We apologize for not keeping the community more up to date with sky climbers development, but we have great news! We are releasing a beta for the next chapter on April 5th! This chapter includes new mechanics such as the paraglider and animal riding on a massive multi biome terrain. There is still plenty of content which we are overhauling, such as an inventory system, enemy AI combat and more characters for the game’s narrative. This beta will recieve consistent updates and will eventually be merged into the master project.
The development team has grown recently so there are now 4 developers working on the game. The current progress new chapter came together in roughly 2-3 weeks and we feel it is a much needed improvement for the game and really opened up how the game can progress. We will be doing our best to keep the community updated with our development and put out more consistent updates to the game.
So heres what is specifically new about this beta update. The first major thing is that this beta was created in a new unity project. With the new developers working on the project, we felt it was better to get everyone on the same page instead of learning all of the ins and outs of the old unity project. With this fresh project, we rebuilt the core mechanics of Sky Climbers and brought some new assets into the project. We have a new terrain engine called terrain composer and this allowed us to easily generate height maps and paint the landscape with ease. We created a low poly shader that applies to the new terrain to give the look and feel that has been present throughout the game. Once we got the new terrain in, we started to add new mechanics and features. To be honest, we were very inspired by “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild” and we decided to craft our our own paraglider to make full use of this new terrain we created. It is possible for the player to launch into the sky and glide throughout the entire map with ease. Even if you are not paragliding, getting around the map is just as quick and easy with the new animal riding locomotion. Animal/Guardian companionship is something we plan to develop more into the narrative as well. The core mechanics of the game have also been modified. We have removed teleport locomotion from the game and replaced it with a “walk in place” locomotion. Hold the circle pad and swing your arms to move. The climbing mechanic has also been revamped as now it possible to climb onto moving objects. We have a “fling from anywhere” script, which as the name says allows the player propel themselves forward; however it is very buggy at the moment.
Our main goals for the next update include populating the map with more animals, enemy AI combat and establishing new dojo environments that can be found around the map. We are working on the game everyday and we should get in the habit of more consistent daily updates.
Thanks for all the feedback so far, please let us know if you have any comments or concerns about Sky Climbers.