Cloudscape

Cloudscape is an extremely cute farming-fighting-friendship game in the vein of Littlewood, Stardew Valley, Fantasy Life, and Animal Crossing, with added inspiration from A Link to the Past — and it just hit a total of $208,806 on its completed Kickstarter campaign.

Like Animal Crossing, the island you wash up on at the start of Cloudscape will be procedurally generated with a few hand-crafted presets, making it entirely unique to anyone else's experience. But unlike any of the games that inspired it, Cloudscape doesn't just boot you out of the mines whenever your health bar reaches zero — no, in Cloudscape, you die for reals.

Cloudscape

When you're dead, your spirit will be sent to Limbo, where you'll have to win a game about Death itself in order to return to life.

But listen, we know what you're here for — it's because we used the word "farming" in the title, and you want to know what else Cloudscape can offer the hole in your heart where Harvest Moon used to be. Well, we'll keep it simple in the form of a sexy bullet point list of features that are bound to get you interested:

  • You can have pets!
  • There's fishing!
  • Also, woodcutting, excavating, foraging, cooking, and mining!
  • Cooking is a minigame!
  • You can build your own furniture and decorations!
  • Ranching and farming are separate activities with their own skill trees!
  • Oh yeah, there's also skill trees!
  • You can sleep anywhere in the game!
  • You can get upgraded tools for 11 of the game's 12 skills (foraging and socialising don't have tools)!
  • Weather and seasonal cycles!
  • Terraforming!
  • Character customisation!
  • A variety of clothing and accessories!
  • Date characters of any gender!
Cloudscape

What's more, the Kickstarter reached all of its stretch goals with a total of over $200k, which means the following will also be in the game:

  • Seasonal outfits
  • Two new romance partners
  • Children with your partner
  • Extra game modes
  • Multiplayer
Cloudscape

As part of the game's various promises, there will be a physical version of Cloudscape on Switch. Several high-tier backers will also be designing monsters, characters, decorations, and furniture for the game.

We've covered Cloudscape before, because not only is it cute as heck, it's also being made by Chris Gottron, an animator who has worked on Spongebob, Fairly Odd Parents, Kung Fu Panda, Boss Baby, and many more. The music is being done by Samantha Van Der Sluis, whose recent credits include work on The Mandalorian and Avengers: Endgame. You can listen to some of her work from Cloudscape's soundtrack on Soundcloud.

The Kickstarter is over, so there's no more opportunity to back, but it looks like the planned release date is July 2023.