World of Anterra

Welcome to 2026...the year of Anterra?
2 months ago – Tue, Jan 06, 2026 at 09:54:56 PM

Hi! Stephane 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 Kickstarter 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 quietly rooting for me and the team, or actively encouraging us, you should feel proud of the difference you make for 81monkeys. This community has become more important to me than I could have imagined. Those who continue to come without judgement, with patience and understanding even in the face of the challenges; your words of encouragement mean the world to me. I'm not sure I would have lasted this long and pushed so hard if it weren't for you and the excitement we share for World of Anterra. It turns out that money is not what I needed most, your support was. 

To say this has become the journey of my life is an understatement. I've been open about most of the challenges I've faced, but something I haven't talked about much is the mental health side of things. I've gone through some dark times over the past few years. Thankfully those times appear to be behind me now. And although it's been a tough road, I want you to know that I am also having the time of my life. I'm bringing my dream game to life, I get to work with an incredibly talented team, and I have a wonderful community of supporters. What more can I ask for? ... well, maybe a few things.

We still have to launch a demo and get to our early access, but I'm committed that both of those things will happen this year. We're finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and this is mainly due to the hard work that has gone on over the last 6 plus months.  

Here are some key milestones you may have missed:

• We've landed some new funding partners, who joined our in-house 81monkeys project funding program. Yes, we created our own funding program.
• We've hired a veteran Producer who has taken all the project management work off my plate along with some of our business development and operations. He's a rockstar!
• We've brought on a marketing partner who has begun supporting us with our social media strategy, community management, marketing, and more.
• And most importantly, we shored up many systems and tools that were holding WoA back. More on this soon.

Along with these milestones, I can also share that our team’s morale and productivity never felt better than it does right now! It's starting to feel like we've hit a "golden age" (civ reference!).

Anyway, that's it for now. Stay tuned for our next round of Kickstarter updates.

As a small token of appreciation, we’ve created some new high res wallpapers for you to enjoy. Feel free to share them with your friends! Hope you're having a great start to your year.

Download Wallpapers here -https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ifYf4o45ptmlSdmsjteSdzd2qxtYMWIT?usp=sharing

Sincerely, 
Stephane - Game Director @ 81monkeys

Trailer Teaser & Fireside Recording
8 months ago – Mon, Jul 21, 2025 at 04:05:07 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Founder's Quest podcast interview and an upcoming Fireside
8 months ago – Mon, Jul 14, 2025 at 03:38:50 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.

Colours and Explosions!
9 months ago – Fri, Jul 04, 2025 at 03:19:08 PM

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 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 Swapping

Palette 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 limiting our assets. One of the wonderful things about modern pixel art games is that the assets are all so tiny compared to 3D games. The reason we wanted to adding a palette swapping system is to extend our asset library without requiring the art team to redo all the assets every time. This doesn't mean that we will have less unique assets and just swap colours; this means that any number of the hundreds or thousands of hand animated assets in the game can be easily scaled up to 2, 3, or even 10 times the amount! This also means that our game will have many more options for player customization.

Here are some examples of palette swapping in our game and how it applies to each layer. Remember that these NPCs are all wearing the same things and all we're doing is swapping the colours.

With our palette swapping system, all an artist has to do is give us a set of palettes in the form of a tiny strip as shown in the image above. This system can be used for anything from creatures to furniture.

Something else to note here is how the art team works to limit their palettes. This is part of the magic of pixel art. Not only does it use so few pixels, it also uses a limited number of colours, but still manages to create a wonderful amount of detail.

Boom Barrels

When times are tough, and people are mean in the Kickstarter comments, it really helps to blow some things up in Anterra.

There 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 igniting 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.

Thanks for reading our update. Stay tuned for more!

Backer Only Update: Refunds, Alpha and more...
9 months ago – Thu, Jun 05, 2025 at 08:27:22 PM

This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.