Screenshots
Watch trailer on Steam ↗Nephelia: Through the Clouds
Dieselduck · Published by Dieselduck · Official site ↗
Content notice: Mentioning/describing adult topics like abusive relationships, phsychological violence, post-truth politics, politics discussion, grey morality, drug/alcohol addiction, criminal behavior, hate speech towards fictional groups, offensive language, profanity.
Last updated 28 Sept 2026
Take control of your own airship, hire people for your crew, help them on their personal stories, follow the trail of a whimsical inventor of the colonisation era, trade, fight, discover, and try to stay afloat.
Free
Action, Adventure, Indie, RPG, Simulation · 2027 · More free games
Navigate Nephelia's clouds in Dieselduck's 2027 indie RPG where you command an airship, hire crew, and follow the tales of a colonial inventor.
About this game
Human colony on Nephelia is nothing like the dreams of your Earthern grandparents. There’s no ground to stand on or extract fuel from, so people once again build airships to become the masters of this world.
You revel in the freedom such life gives. All you need is a trusty team, quick thinking, and a little luck.
Nephelia: Through the Clouds is a dirigible simulator in open 3D skies with a non-linear text RPG storyline. It takes inspiration from games *Sunless Seas/Skies,* *Highfleet* and *Space Rangers*.
Fly freely among the proceduraly generated clouds which follow the wind and weather patterns. Each cloud is a source of resources to keep your vallet full and flight safer, yet there’s no guarantee that nothing else is lurking in those clouds. Mod your airship and stock it wisely, and it will withstand the test of storms, thunder, and numerous fauna of Nefelia.
Long flights remind you like nothing else that strength is in numbers. Find best lads and lasses for your crew, earn their trust, and together you can fight your way through air pirates, authorities or spider clouds alike. Give the orders to your gunmen, send crewmates to patch your wounded airship (or men), all while stiring the wheel by yourself. Once you master this, you might become the master of Nephelian skies.
Unlike you, most people of Nephelia spend their whole lives in overpopulated towns built upon several flying platforms. These grounds, while questionably solid, give root to many hopes and even more conmen. You can make a fortune, level up your skills, but who knows when will dice fail you. Luckily, your crew have extra dice on their hands — if you choose to take them along while on land. Just remember that they might have their own enemies.
People of Nephelia are split into several factions, and getting on good terms with one of them might make you a wanted person with another. Tread carefully when making friends and taking quests, and use money, actions or brute force to make a name for yourself. Or maybe you seek to bring the long-awaited peace between the factions?
You revel in the freedom such life gives. All you need is a trusty team, quick thinking, and a little luck.
Nephelia: Through the Clouds is a dirigible simulator in open 3D skies with a non-linear text RPG storyline. It takes inspiration from games *Sunless Seas/Skies,* *Highfleet* and *Space Rangers*.
Fly freely among the proceduraly generated clouds which follow the wind and weather patterns. Each cloud is a source of resources to keep your vallet full and flight safer, yet there’s no guarantee that nothing else is lurking in those clouds. Mod your airship and stock it wisely, and it will withstand the test of storms, thunder, and numerous fauna of Nefelia.
Long flights remind you like nothing else that strength is in numbers. Find best lads and lasses for your crew, earn their trust, and together you can fight your way through air pirates, authorities or spider clouds alike. Give the orders to your gunmen, send crewmates to patch your wounded airship (or men), all while stiring the wheel by yourself. Once you master this, you might become the master of Nephelian skies.
Unlike you, most people of Nephelia spend their whole lives in overpopulated towns built upon several flying platforms. These grounds, while questionably solid, give root to many hopes and even more conmen. You can make a fortune, level up your skills, but who knows when will dice fail you. Luckily, your crew have extra dice on their hands — if you choose to take them along while on land. Just remember that they might have their own enemies.
People of Nephelia are split into several factions, and getting on good terms with one of them might make you a wanted person with another. Tread carefully when making friends and taking quests, and use money, actions or brute force to make a name for yourself. Or maybe you seek to bring the long-awaited peace between the factions?
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
Minimum:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: Windows 8
- Processor: Intel Core i5/AMD Ryzen 5
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia 1060/AMD RX 580/Intel UHD 620
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 2 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Vulkan-compatible videodriver
Recommended
Recommended:
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: Intel Core i5/AMD Ryzen 5
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia 1060/AMD RX 580/Intel UHD 620
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 3 GB available space
- Additional Notes: Vulkan-compatible videodriver
Supported Languages
English, Russian
Latest news
AnnouncementsOfficial
Spring & Summer events we participated so far
We have a lot of news, but first we need to recap a couple events we participated in. 1. IGROPROM online was very intense. For two months (03/29/26-05/23/26) we had 20 streamings, got lots of feedback and support. We haven't earned any prizes among 130+ participants, just a nomination in a Prototype category, but it was a good boost for our morale. And a good bunch of free playtesting to improve the demo.Kudos to everyone who streamed demos and prototypes of Nephelia! 2. We just came back from the Conference of Game Developers (Moscow). It wasn't held as a separate event for more than a decade and now we've witnessed a legendary comeback. We had 4 hours to show our game and 4 more to hang out and we did so brilliantly. Some publishers' business cards are keeping us warm (summer has been chilly in our region). Hopefully this will bring us new prospects.3. In the meantime we've developed a new demo (0.9). After few iterations and Steam page improvements we will be happy to put it on playtest for all airship enjoyers here on Steam. Watch this space, it will come out somewhen late summer, we're almost there!Read full article on Community Announcements (brunooftrenzalore)AnnouncementsOfficial
Development diary - mooring & telepotration
Developers' diary this week features another application of mooring - mooring to another airship. In case of trade you won't need to throw and catch cargo in mid-air! Make a radio contact with your trade partner and you'll have an option to teleport to his visinity and anchor automatically. Thus we illiminate situations you have to chase a windblown trader to make a deal. This and other new mechanics would be available in the 0.9 demo free playtest scheduled to February. Make sure to wishlist and follow.We are not finished with the rope physics yet and we'd definitely be back for grabbing loot, harpooning a skywhale and boarding later in development. For now we are going to improve radio communication with other airships and objects.Read full article on Community Announcements (brunooftrenzalore)AnnouncementsOfficial
Developers' Diary – mooring the mast
Hello, it's screenshot time!We've been delaying mooring to the city long enough, but look at us now: here we are, figuring out the rope physics and mechanics. Shoutout to Virtual Method Studio for Obi Rope asset, though it's not an easy task to make it do multiple things we want from it. We ain't stopping at just mooring airships to the masts – it's harpooning and hauling we want as well as decorating platforms with lianas, flags and other hanging stuff. We place a lot of hope on this asset, but we can't be sure if it will be all made as planned. May be with your help one day. For now, we are gonna polish mooring and other new features of 0.9 demo to present them to you as a Steam playtest somewhen in the first quarter of 2026.See you with more updates and Merry Christmas!Read full article on Community Announcements (brunooftrenzalore)AnnouncementsOfficial
Developers' Diary – the events of this fall
CONFA, IGROFPOM, Game Industry - these are three events you could playtest the Nephelia demo ver. 0.8.5 this fall. We've collected lots of feedback, met friends and generally had a good time. Below you will find a little more details about each of these events.What: the CONFA conference Where: Saint-PetersburgWe went to CONFA as if we were visiting friends, but it was the first playtest of the new demo, and of course, there were some bugs. The demo was presented by Oleg and new team member Vladimir, with moral support from Anastasia.We were featured in a couple of videos, which is always nice. What: the IGROPROM festival&exhibitionWhere: MoscowIt's a big exhibition, but we didn't have the resources for a full-fledged booth. Instead, we got a two-hour slot for a playtest on a top-of-the-line computer. Our game designer, Elena, presented the game. What: The Game Industry conference Where: MoscowThis was more of a professional event. We spent a full day presenting the game's showcase, attended a few lectures, but mostly focused on gaining attention of experts and guests. Our composer, Lidiya, joined Elena at this event.Of course, this fall wasn't all about hanging out at festivals and fixing bugs. But we'll report on development progress in the next blog, which will now be more regular (we hope). We got a lot more to tell, that's for sure.Read full article on Community Announcements (brunooftrenzalore)Patch NotesOfficial
Work in progress - pendragon
Meet another native enhabitant of Nephelia – the pendragon! Airship captains are telling stories about their encounters with it. Most of them are lies to impress young skynav cadets, because truth is much scarier. Credit artists artstation.com/grafedelweiss and artstation.com/vauslogiaRead full article on Community Announcements (brunooftrenzalore)
