Cloudscrapers Demo Initial Impressions and Interview
A beautiful puzzle roguelike adventure into the sky.
Cloudscrapers is a promising puzzle roguelike releasing today, September 14th 2026 on Steam. I spent about two hours with the demo, and found it's unique premise very charming! I interviewed Sebastian Jantschke, Lead Game Designer about Cloudscrapers, with my interview featured below after my impressions.
The idea behind Cloudscrapers was for me to build a tower as high as I could into the sky! I was given a limited amount of three different materials — wood, stone, and nature — to build with. Once I ran out of these, the run was over, and I was sent back to a skill tree from which I could put points into various upgrades, such as unlocking more starting materials.
Supplies could be replenished and coins earned by how I chose to build the tower. The building is made up of a horizontal five block row. A row must contain a minimum of three blocks to unlock the next row. While building materials are limited, more can be obtain by completing quests. Quests are tetris-like block shapes made up of one material, and completing them yields either materials or coins. The game starts with there only being two options to chose from, but through the demo I was able to unlock a third option.
As the tower goes further into the sky, it travels through different biomes that affect the game in different ways. For example there was a stormy area that zaps the tower with lightning and deleted some of my carefully crafted quests. Another contained poison clouds that would render that row unable to contribute to building quests.
With the entire skill tree in the demo unlocked I made it level 60. I loved the time I spent with Cloudscrapers, and thoroughly enjoyed the gameplay loop. It also played perfectly on Steam Deck, making it an ideal handheld experience. There was just enough story sprinkled into the demo as well featuring an elf with an alternate evil persona that I am very curious about and can't wait to see more. While I won't be reviewing it on the site, I will be purchasing a copy of this game on launch day. I hope you decide to give this game a chance as well!
Below is the interview with Sebastian Jantschke. Enjoy!
1.) Tell me a little about yourselves! How did you come to be creating video games?
We got to know each other at university, where we studied Game Design together in Munich. From the very first projects we worked on, it became clear that we clicked in the areas that mattered, while also complementing each other really well.
So we founded a game studio together with two other students. The first few years went quite well, and we mostly worked on commissioned projects based on existing IPs. But when we started developing our first original game, the crisis that hit the games industry after COVID-19 caught up with us too.
We had to cut development short and scale the team back to just the two of us, which was an incredibly difficult decision. But in a strange way, Cloudscrapers probably would never have happened without going through all of that.
2.) Tell me a little about Cloudscrapers! I love how it's a combination of a puzzle game and a rougelike. How did you come up with the idea of Cloudscrapers? Any outside influences?
We'd had the idea of a tower-building game floating around ever since a game jam we did with our whole team back in the day. After restructuring the studio, we spent a lot of time hiking in the mountains to clear our heads and think about smaller games that we could realistically make with just the two of us.
On one of those hikes, we watched clouds drift over a mountain peak in a particularly beautiful way. It sounds a little cheesy, but that really was the moment that sparked Cloudscrapers. We waned to capture that sense of awe you can get from looking at the sky, whether it's a calm, cloudy summer day or a raging thunderstorm, and combine it with the tower-building concept. That's really how the game was born.
3.) This is such a chill cozy demo, and such a nice handheld experience! What platforms is it releasing on in two weeks? Any plans for a mobile port? It plays fine on Steam Deck, but any news about Steam Deck verification?
Cloudscrapers will release on Steam on September 14th, and we're happy to confirm the game will be Steam Deck verified for launch! No other platforms are planned for now, but it's something we'd love to potentially explore.
4.) This is such a gorgeous demo as well. Where did you get the idea for the art direction?
We worked with a few external artists who are also good friends of ours to bring our vision to life. A lot of the art direction really came from them, while our main requirement was simply that the clouds had to look fluffy!
There was also a lot of inspiration from beautiful games like Spiritfarer, as well as from the way the manga/anime Made in Abyss portrays its mysterious, seemingly endless abyss. We wanted to create a similar sense of wonder and mystery with the sky, just in the opposite direction.
5.) Our elf guide had a strange moment where he wasn't quite himself...he said lack of oxygen or something...this is just a normal puzzle game right? Nothing sinister going on?
Well, there is definitely a little more going on with our main character and the story than you might expect from a pure puzzle or strategy game. Besides the bread-and-butter thinky gameplay, we wanted something that would further set Cloudscrapers apart, and for us, that was having a story and a mystery to uncover.
Let's just say that the main character's strange episodes are an integral part of a larger mystery spanning the skies. As you climb higher with your tower, you'll not only discover new environments, but also unravel what's really going on piece by piece.
We hope this little narrative thread gives players another reason to keep climbing and see what's waiting for them at the end of their journey through the clouds.
