Work on Skyfear has been quietly but smoothly continuing in 2026. I plan on releasing the next update in March and this update will bring some small yet significant changes to Skyfear that I believe improve the game's main draw and make it more engaging.
Coming in the Spring Update
- Main Menu changes. The game will present you with the Main Menu first instead of dropping you into the Lairworld. This has been requested for quite some time and I finally came up with a logic design for how to impliment this that I was happy with. Lairworld will now be entered through the Main Menu, and you can just enter and exit as you like, but the Main Menu will now be served first which a majority of new players are going to be more pleased with.
- In-game updates menu. There will now be a place in-game to view all the documents and things related to Skyfear such as these blog posts. This was halfway already a thing in the game but the UX has been redesigned to be more user friendly.
- Gameplay changes. After a lot of consideration, I felt like Magic and Health and Ability frags were near unlimited and perhaps lead to stagnant gameplay. I've reduced the automatic regeneration for all of these things by a significant amount, and buffed the pickup orbs quite a bit, plus making their placement in the arenas more meaningful. This has lead to playing with a lot more decision-making during battle, players now having to be smart about managing their Magic usage, and the game feels richer this way. Will have to be dialed in but I think this is good for the game.
View the commit log for more details: https://playskyfear.com/docs/commits
All of this will go through the experimental branch first, so keep an eye on the commit log for when that goes up.
In progress
These are things that I've also been working on, but can't say definitively when they'll be ready:
- Dragon re-do. In order to deliver some proper good dragon animation, I've got to basically re-make the rig and probably also re-do the retopologized game model. This is going to take some time to get right, but will be worth it.
- Tutorial game mode, for players of all experience levels to both learn how the game works but also practice it and experiment as much as they want.
- Lighting and camera composition improvements. While I believe I've made some nice looking environments and effects, I think the game's camera work doesn't always let that shine. Possible that improvements make it into the Spring Update but we'll see!
- New content. I've got a list put together of new magic types, perks, abilities, maps, game modes, and cosmetics. Ultimately everything written above this is more of a priority, but I have a goal to significantly increase Skyfear's in-game content in 2026 so I'll be starting to select and finish the things on that list.
- A PVE game mode has been designed. Single player & co-op. Will talk more about this later in 2026!
Thanks for reading, thanks for playing, see you in the arenas soon!
- telekrex, developer