- 150,000 wishlists! - 24 August 2026
150,000!! Another big milestone for the team. We're putting everything we have into this game, which leaves nothing for marketing at this time. So hitting 150,000 is a big deal for us and a reflection of our community's support.Stay tuned for some new content posts!
- Join us for a Live Fireside and Q&A - 9 August 2026
We're excited to host our 43rd Developer Fireside and our first YouTube Live broadcast.We will be discussing some of our design pillars, as well as sharing a behind the scenes look at some tools we created to build and manage World of Anterra.What should I expect?This Fireside will be the first in a series sharing the work that goes on behind the scenes and showcasing what it takes to make a pixel art game of this scale. It's easy to just picture the team whittling away at game content, when in fact the lion's share of work has gone towards designing and developing all the tools and systems required to make and manage World of Anterra. You will get to see these tools used live to create actual gameplay. By attending or watching the recording, you will have a much better idea of what 81monkeys has been working on and what our goals are.We understand that gameplay footage, launch dates, a…
- 100,000 wishlists passed! - 8 June 2026
100,000 is such a big milestone for our team! Thank you to our community for continuing to support us by sharing World of Anterra. This couldn't have happened without you.
- Developer Fireside - 8 June 2026
We're hosting our 40th developer Fireside on Friday, June 12th at 11AM Pacific Time.We'll be discussing the response to our new trailer and Steam page updates, discussing the gameplay features highlighted in the trailer and taking questions from the audience. We hope to see you there! Developer FiresideLocation: Discord StageDate: Friday June 12thTime: 11:00 AM (Pacific Time)
- We've passed 80,000 Wishlists! - 29 May 2026
Wow! 80,000!! This couldn't have happened without the support of our wonderful community. It's amazing to see our wishlists continue to grow despite not having the budget for any paid marketing. 100,000 here we come!
- Live YouTube Premier of Trailer 2 - 26 May 2026
Mark your calendars! We’re premiering our new trailer on Friday May 29th, at 11AM PT.This is the biggest update we’re shared about the game since we first announced it. Once the trailer has been released, we will share a scene breakdown for our community to better highlight the progress and improvements that have gone into the game.This is a live event on YouTube, and includes a live chat with our team during the viewing.Make sure you go to the video page and click the "Notify me" button so you don't miss it. We're still doing our own marketing, so we could really use your help in getting the word out. Share this post, or the YouTube link and help us make this the biggest premiere it can be.
- Gameplay Feature: The Way of Water - 12 March 2026
We have updated all the water effects in World of Anterra! This may not seem like a big feature, but water plays an important role in Anterra. Water factors into multiple game mechanics and features. For example, we have both shallow water and deep water environments, and there are resources, creatures, and enemies that can only be found in or near water... plus fishing and sailing.Multiple techniques and systems have to come together to make our water look so good, but the most important one is the use of shaders.Shaders are small programs that run on the GPU and are used to turn boring environments into beautiful ones. Shaders were originally made for creating shadows, hence the name, but nowadays they are used for so much more, like water! Shaders work on the GPU at various stages of the rendering pipeline to dramatically improve the quality of what shows up on the screen.Here's an o…
- Gameplay Feature: Tools That Power Anterra - Part 1 - 10 March 2026
This update shows off one of the MANY tools that we’ve made to help bring our vision to life. Shadow Offset Map Editor (We need to come up with a name that can be shortened…S.O.M.E. just doesn’t work)First up, we have our height map creation tool, called our Shadow Offset Map Editor. This tool was created to help us generate height maps for our game assets.A height map is a visual representation of the distance a pixel is supposed to be from the ground. Since our assets are all flat 2D images, everything is actually on the ground, so we need to fake their height. Height maps use colour to encode data for our code to interrupt when you’re playing the game. It essentially gives 2D assets 3D information, so shadows know how far to “climb up” before wrapping around, and objects know how to properly clip and overlap each other, like when the player stands in tall grass.The grass and the play…
- Gameplay Features: Explosions, Boom Baby! - 6 March 2026
When times are tough, and people are mean in the comments, it really helps to blow some things up in Anterra.Boom BarrelsThere is a powerful substance in Anterra that is generally used for mining in the Mancian Wastelands, but it can also be found in other places around Anterra. The substance is very volatile and needs to be handled with care, but in the right hands, it can be very useful for things like exploration or combat.Remember to keep your distance! It's always good to keep some extra fuses on hand, unless you're able to ignite it from afar. Fuses can be found, purchased, or crafted, so there won't be a shortage of them.As for our explosions, they are made by combining layers of hand-animated sprites with procedural effects. Here's a small sample of the handmade animated assets. - Stephane, Game Director
- Gameplay Features: Palette Swapping & Pixel Art Magic - 4 March 2026
There are so many exciting things happening in World of Anterra, but our main focus now is on finishing the features and content for our Kickstarter Backer Demo. While most of the team is currently deep in the trenches battling bugs (think Starship Troopers), the rest of us get to work on content and polishing with all the cool new features in the game. There's quite a list of things in our "ready to share" backlog, but today's update will be a mix of behind-the-scenes and new stuff. Palette SwappingPalette swapping is a technique where all the colours of an asset are swapped for new ones by the game engine. This was first introduced in video games back when computers lacked the resources to manage large amounts of assets, so palette swapping allowed developers to reuse assets and animations by changing the colours on them. In World of Anterra, however, we don't have to worry about limi…
- Founder's Journal #3 - 19 February 2026
If you've been following along with my Founder's Journals you may be wondering how the team made it through all this with me. Well, despite the (many) financial hardships, I've always managed to pay the team, albeit late at times. I never asked anyone to work for free, never put pressure on them to stay, and always offered to support them in finding new jobs. Each time that we ran out of money, I would always prioritise my team over myself. This doesn't mean that running out of funds didn't impact them. They had to deal with the uncertainty of not knowing when (or if) they would be paid, and deal with concerned families, friends or partners. I am very grateful to the team members who stuck with me through it all, but I always worked hard to shelter them from the hardships... maybe even a bit too much at times.This part of the story involves NFTs. Just know that we never sold, or profite…
- Founder's Journal #2 - 28 January 2026
Our Kickstarter was extraordinary, but how we got there may be even more so.These founders’ journals focus (mostly) on the struggles and the hard times, but with every breakdown comes the opportunity for triumph. If you take anything away from these posts, I hope that's it. I know I'm not the only one who has gone through this, nor will I be the last, but I believe sharing our stories is one of the best ways we can support each other. There’s a lot more to these stories, but I'm keeping it succinct for these posts.I tried everything to get funding prior to taking on World of Anterra: equity investors, publishers, grants, work-for-hire projects, but most of these efforts fell short. The truth is, I was playing it safe. I had a dream and a vision to make World of Anterra, but I didn't think we were ready. We were focusing on smaller mobile projects, because I thought it would be an easier…
- Gameplay Features: Tutorials - 26 January 2026
There are two kinds of tutorials that we really don't like; tutorials that use popups full of text, and the ones that force the player to take actions with things like bouncing arrows. Although our goal is to build intuitive gameplay systems and UIs, tutorials are still needed to remove unnecessary friction and to support accessibility which is important to us and our community. We've designed our tutorials to be contextual; they only appear when the player may need the information, based on their actions. Like harvesting berries.Harvesting TutorialAnother goal is to use the least amount of text possible.Tutorial designs 1 and 2, and final version in-game.We went through a few iterations before landing on what we have now. Not only did we have more text, we also triggered it as a call to action, which meant it appeared on screen once the player could see it and didn't go away until the…
- Gameplay Features: Breakables and non-combat mechanics - 22 January 2026
We haven't shared a detailed breakdown of our combat yet; don't worry it's coming! The combat in World of Anterra incorporates real-time mechanics with grid-based movement and strategic gameplay. But many people have asked how World of Anterra incorporates real-time combat mechanics into non-combat gameplay.How players interact with the world is very important in WoA. Core systems and mechanics have been designed and developed by Stephane and the team to integrate with, and expand, interactions. UIs don't take you out of the gameplay, they enhance it! And the same can be said about our combat mechanics. Not only can you swing a sword, or shoot arrows outside of combat, there are many reasons to do it:Shooting an arrow to distract a creature, or for a sneak attack.Hunting to fill your ration packs with meat.Hacking down bushes to expose new paths and secrets.Smashing things like vases fo…
- ICYMI: Teaser Trailer - 21 January 2026
In case you missed it (since we forgot to share it here), check out the World of Anterra Teaser Trailer!Stay tuned for a new trailer coming soon, as we have more to reveal… 👁️
- Founder's Journal #1 - 20 January 2026
I almost cancelled our Kickstarter after 5 days, but then something extraordinary happened.Many people know 81monkeys had a "successful" Kickstarter campaign (our backers certainly do), but few know how it all went down.When I first picked our Kickstarter date, we had a good roadmap and runway, including funds for marketing and growing our team during the 30-day campaign. We had around 700k of incoming funds and had recently moved out of my basement into our first office. Things were looking up. But a few months before our Kickstarter was set to launch, disaster struck. The funds we were promised were no longer coming.We were effectively out of money with about 2 months to go. I couldn’t pay the team, let alone market our Kickstarter campaign. Our Kickstarter dreams looked dead in the water, but I wasn't going to give up that easily (not sure "easily" is the right word here). I spoke wi…
- Welcome to 2026...the year of Anterra? - 14 January 2026
Hi! Stephane, Game Director on World of Anterra here.Thanks for hanging in there while the team and I had our heads down working on the game. Although it's been a minute, I'm happy to be back with some new updates! I've been working on a bunch of content and writing in my spare time that I plan to share over the next few months. These updates will include a new type of post that I'm calling Founder's Journals.Founder's Journals will be a true "behind the scenes" look at what it took to get WoA and 81monkeys to this point. These posts will go all the way back to when I first started this journey before our Kickstarter and continue to the point that we're at now. We will also share Feature Showcases with some meant for our Steam Page, and I'm excited to share them here first for feedback.If you've read this far without hitting the comment section, I want to thank you. Whether you've been…
