20,000 Leagues Above the Clouds

NOTE: REQUIRES GAMEPAD

(You can fly around with KB+M but won't be able to shoot. Sorry!)

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Welcome to Pinefiord. A tranquil collection of floating islands far up above the clouds, where humans and automatons alike live peacefully, side by side. While the scenery certainly is breathtaking, the nature of Pinefiord’s geographical uniqueness has proven difficult, to say the least. However, the Pinefiordians have never been known to back down from a challenge; they embrace it with all the ingenuity, knight-errantry and joy of discovery they can muster. Therefore, it’s not surprising that they’ve made aviation and engineering their main enterprise. Indeed, they dominate the aeronautical plane and Pinefiord itself has become a blossoming trading centre.

But in the misty nothingness many fathoms below Pinefiord, something ominous is lying in wait. Something … hungry. Oh, and there are also pirates. And an iron-fisted and bureaucratic navy that really lacks any sense of humour.

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20,000 Leagues Above the Clouds started in 2011 as nothing more than an attempt for us to learn to program our own games. Even as the world of Pinefiord with its airships and floating islands started to take serious shape we consciously set only humble goals for ourselves: to learn and to have fun in the process. These goals have been met several times over, and without the project we would not be where we are today professionally or personally.

Despite our goals to learn and have fun, we eventually found ourselves with a project that was so ambitious that finishing it would have required significant funding. Throughout 2016, and then again in 2018, we pitched 20,000 Leagues Above the Clouds to publishers all over the world. Though our pitches were met with many “ooooh!”s and “aaaah!”s, eventually it became clear that from a financing standpoint the game was just too big to be small, and too small to be big.

Rather than letting 20,000 Leagues Above the Clouds keep sliding forever into the vapors, we finally decided to “call it”. We wanted to take this opportunity to celebrate the past and look towards the future. So, as thanks to you for sticking with us this long despite our rather atrocious lack of communication lately, we are releasing the 2015 ComicCon demo of the game to be downloaded for free!

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Known issues / limitations:

1) At this point in development, the game was still missing any kind of progression for the ship and its upgrades. You can switch to different ships, weapons and gadgets, but everything is unlocked from the start and there are only a handful choices. 

2) You cannot open the quest log when you are docked in a port, even though the UI encourages you to do just that. Instead, press right on the D-pad after leaving the port, and you'll see your quests.

3) The game might freeze if you try to do too much stuff with the gamepad during the short cutscene after the tutorial, when the station is firing up its engines. Just wait until after the fade out and fade in until you try to do anything. 

4) A lot of players fail to notice that they get "Encumbered" after picking up too much loot, which severely limits the fun of moving around. Don't forget to empty your inventory into the shop or throw cheap stuff overboard!