One of the highlights of the weekend reveals at the intermittent Summer Game Fest events was Treehouse Games’ Voyagers of Nera, though actually, it was originally announced back in 2023 when it picked up outside investment, though it didn’t have a name back then. It rolled up to Steam last year as a co-op survivalbox, with a playable demo already open. Treehouse is an indie team led by Michael Chu, whose claim to fame ’round here is his long-running role as product lead on League of Legends (the former Riot guy, not the former Blizzard guy) and Ryan Sullivan, a mobile game developer.

As originally announced, the game was meant to allow 16-person co-op play, though that’s apparently been downgraded to 10 over the last year. Here’s the pitch:

“Voyagers of Nera is a cooperative survival-crafting game where you must survive a magical ocean world brimming with lost spirits and deadly monsters. Sail to distant islands, build beautiful villages and surf across the waves with up to 10 players. Voyagers is releasing in Early Access in 2025 for PC.”

Indeed, over the weekend, that early access date hardened to August 5th, and the game’s demo has gotten a major facelift too: “Our biggest and shiniest Steam Demo update yet is now live, packed with months of improvements, new features, and polish in preparation for Steam NextFest,” the devs write. The new trailer is below.