Introducing Summerhill — a Shepherd’s Journey into Lands Unknown.
Take up the call of a young shepherd and their faithful dog as they venture into the mysterious lands at the border of their home. Work together to reunite your lost flock, and immerse yourself in this timeless, coming-of-age folktale.
After many years of preparation, we’re proud to finally announce our next game at Land & Sea. It’s an entirely new IP and our most ambitious project to date. You can watch the teaser trailer below, or read on to find out more.
Round Up
Summerhill is a story-driven puzzle adventure in which you play as a young shepherd and their dog. Together you’ll be tasked with rescuing your lost sheep and uncovering the long-forgotten mysteries of an ancient landscape.
The game is available to wishlist on Steam, so if you’d like to follow along and be notified at launch, please head over to our page and hit the wishlist button! As a small team, your wishlists are one of the most impactful ways to help us set the game up for success early, by demonstrating demand and helping us reach a wider audience.
Pastures New
Core creative & development team for Alto’s Odyssey – from left: Todd Baker, Joe Grainger and Harry Nesbitt
As with our game’s protagonists, the team at Land & Sea are also venturing into exciting and unprecedented territory with Summerhill – it’s our first official foray beyond the Alto Series since its inception a decade ago. In fact it’s just over 10 years to the day since our studio’s founder and creative director, Harry Nesbitt, first made the jump into the game industry as the sole artist and developer of Alto’s Adventure.
Since then, Harry has been working hard to assemble a team to continue the development of the Alto Series—including the BAFTA-nominated Alto’s Odyssey—while at the same time sowing the seeds that would eventually grow into our next title and beyond.
It’s taken many years for Land & Sea to find its voice, with Summerhill being the first true expression of who we are and the themes we care about most. It’s the culmination of a lot of hard work and careful planning, so we couldn’t be more excited to finally reveal it to the world.
A Shepherd’s Origin
“we really want to do justice to this timeless tradition and tell a story that could only be told in this way.”
The idea for Summerhill was first conceived back in 2017. At the time, the team was searching for a playful and satisfying game mechanic with a grounded “folk” sensibility. We were particularly drawn to the rich history and cultural impact of sheep herding – a theme we touched on lightly in Alto’s Adventure (Alto himself being a humble llama shepherd) but that we always felt had more unexplored potential.
“There are few people or places around the world that haven’t been impacted in some small way by the practice of shepherding” explains Harry “In many ways, it’s in our DNA, so we really want to do justice to this timeless tradition and tell a story that could only be told in this way.”
We realised there had never been a game that really tapped into what it means to be a shepherd. Sheep are often used as a throwaway gag, or depicted in a cutesy, cartoonish way, that undermines their benevolent, enigmatic nature.
Aerial drone footage of sheep herding - credit: Insider / Tim Whittaker.
Furthermore, herding as a mechanic is often tedious and frustrating, rarely capturing the grace and fluidity of sheep flocking from one space to another. During early development, the team became aware of mesmerising aerial drone footage of sheep being herded between fields that captured a hypnotic beauty in their behaviour and quickly went on to become a central pillar of the game.
Assembling The Flock
The team working on Summerhill has been assembled from many different places with a wealth of combined experience between us. Collectively, we’ve worked on games such as Monument Valley 2, Mini Metro and of course the Alto Series. If you’d like to read more about us, you can do so here on our team page. We look forward to introducing ourselves further as development continues!
Sounds Of The Earth
We’re also super excited to be working again with our longtime collaborator, Todd Baker. Todd is an audio designer and composer best known for his work on games such as Monument Valley 2, Dreams and our very own Alto’s Odyssey.
Todd Baker – Composer & Audio Designer
Todd brings his signature ‘soundscape’ approach to composition and audio design to Summerhill, marrying music and sound effects in a holistic manner to create a unique folk-inspired soundtrack. You can get a taste of what he has planned from the teaser trailer above, but we’ll be sharing more snippets with you throughout development.
The Road Goes On
Lastly, we want to say a hearty thank you to anyone who has followed us on our journey! Today has been a long time coming and truly is a huge milestone for us, but there’s still a long road ahead. Now that we’ve spilled the beans, we’ll be posting more regular updates of our progress over the coming months, so be sure to Wishlist, follow us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or join our mailing list to be the first to learn more.
Kind regards,
The Land & Sea Team
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