World of Anterra

Founder's Journal #3
26 days ago – Thu, Feb 19, 2026 at 12:11:05 PM

My Kickstarter Story - "The Prologue" Part 2

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 profited from NFTs. No hate (maybe 🤏) to those who did, but NFTs didn’t match our goals, although we did get quite a few pitches to make WoA NFTs. "We can help you raise $10 million with World of Anterra NFTs!" 😆

We went from being desperate for work to turning down projects.

Due to the NFT rush, we had many projects pitched to us. We were uncomfortable working with NFTs, but we needed the funds to continue developing WoA. So we took time to get to know the people behind these projects and only when we thought we could work with them did we consider taking them on as clients. We ended up accepting a few design and preproduction contracts and approached each project with the same curiosity and passion that we would any game. The fact that NFTs were part of it didn't matter; we just focused on making great games!

After jumping between projects, we had two partners come with big offers to move into development, but we could only pick one. We were about to choose the partner who aligned with us the most culturally, but we received a counter offer that included an (promised) investment in 81monkeys to help fund WoA. These were the funds we needed to grow our team and bring a strong project to Kickstarter. The contracts were drawn up, including a LOI (Letter of Intent) for the investment, and we were off to the races!

And we never stopped working on World of Anterra!

The team and I worked hard on the game, and boy, was it good. Within 5 months, we had a fully playable beta version (with no NFTs yet) that was good enough to run tournaments with their community. The feedback was great! Unfortunately, things weren't so great for our partner. They had not fulfilled their commitment to invest in 81monkeys, and instead were burning money on other projects. I pressed them hard, but at a certain point it became clear to me that they probably never planned to pay it, and may have just used it to get us on their project. 

Once I realized the investment wasn't coming, I decided to pull the plug on their project. They were getting a discount on their game, because we were working hard to prove ourselves worthy of the investment. Were we being played? Whether it was intentional or not didn't matter. I told them they needed to sign a new LOI that included a 100k non-refundable deposit towards a future equity purchase before we would continue working. This was a huge risk, because we desperately needed the contract, and we were too far away from our Kickstarter to survive without the funds. But we were killing it with their game, and I was confident they wouldn't be able to find a better partner. Boy, were they pissed! After a bit of a back and forth, they paid us the 100k, which I put in our bank as security for our Kickstarter. They kept paying us to work on their game until about 4 months before our Kickstarter was set to launch. That's when they told us they couldn’t pay their last two invoices. This is how we ran out of money before our Kickstarter. 

That partner did end up paying their outstanding invoices by the time our Kickstarter ended, but not until we went nearly 3 months without any funds. Thankfully we had that 100k I forced them to pay, which became the lifeline we needed to get to our Kickstarter. I don’t know how we would have made it, had I not pulled that stunt, and demanded a non-refundable deposit...

The irony of it all is that an investment in 81monkeys would have been the best thing they did with their money!

- Stephane - Game Director @ 81monkeys

Founder's Journal #2
about 2 months ago – Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 01:21:13 PM

Our Kickstarter was extraordinary, but how we got there may be even more so.

My Kickstarter Story - "The Prologue" Part 1

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 path. This meant the studio I was pitching and building was different from what I truly wanted, which was to make a PC/Console game. That's not a recipe for success, authenticity is.

The COVID lockdowns proved to be our first real test. We had a funding partner for our first game which was in soft-launch on iOS and Android, but the pandemic hit their business hard. And without any notice, our funds were gone. That was the first time I had to sit the team down and tell them I couldn't pay them anymore. I truly felt like I had failed. It was a hard conversation and there may have been some tears shed. But that was also the first time the team took a chance on me, and stayed. We made it through the next few months with the help of Canada's CERB program and some small contracts that I managed to dig up.

That's when I decided to stop playing small and swing big with World of Anterra.

My strategy at this point was to get CMF (Canadian Media Fund) funding, build an "MVP", and bring it to Kickstarter. We only had about 2 months left to apply for the Early Development Phase with the CMF, but I had been investing my free time designing and writing for over 2 years. The team had also been pitching in here and there, and we had a pretty clear vision for the game by this point.

After 2 months of hard work, I submitted our application with only a few hours left before the deadline... then we waited. 

I felt excited and motivated by the hard work that went into our application and I was confident we would get it. CMF has a number of categories that they score projects on with different weighting for each one; team experience, project description, market fit... but innovation was one of the most valuable categories. 

After weeks of waiting, our scores were in and we scored really high! … but unfortunately not high enough to receive funding. I believe their judges couldn't see past the pixel art, because pixel art doesn't scream innovative or cutting-edge.

I failed again and it stung, but I also learned a lot. The CMF has a structure and requirements that forced me to dig deep on the game mechanics, the business case, and the pitch. This became the foundation for other grant applications, as well as our Kickstarter campaign. We managed to scrape by the next few months. A few small grants and the COVID relief funds from the CMF kept us and World of Anterra alive...for a time.

Unfortunately, our funds would run out again. And again I found myself in front of the team telling them that we were out of money, but this time it looked even more bleak.

- Stephane - Game Director @ 81monkeys

Private showcase and tutorials
about 2 months ago – Sun, Jan 25, 2026 at 09:40:25 AM

We showcased WoA at a recent private industry event. And this was the first time we let anyone play the game at an event! Not the first time we've had non-studio members try out the game, but the first time that we handed the controller to someone and just let them play. 

This is a big milestone for us and the feedback did not disappoint!

The event was relatively small with about 20 other talented developers showcasing their projects. As much as we don't like to brag (or put down other developers), you'll be happy to know that many people came back to us to say that World of Anterra was not only the best project there, but the one that they were personally looking forward to playing to most.
 

Some player quotes from the event.

• “This is the hottest game at the show.”
• “I can't wait for this game! Just wishlisted it.”
• “That’s the best game here!”

So what does it take to have the game playable for an event like this? Obviously the game needs to be playable and bug free (at least in the demo sections 😉) But for us, the most important thing was having a proper tutorial so that we could just hand the controller to players and let them experience the game on their own. And to do that tutorials need to be properly integrated, because most people will only have 10-15 minutes to play at an event like this (some people played for much longer) and you don't want to waste that precious time on tutorials and cinematics.

Tutorials

There are two kinds 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.

Another goal is to use the least amount of text possible.

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 action was taken. But as you can see, we only show the tutorial when the player is near the object.

Icons are also an important part of accessibility. 

We decided to use animated icons that describe the action, rather than just showing the button. This works in WoA for a few reasons,
1. Interactions ALWAYS use the same button.
2. There are many different types of interactions in the game, so it makes more sense to let the player know what will happen if they press the button.

Some examples of animated icons are open doors, open containers, read, harvest, sit or mount... and all of these interactions use the same button.

This icon animation may seem redundant, because you can see the door open, but there are situations where a door can be obscured by something like a roof. This is why we added an outline to all interactable objects and always show the icon. 

Animated icons are also more fun to look at. 😉

Anyways, back to the tutorials...

The first area in WoA has a number of harvestables, containers and items to pick up, and in most cases the player won't trigger them until they approach something. However some tutorials are more complicated and require multiple steps to complete.

Here’s a look at our Tutorial Manager. In this tutorial, the player is asked to collect a torch which is in a container.

As you can see this tutorial has a few steps, but what happens if the player doesn’t complete them all? For example, a player could open the container and close it without taking the torch. Maybe they're just experimenting, or ignoring the prompts, or maybe they hit the wrong button. Rather than forcing the player to take the torch like most games, we let them break out of the tutorial. Because if they’re just hitting buttons to see what they do, it's far better to let that happen rather than force the player to do something. Everyone learns differently! 

In order to support this experience we added regression steps to our tutorial manager so that designers can choose how and when to regress tutorials if the player doesn't complete all the steps. 

The image below shows how regression is used in the case of the player needing to pick up a torch from a container. If the player doesn't take the required item and closes the container, the tutorial will regress to its starting point and guide the player in opening the container again.

Here's how that looks in game.

Here's another example of the player switching between abilities during the "Ignite Torch" tutorial.

Lastly, some tutorial beats can be completely avoided if the player has already figured it out. For example, there’s a tutorial for extinguishing the torch when the sun comes up, but the player is given the chance to take the action on their own before the tutorial triggers.

Let us know what you think about our approach to tutorials!

Founder's Journal #1
about 2 months ago – Mon, Jan 19, 2026 at 03:22:03 PM

My Kickstarter Story - Part 1

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 with the team, and amazingly everyone said they would stick it out until the campaign ended. Over the coming weeks I managed to scrape together a bit of money to help some team members pay bills - which included giving up my family's rent money. Thankfully I had a very understanding landlord (and wife) who agreed to let us go a couple months without paying rent. But all of this put way more pressure on our Kickstarter, because now we weren't just raising money for our game, we would also need to cover our growing debt.

Fast forward to our Kickstarter launch day. After many long nights preparing our page, assets, trailer... we started our campaign with a very small following. Day 1 felt promising! People were excited to back us and we managed to hit a modest 18k, but it didn't last. Day 2 our pledges dropped 40% to 10k. I decided to start some FB ads with a tagline I heard a publisher once called the game; "Skyrim with pixel art." I used what little room was left on my personal credit card (maybe 6k) in the hopes of turning the ship around, but it didn't seem to work. By day 5 our pledges were down to 5k and that was when I decided to cancel the campaign. At the rate we were going, I would barely have enough to cover our debt and I believed in the game too much to waste our opportunity on KS. I went to bed that night with a huge pit in my stomach, and spent sleepless hours going over my speech to the team... I fell asleep at some point, and woke up to a notification on my phone; someone on Discord shared a link to a GamesRadar article about World of Anterra. Our pledges jumped up by 200% to $15k that day... the next day, $48k.

It was like waking up to a new world. The campaign ended up taking in almost 400k. Another 12 articles would be written about World of Anterra before the end of the campaign, including a great one from Nintendo Life.

And as an added bonus, some of the funds we were hoping for came in and covered all the debt we incurred and then some.

I believe that tagline, "Skyrim with pixel art", along with the ads that I ran with my last bit of money, became a beacon for the journalists who wrote about our game.

And so it began... 

Feature highlight: Breakables and non-combat mechanics
2 months ago – Fri, Jan 16, 2026 at 12:30:25 PM

We haven't shared a detailed breakdown of our combat yet; don't worry it's coming! Based on what we have shared about, you should know that combat 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 for loot.
• The list goes on...

World of Anterra is not the first game to have these mechanics, but it's how they're integrated is what make them special in WoA.

Here's a look at some of these mechanics in action.

Breakables support our game's core pillar of exploration really well. For example, hitting a vase, or basket can expose some valuable loot, food or... other surprises.

Thorn bushes, vines or spiderwebs can reveal new pathways, hidden containers or entrances to caves... they may even make you feel like Indiana Jones!

Another aspect of using weapons outside of combat is attacking unsuspecting creatures. A great way to get the upper hand in combat is to sneak up on unsuspecting creatures to land a devastating blow. Just be careful you don't get spotted.

And of course there's hunting, which we have shared a few times now. Some creatures won't enter into combat with you, but that doesn't mean you can't kill them. You just may have to either be very sneaky, or just chase them down... and sometimes that's easier said than done.

That's all for now! Stay tuned for more.