Christmas Season with Skystead Ranch!
November is always a busy month here at ToastieLabs, we made it even busier this year by adding all of this Skystead Ranch development on top! We're inching ever closer to a finished game, thank you to everyone who has played the Beta so far and given us valuable feedback!
Find out more below.
Floor and Building Improvements
The most exciting change has been from Rob who has implemented a long-awaited change to the building mechanics.
Changes such as placing flooring under objects and directional arrow UI for objects that face in a certain direction will allow you to get even more creative with your builds and add that extra flair of personality to your Skystead Ranch.
Buildable objects have all been revisited with this "flooring or not flooring" pass to make their occupied space better fit the actual shape of the object. This means odd-shaped objects can now be placed closer to other objects, and most excitingly, the mini bridge can now actually be a bridge to go over your other designs!
Get building and show us what you come up with, we can't wait to see your creations!
Cooking is Finished! (Almost)
We've done it, it's finally complete! Cooking is fully implemented into the game, all recipes, all foods and all whacky combinations have been added to try! (untested)
There are still some minor things to do, such as UI implementation to tell you when the cooking is done, adding the recipe book that Laura has created so you can know what you can make and most importantly, actually testing that every recipe is set up correctly in the game!
Recreating the Tutorial
Rob has been re-designing the tutorial as we have been handing out Beta access to our Kickstarter backers! (Thank you again 💖)
Our previous tutorial was from over a year ago as so much has changed in the game that it no longer applies! A lot of work and design thinking is needed to get this perfect but the feedback that has been provided so far from our backers has been pivotal in making sure we hit the mark - thank you for your feedback in Discord, please keep it coming!
Controller Support
Work has been going ahead on controller support as we start to pave the way for Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck support. Jack has been making all the relevant UI changes so you will always know what buttons to press no matter what controller you are using.
Rob has been painstakingly adding all of the implementation for the new controller UI, which is a personal favourite of his (sarcasm).
New Skylets!
As always, Jack has been hard at work finishing up the list of Skylets, meet the final 2 Skylets for the release of Skystead Ranch!
Fjord (right) is a big, long-necked Skylet who thrives in the colder reaches of your Ranch, their long hair keeping them warm in the strongest of winds. But they are rather shy and can be tricky to entice into a new home!
Peggy (left) is the rarest Skylet we know, they will only appear on Skysteads that already have a vast variety of Skylets for them to make friends with as they hate to be alone!
Left: Peggy - Right: Fjord
Wormy!
For any of you who have been following our development from the very beginning, do you remember Wormy?
Wormy was one of the 2 test creatures for the very early prototypes of Skystead Ranch to test if the game idea was possible - but they were left behind as we continued with the development and were replaced by Shelly.
But not any more! Jack dug him out of the depths of the folder structure where he had been buried and recreated him to better fit the game as it is today!
What a cute little guy he is!
Nintendo Switch Release Delays
An update for those of you who are waiting to get Skystead Ranch on the Nintendo Switch, we are sorry to say that we have hit some unexpected delays with getting the game working well on this console. We are still confident that we will be able to release Skystead Ranch on the Nintendo Switch, but due to these delays and the turnaround time needed for Nintendo, the game will not be released on Switch at the same time as we are releasing on PC. If you are a Switch Kickstarter backer, don't worry we are still hoping to send you keys at the same time as PC backers so you shouldn't be impacted too much.
We will update you further with an exact date when we know more. Thank you for your patience!
Skystead Ranch is still releasing on Steam on the 17th of Jan, that's only 38 days from the posting of this update! 😱
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570/Skystead_Ranch/
Please wishlist the game if you haven't already and tell your friends about us!
With love, the ToastieLabs team <3