Welcome everyone! It’s Early Access launch day! Work on Lakehopper first started in summer of 2023, and the game has been in full time development since November 2024. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while now! Lakehopper is a solo project and it’s been a joy to work on. I’m very excited for what I’ve got planned for the future.

Thank you again to everyone who participated in the playtest! Lakehopper is a better game today than it was a month ago, thanks to your feedback and bug reports. If you reported a bug, and it hasn’t been fixed yet, know that all those bugs are still on my list and will be addressed.

I’ve made a few changes and fixed some bugs since the last playtest version, including a fun surprise that will allow for some customization! The full changelog for this version is below. During the next period of development I will be focusing on fixing more bugs, including some bigger issues that I wasn’t able to address before launch.

Currently there’s a memory leak causing crashes on the native Linux version. I want to get this fixed ASAP. Some playtesters were having issues using or binding their specific flight sim peripherals. Most peripherals do work, or partially work, but I want to make sure everyone can use their hardware. This is a bigger fix that involves technically complex changes and I want to give it the care it deserves.

The first updates will mostly focus on fixing bugs and making the game more robust. I’ll likely include some minor content updates, but the earlier I fix bugs, the better!

There are a lot of things that need to be added to make Lakehopper the rich, rewarding, and challenging game I want it to be. This includes, but is not limited to: NPCs, story and dialogue, weather, a day/night cycle and calendar, more planes, more parts, more subsystems, more locations to visit, more jobs to do, localization, tutorials, mod support, etc.

This is a huge list, and I’m aware of the monumental amount of work that needs to be done to add all that. It’ll be a long process, especially given that I’m a solo developer. I don’t have any specific timeline for when any specific feature will be added, though I’ll publish a more detailed roadmap soon.

After completing the fixes I mentioned above, probably the first new thing I’ll add is a new plane that’ll be easier to start with, and some highly requested alternate parts. The timeline here depends mostly on the time and effort required for post-launch bugfixes and tweaks.

Thank you for checking out Lakehopper! I’m so happy to be able to finally share it with you! There’s more exciting things to come, and really, this is only the beginning of the journey! Happy skies!

• Major Changes

  • Paint your plane!

    • I’ve added the ability to change the color of your plane! Just inside the rear door, you’ll find a blue “Change Plane Color” button that will open a UI to allow you to select plane colors. You can create a two color gradient or generate stripes from those two colors. The fuselage, underside, and tail of the plane can get their own color schemes. I wanted to add a bit more variety and customization to the plane! You can always uncheck the Custom Color toggle and return to the default paint job. More livery options will be available in the future.

  • Push and hold on plane trim, dials, and the rope tool

    • No more button mashing to set trim or adjust the VOR! I’ve added the ability to push and hold to adjust the plane trims, turn knobs, and adjust rope length.

    • Currently there’s not much feedback when you hold an input, but I’ll fix that soon so it’s clearer when you’re adjusting things.

• Improvements

  • Added a “Reset Nozzle” button on the refuel station. Pressing this button will return the nozzle to the refuel station, for instance if you drop it to the ocean floor!

  • Added a new game intro screen with some useful info for new players. This will only appear when you start a new game. The playtest notice on the main menu has been removed.

• Bugfixes

  • Optimized some motor part colliders. Overly complex geometry was causing frame lag spikes during assembly, and was possibly causing the game to freeze for some players. These colliders have been greatly simplified reducing this lag.

  • Potentially fixed an issue where the mouse sensitivity could be reduced to 0 and get stuck there. The game will check if your saved settings have the mouse at 0 sensitivity and reset it.

  • Fixed an issue where the pause menu would reopen unexpectedly when pushing a controller button.

I’m so excited to be able to share the game with everyone. There’s a lot more to build, and I’m thrilled to have everyone joining me on the journey!

Feedback and bugfixes for the playtest can be submitted in the Steam Discussions forum! This will give you a chance to try the game out, and help me prepare the game for the full launch.

Ultimately, Lakehopper is the game that I want to play. I’m a huge fan of sandbox flight sims, but I sometimes struggle to set my own fun goals with so many possibilities. It also feels a little underwhelming when a flight ends, and the world and your plane “reset”. I also really love a lot of more casual flight games, with simpler flight models and lots of really fun game mechanics. But I often miss a more complex and engaging flight experience in those games, including the consequences of poor piloting.

I looked around and didn’t see much of what I wanted: A grounded, general aviation focused flight sim with a complex flight model paired with interesting game mechanics to motivate decisions, in a world that continues to exist after a flight ends, complete with rewards and consequences for how that flight went! So that’s what I’m building. A flight sim that challenges your piloting skills, surrounded by a game and rich, persistent world to challenge and reward the player, with the primary goal of making the flights you make and how you fly them matter.

Lakehopper’s Development So Far

I started Lakehopper back in June 2023 as a solo hobby project after making this 3D modeling “doodle” of the plane. As you can see, the futuristic design of the engines predates the game even existing, and honestly, I can't tell you why I made that creative choice.

I wondered if I could get it flying in a game, not realizing I’d already bitten off more than I could chew. Nevertheless, by the end of that summer, I had a working prototype with a floating, flying plane, and put the project aside for a time.

In November 2024, the spark reignited and I was able to fully commit to making Lakehopper the immersive game I knew it could be. Over the next year and a half, I worked full time on the game. I improved the physics systems for flight and water interaction, created a terrain system, the basic jobs system, developed the part assembly and maintenance systems, and much more. Most of my focus so far has been building out the core systems, paving the way for expanding the available parts, planes, jobs, destinations, and in general adding more to explore and more interesting decisions to make.

Right now, you can have fun in Lakehopper, assembling the plane, flying packages between different locations, doing occasional maintenance, and exploring the wilderness.

The last three months have been purely dedicated to making sure the current features of the game are polished and relatively bug-free. I’ve got high standards for myself and want to ensure the game is fun to play and immersive from the start. The open playtest will help me be certain this is the case, and find any issues I’ve overlooked as the game’s solo developer!

I’ve got a lot of things I want to add to Lakehopper, many of which don’t exist in the game at all at the moment! Early on, I’ll be focusing on adding new game systems, and refining and expanding existing ones. There is some new content I’ve planned to add sooner rather than later, such as a new plane, some new parts, and a few new locations. Once I have all the major game systems in place, my focus can shift to adding more and more content and fleshing out the world of Lakehopper. I don’t have any set timeline for when any of this will happen, but exciting things are in the game’s future!

Thanks for joining me on this journey!