Bossa takes on AAA level online multiplayer with coherence!

Sharing is caring!

More than five years ago, Bossa Studios had a tough decision to make: Kill off a beloved game or face possible bankruptcy.

“We were at this sort of crossroads,” Lead Game Designer Luke Williams said in a recent interview. “We either had to double down and reprogram the whole game, at least from a networking point of view, or be sensible and not bankrupt the studio.”

So, the studio shut down Worlds Adrift on July 26, 2019. But the game and its soaring potential never left the hearts and minds of the studio, especially those who worked on the massively multiplayer sandbox game.

“I don’t think there was ever a time that those folks weren’t thinking about what made that project great and exciting,” said Mark Dugdale, principal game architect and lead developer. “And what we would need to do better if we ever came back to it.”

The idea of a spiritual successor floated in the air, but with it was also the concern of once more putting the studio on the line to make it happen. That was until Bossa discovered coherence, a multiplayer-focused network engine with an eye on both stability and preservation from the co-founder of indie studio Playdead.

“coherence gave us the confidence that we could pull Lost Skies off,” Williams said. It’s the sort of company, he added, that would ensure neither the studio nor the players would get burned.

To continue reading this story head over to coherence where this ran on April 4, 2025.