of our team comes from AAA, and half comes from Indie. That's not always been easy, because people come in with such different expectations. But the advantage is, we've really embraced both sides. The thoughtful planning about where we want to go, and also the sort of fearlessness of saying we're just going to playtest all the time. And they told us this thing, we didn't expect it. We should really consider changing that. Are we just going to change our whole game plan? Okay? I guess we are.
I think what that means for us in the future is that we still want to build these great collaborative experiences. We still care deeply. And why the studio exists is really for these shared adventures with your friends, these worlds, to get lost in these things, to create quality time with your friends. That's like the impact we want to have. That's the thing that we got from games. Now we get to spread to other people and a whole new, bigger generation across the world that are using games for that, and that's so cool to us.
The way we want to do it is hopefully by being a lean, mean team that is fearless, that playtests, that interacts directly with our community. I think a lot of our earnestness and our openness have been such an advantage for us and led us to just make the game better and better. It's also helped us build our community, and I think built a lot of advocates who really made an impact on the game.
They know that, sometimes, we're going to screw something up and will rely on their feedback to make changes. The community will hopefully know that we actually care. We actually listen. I feel like that's a really hard-earned thing, and people are maybe more pessimistic; there's just so much noise out there. I feel like we've really learned almost a superpower here that I want us to only add to for any game we make in the future. That sort of openness, that communication with our players and with our community. That’s what Treehouse Games is about."
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