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Alto's Adventure devs open a studio focused on 'folk' games

Land & Sea aims to create 'artful, hand-crafted experiences.'

Land & Sea

The development team behind the classic snowboarding endless runners Alto’s Adventure and Alto’s Odyssey have opened a new studio called Land & Sea. They’ll focus on making “folk” games.

Alto lead artist and developer Harry Nesbitt, programmer Joe Grainger and composer Todd Baker have been joined at Land & Sea by producer Jair McBain and narrative designer Jenna Jovi. They’re looking to build on the success of the Alto series by creating “artful, hand-crafted experiences that resonate with a wide audience.”

“We feel like there’s a shared groundedness in the things we make; an earthy, honest quality that evokes a strong sense of time and place,” Nesbitt, founder and creative director of the studio, said in a press release. “We want our players to feel they’re looking through a small window into a much larger world; a world that exists beyond the edge of the screen and stays with you long after you’ve put the game down.”

Land & Sea will continue to work with Snowman on Alto projects while developing other games. It released a teaser image for the first of those, which you can see above. The studio isn’t saying much about it yet, save for the fact it’s “an accessible, coming-of-age folktale set against an ancient pastoral landscape.”

The game’s in pre-production, so a release date’s probably quite some time away. If it’s anywhere close to the quality of the Alto games though, it’ll be well worth waiting for.