Bossa Studios, the creator of the sleeper hit Surgeon Simulator, is heading for adventures in the sky with its next game Worlds Adrift, and VentureBeat is reporting it has raised $1.35 million in funding from UK investment firm London Venture Partners to fund the MMO.

Worlds Adrift, as Bossa Studios previously explained to Gamasutra, will be a sandbox online game where players can join together to crew flying pirate ships as they sail through the floating islands of a fantasy world. 

The funding is a big jump for the UK developer, whose previous games Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread have been far smaller than a full-scale MMO. The company has already released a player creation tool for Worlds Adrift which lets them create their own islands that can be considered for implementation in the game. 

In a statement, Bossa CEO Henrique Olifiers says the company intends to use the funding to take advantage of advancements in cloud computing technology to create a more procedurally-generated MMO, rather then the scripted MMOs of recent years.

“Think of it as the difference between a scripted TV show where once you’ve watched an episode and know what’s happened…versus an improv stage where the same scenario can lead to an infinite number of unexpected interactions due to actors empowered with full freedom each time,” Olifiers says.  

Olifiers previously told Gamasutra that Worlds Adrift was only possible thanks to a partnership with world simulator startup Improbable, which builds operating environments for virtual worlds.