I highlighted Voyagers of Nera a few weeks ago and I loved it. From the art style to the gameplay, I could see that this was a game with some real staying power. And it’s all down to the team of devs making it. Treehouse Games was founded on the idea of cooperative play and just having somewhere to hang out with friends. Recently, I got to interview (and nerd out with) Michael Chu, CEO and Co-Founder of Treehouse Games about Voyagers of Nera and what drives him and the team when making these games.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clairity.
‘vOYAGERS OF NERA’ AND ITS INFLUENCES
My daughter was actually sitting next to me while I was trying [Voyagers of Nera] and she said “Demigod!”. I had to tell her it’s not Moana. It does look like Moana could be an inspiration, but what were your inspirations for the game?
Michael: Oh, a lot. I mean when we first started making this game, really, we were thinking of the metaphor of a road trip. Like what’s this adventure you could share with your friends, travel to these different places? And survival crafting felt like such a good mix for that. So of course we looked at things like Moana, Raft, Subnautica. For a long time, one of our pillars, for the creative vision for the game was just “cooler than pirates”. Because we were like “every seafaring game is just pirates over and over”.
And then we started to look at things like Zelda and Miyazaki. Wind Waker of course, but also Breath of the Wild and Moana, I think do a great job of taking something familiar, almost universal of sitting there on the ocean being like “wow, what could be on the horizon?” and then elevating it into something magical, fantastical and more aspirational. And so that’s what we wanted to do with having a seafaring game. Taking you into something familiar. It’s like “you’re on a ship; you’re there with your friends; you’re staring out at the sunset like what’s on the horizon?” and then hopefully bringing in a lot of fantasy and magic into the world.
Making Voyagers of nera
How hard was it to nail down the concept? You guys are doing 10 players in a session, I’d imagine that’s pretty tough tecnhically to pull off
Michael: Yeah…it was. it has not been a straightforward path to making the game. When we started with that same sort of road trip thinking, we were really thinking about the voyage you take on your ship. Coming back and forth and staying on the boat. Making that your long-term base. But it started to feel like “oh it kinda sucks to build this beautiful space and then watch it get burned down by enemies coming to your ship”. So, we started to look at more broad survival crafting reference. And this direction of having these island home base that you come back to and explore.
So, it’s definitely been sort of a winding path nailing down the core concept. I think over the last year and a half, it’s been way more straightforward. We know exactly what we want to make. We’re going to keep putting stuff out there, keep playtesting it, keep iterating. Which we’ve been pretty consistent on since last May. We’ve been playtesting with our discord community every two weeks with a fresh build.
That’s actually incredible to be doing it that consistently!
Michael: It’s been a huge help to us. Because before, you could work on something for months and months. And the natural spot is always “Oh it’s gonna be better” in like another month or two. But honestly, you can learn so much even from showing off something really rough. Once we got to that point where we started testing more frequently, it just helped us have a lot more pulse on what was working and not working.
Starting off
So, was Voyagers of Nera the game you always wanted to make? Or was it something you had been conceptualizing for years and finally had the time and space to do it?
Michael: Not quite, actually. So, when we started the studio, we didn’t have a specific game idea that we had to make. That was kind of on purpose. We wanted to go in open and willing to learn. My co-founder [Ryan Sullivan] and I, we’re friends from college. We had talked about making a studio for a long time. This is his fourth startup that he’s been part of and my first. I was coming from Riot [Games] working on League of Legends for many years. And that was a really global view into what was happening in games. And we hit this point where we were like “we’re so fixated on making this brutally competitive experience” and it’s made it harder for what a lot of people look to the game for which is “I just want to spend time with my friends”.
So, in starting a studio, that’s always been the most special part of games for my Co-Founder and I. It’s how he and I stayed in touch in college, it’s how I have something in common with my brother who is 10 years older than me. And now we’re sort of watching the world turn. Now games are becoming a default hangout thing for everybody. Not just hardcore gamers or nerds like myself growing up. And so, we really wanted to make games that had all the ingredients of a hangout experience. Something memorable that you could experience together. Shared goals, shared progression, a way to be creative or expressive that wasn’t just “how good are you at shooting that guy in the head?”.
And that led us to survival crafting as a spot. Because it has so many of the right ingredients and it’s already starting to be this landing spot for people wanting to find this flexible fit with their friends. And we felt we could build something different and unique inside of that.
What treehouse games is about
Going over the website, that seems to be the mantra of Treehouse Games, co-op experiences, not necessarily getting into anything competitive. When you started the studios, were you looking at that as your thing no matter what, or are you going to be looking to branch out into different things?
Michael: I think every type of game we make is going to be about that multiplayer experience. It sounds a little cheesy but “these games have helped us make friends ourselves”. We were largely —all the developers on the team — the nerds who are pushing through a lot of hard times, even for completive games. It’s like “we’re gonna have a great time playing this game. Just play for 100 hours and then you’ll be good enough and then we’re gonna kick ass”. That barrier is crazy high for most people.
Now games are becoming that answer. It’s becoming something that’s as common and rich as going out to dinner with your friends. And we want to make experiences that are there to provide that quality time. We would love for you to play our games, and then without even realizing it, feel like you’re closer friends with the people you came in with. So, any type of game we make, we want to achieve that. We want to make worlds for friends to get lost in together. We want to create something that provides that quality time, we think there’s a lot of room and a lot of value in having that shared connection with people.
are you ready to nerd out? no? too bad, we’re nerding out!
What was the hardest thing to put together? You’ve got the survival crafting, the sailing, the combat. What was the hardest thing to make work with everything else?
Michael: Oh God [laughs]. The boring developer answer (Quick note: No such thing, I loved this answer) is just multiplayer over that much space. The amount of work that goes in under the hood of making so many systems fit together, or like resource nodes in two different corners of the world work technically in multiplayer? Super hard. One that Sea of Thieves does a crazy great job of that you would never see under the hood, is making every character moving on a ship smooth and replicate well. [Make] what I see on my screen the same as what you see on your screen? So hard. Super, super hard. And they just kill it like it’s nothing.
I think some of the ones that are more player-facing that have been really challenging, the building system is one we’ve been back and forth on a lot. We wanted to make something that is a little easier to jump in and build something that is beautiful and still leave room for something creative. Instead of tile-by-tile, we have sort of node and socket kind of set up, like frames and panels. So pretty quick, within like 20 clicks, you can build a whole building that looks really cohesive with everything else that your friends are building. And hopefully we avoid the Costco problem where you just build a warehouse full of your crap for the first 20 hours.
But the complexity of that, the reason so many games just go one tile by one tile is because it’s a lot more straightforward in some ways. So, we hope that people are gonna find a lot of joy with that. And a lot of people who aren’t into building will be able to really play around with that and get a lot of fun out of that. But it was super complicated to figure out how all the pieces fit together and actually build a system that accommodates that.
one last thing
Last question for you. When it comes to Voyagers of Nera, outside of playing with your friends, what do you want people to take away from this experience?
Michael: Really, the friend part, we want to be eternal. But the reality is a lot of people don’t play these games with their friends. I think that’s totally fine. That’s how we all spend a ton of our time. But for Voyagers of Nera in particular, we want it to be a game about exploring a magical ocean world. We want people to see places they didn’t expect. To be like wowed and feel like their time spent here is warm and worth it. Even if that is seeing a beautiful scene, seeing a beautiful cliff made of coral reef that they didn’t expect to see, or being hunted by a sea monster five times the size of your ship. [We want them] to be transported to this place that really sets their imagination off.
Best case, [we want people] to be sitting there and saying like “wow, holy crap, are you seeing this?” with their best friends next to them and sharing in that moment together. And that’s been a lot of the fun of playtesting, making something that we think is going to start landing that feeling of being in this magical world. Some of the biomes — I don’t think you got to see in your demo — the second biome, we call it The Reef. It’s just this huge area, bigger than the first biome, that is all cliffs made of coral reef. And you unlock a glider, and you have these air geysers that you can take up into the sky. We just want moments like that where this place feels special. That’s really the emotional landing point we want with people.
Thank You to Michael Chu for taking the time to speak with me about Voyagers of Nera. It’s coming out August 5th, 2025 in Early Access on Steam. Be sure to check it out.
The post My Interview with Treehouse Games CEO, Michael Chu on Voyagers of Nera appeared first on VICE.
