These days, major AAA titles are characterised by unrivalled graphics, countless customisation options, and plenty of spectacle. And that's not a bad thing at all, just a bit too... commonplace, even repetitive. That's why we're always saying that the greatest innovation in video games in recent years tends to come from small or medium-sized indie studios. And within those lines of innovation lies the artistic voice—that element where a concept or a good design, whether visual or auditory, can etch a game into our memory for years to come.
It was precisely during our visit to Madeira that Andrzej Wysocki, CEO and founder of Laki Studio, spoke to us about the artistic vision as the leitmotif of his work and that of his team. He is currently developing the recently announced Cloudsphere, a deckbuilder set in a world where airships are the means of travel, of living... and of fighting.
"Cloudsphere is a roguelike deck-building game, in which your ship is your deck. In fact, it's the only deck-builder, because you actually build your deck. The name is a play on words." Wysocki began his talk. "Yes, you sail through this fantastic Cloudsphere, which is in the name, and there's a ruin scattered across the world, from a destroyed city of a giant leviathan called Altul, and you scavenge for parts, modules, and build your own ship, and fight pirates and leviathans, and try to lure this giant beast into the maelstrom at the edge of the world."
Airships, space travel, pirates... It sounds like a very unique adventure, but it also resonates with certain ideas we've consumed in the past. When we asked him about the inspiration for Cloudsphere, this is what he told us.
"We want the tone to be light-hearted; there's a drastic catastrophe, but we're playing a group of misfit, vagabond robots. And it's inspired by Treasure Planet, which I grew up watching, and the film Atlantis, and by Moebius, the comic book artist, and I think we have a lot of artistic inspiration, because my background is actually in conceptual art. I set up the company six years ago to create my own creative games, but all the teams are made up of highly skilled artists, and we want our games to be of the very highest quality, and to be inspired by our childhood. And by the most inspiring games we've seen, such as Final Fantasy IX, beautiful airships, and all this fantasy of world-building - that's what we're here for."
You can find the full interview in this article, and you can also look forward to the release of Cloudsphere for PC sometime in 2026.