Press Kit

Location: South West of England, United Kingdom
Website: www.landandsea.games
Email: hello@landandsea.games
Twitter: @landandseagames
Releases: Alto’s Adventure (2015), Alto’s Odyssey (2018), Alto’s Odyssey: The Lost City (2021), Alto’s Adventure: The Spirit of the Mountain (2022)

Land & Sea is a small, UK-based, independent games studio founded with the goal of creating artful, hand-crafted experiences that resonate with a wide audience. 

The studio is formed of the same BAFTA-nominated development team behind the critically acclaimed Alto’s Adventure series – including lead artist & developer Harry Nesbitt, programmer Joe Grainger and award winning composer and audio designer Todd Baker (Monument Valley 2). The team is joined by former-Dinosaur Polo Club producer Jair McBain (Mini Metro, Mini Motorways) and writer Jenna Jovi.

As well as continuing to nurture our existing partnerships, we’re also busy developing brand new IPs that embody the core themes we’re most excited about.

We’re not ready to reveal too much just yet, but we can say that the first of these will be an accessible, coming-of-age folktale set against an ancient pastoral landscape.

Collectively, the studio is drawn to the term ‘folk’ games as a way to describe the shared sensibilities of the team and the kinds of experiences we care about.

We believe there are a number of threads running through the things we make – a sense of calm, wonder and reverence for nature – but also something more. At its heart, folk art is about conveying the everyday lives and feelings of ordinary people, often with a strong connection to the landscape around them. While our games may dance around the edge of fantasy, they’re also very much grounded in their own reality – a small window into a much larger world, that serves as the backdrop for what are ultimately deeply human experiences.

At Land & Sea, we have a shared love of nature, history and folklore – all things that have come to inform our name as much as our ethos. This influence weaves its way into every aspect of the worlds we create – a thread that began with Alto’s Adventure, and extends well into our future as a studio.

The Alto Series also showed us the immersive and meditative power that games can have. We were overwhelmed by the feedback we received from players who felt that our games helped them feel calm by providing a sense of ‘zen’ in their otherwise stressful lives. Moving forward, we want this feeling to be as much a part of the games we create as a guiding principle of our studio.

“Growing up in the British Isles, and living for many years in the South West of England, the ocean has never been far from my mind. There’s an ancient and powerful feeling I get any time I stand by the coast and look out to sea.

Our logo is inspired by a curious structure known as the Daymark, which can be seen for miles around an area called Kingswear in South Devon and has been used by ships as a navigational aid for centuries. It has a profound and imposing presence that has always deeply fascinated me – a great stone monolith that pierces the sky, creating an intangible thread between the land and sea…

It’s this same sense of awe and wonder, combined with a kind of grounded, timeless quality that we want to bring to the games we make.”

– Harry Nesbitt, Founder, Land & Sea

Please visit our this page for up to date information about our team.

Land & Sea continues to work closely with Snowman under the banner of ‘Team Alto’ – a name established to describe the collaboration on the Alto series between Harry Nesbitt and the Toronto-based indie studio.

As Harry grew from a sole developer to leading a team of talented contributors working on new original titles, it was only a matter of time before they needed a name and shared creative philosophy. It’s from this evolution that Land & Sea was born.

This collaboration with Snowman will continue, with Land & Sea serving as the principle development team for all things Alto.

Partnership opportunities

We are always open to discussing future collaborations! If you’d like to discuss partnerships or publishing opportunities in relation to our future titles, please get in touch with us at hello@landandsea.games

• ‘The developers behind Alto’s Adventure have a new studio focused on ‘folk’ games’

  - Andrew Webster, The Verge

• ‘The next great iPad game is a chill snowboarding adventure’

  - Andrew Webster, The Verge

• ‘Land & Sea spins the folklore of fictional worlds’
  - Rebekah Valentine, gamesindustry.biz

• ‘Alto’s Odyssey and the art of the perfect sequel’

  - Chaim Gartenberg, The Verge

• "Alto’s Odyssey might just be the best mobile game out there."

  - Edoardo Maggio, Business Insider

• Road to the IGF: Team Alto's Alto's Odyssey

  - Gamasutra

For press and business enquiries please get in touch with us via hello@landandsea.games

For support for the Alto games, please get in touch with support@builtbysnowman.com

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