TIME TO DEMO

 Ahoy all!


It’s time to put on that peg leg and find your eye patch! It’s time for piracy!

The FREE Sky Pirates demo is out for everyone to play!




Demo Link: Sky Pirates: Puzzles & Plunder


It’s been quite the grind to get here. We began with a long list of things to do, and then kept adding as we went along. That being said, we also pushed a few things out that we`ll be re-visiting once we get the time.

One of our big goals with this demo is to collect feedback and game-play data so we can further refine the scoring and enjoyment! So invite your friends and play as much as you can so we can make the game better for everyone.



    In the tavern, you’ll find a job board which will display ships that are currently active. You can hop on to an active ship OR start your own! Note that all ships are currently ‘public’ to encourage group play and reduce server load while we make sure things are stable.


A few updates to the puzzles have happened. We’ve tweaked the visibility on several, Hydronautics and Repairs both have overhauls of the visibility, so please let us know if it helps. Along with that, our Boarding game should kick off automatically after the target ship is disabled in the Navigation game. Here’s a quick overview of the Navigation and Boarding mini-games:

Navigation


     Captaining a ship and shooting other ships is core to the gameplay loop, and we’re trying to make this more accessible to more people. Part of this is changing how this game works

    Each ship comes with a ‘deck’ of move cards. At the start of each round you`ll get a hand whose size is determined by the ship’s speed. So the better your sailors are, the more move options you`ll have in your hand! Eventually ships will have special cards and modifications to your ship will grant even more options.

                              


    During a round, you may place as many or as few of your cards into the ship-move-slots to the right, but hold on! That blue bar is your water level. If your hydro team is doing well, all the move slots will be open, and you can place them in the order you like. However, as the water level lowers, you’ll have to plan further ahead, as positions will be locked and you cannot modify them until they are unlocked.


    At the end of the round, the top move is activated and removed. The rest of the moves shift one position up, and the next round begins!

 
 

But I hear the cry; “When do I blow stuff up!?” Any time before the movement begins on your round, you can activate the port or starboard cannons. If there are loaded cannons on the side you choose, they will fire after the movement ends and before the next round begins. Thankfully, you can make changes until the last moment, just make sure you know which way you are facing!


With this aim to increase game speed, we also made sure the cannon boards will always direct Battledeck players to a cannon to load if there is one.

When these are yellow or green, you can make things go boom!


Currently, world collisions with other ships are not enabled. We`ll work on that in our next Navigation update, plus obstacles and other effects. “Just don’t worry about it…” (Russ- 2026). 



Boarding





Move blocks side-to-side by dragging them- matching three or more blocks of the same color horizontally or vertically will clear them. The goal is to launch as many matches of 4 or more blocks as possible, while not allowing any column on your board to reach the top! If it reaches the top you get a tiny grace period and then get KO’d. Enemy attacks will come in from the side and you break them by making matches next to them!




Speaking of things that are broken, please remember that this is a DEMO. There will be bugs, things that are weird, unintended functionality, and some instability. Some things we can fix in real time, other things we’ll fix with small updates. And- importantly- some mechanics will change. So definitely share what you find with us! Each bit of feedback is valuable and helps us better track issues. 



        Looking at the future, we`ll be taking a short break on development. Partly to let the data collection create some patterns and partly to recover from the push to get this to a publishable demo. We`ll be doing other things, going for a publisher is definitely still on our list and with a demo, it opens the doors to a lot more than just a pitch. And we’ll be pushing small fixes as we’re able- as well as updates to the mobile app.


So get out there and sink some ships with your friends, or make new friends! We have a channel on our Discord for those looking for groups. There are also links in the game to submit feedback, and a few easter eggs for people to discover!


Join us below and don't forget to wishlist!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

In the wet-works

Image
  Ahoy all you salty sky-raiders! As the spring weather rolls in we are drenching ourselves in our work. Recovered from sickness and back on track we are pushing to get the first puzzle into your awaiting hands. My baby, Hydronautics (formerly bilge) is coming along and we are in the process of finishing it to be packed up and ready for deployment. Soon you`ll be able to get your hands wet with our first puzzle, which we’re aiming to follow up shortly with the others. Our initial work is vital to the process, so we`ve spent a lot of time making sure the backbones for the interface, game management, and effects will work across multiple games.  Before we plunge into the depths of the full release we`ll be putting out all the individual puzzle games to play, getting player feedback, trying some experiments, and fixing bugs. We will be releasing a more detailed dive into Hydronautics with a video shortly (once I finish editing it...again). But I`d like to take a little of your ti...
Read more

Wind and Weapons

Image
Sailing has come a long way very quickly, we (Russ) started from scratch again, but with a better understanding of how we wanted the game to feel and the features we wanted to build in. With all our foundation work on Hydronautics it became the first puzzle to be brought on using all the prior work we had put in.  There were growing pains, and a lot of deep discussions about what should be done within each individual puzzle and what should be done in a universal code block. It can seem straightforward, rating each puzzle by a scoring rubric. In reality, none of them play the same way, so scoring and rating how skill is measured can be tricky! This brings to mind how important it will be for all of you to let us know what is working for you and what is holding you back. As we develop variations on the puzzles, it`ll be the best way to guide our design process. While it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to love at least one variant of each puzzle, the goal is to make it so you d...
Read more

Made of Bricks

Image
  Made of Bricks Greetings fellow raiders! A Message from Lead Developer Russ: As we mentioned in the last post, the past two weeks have been focused on migration to Unity 6. One of the things we knew going into this was that our framework thus far had been pieced together in a “get it working, fix it later” fashion- and that wasn’t going to be sustainable moving forward. With that in mind, we made the decision to build a solid foundation that is robust, flexible, easier to build on top of, and will better suit our needs moving forward. This was one of those choices where the only downside is the time it would take to create.  And now here we are, knee deep in getting everything laid out properly. Prior to this, we would see problems come up and just find a band-aid solution so we could push forward. Now we have a better knowledge of how to avoid many of those issues through better planning and execution. It’s been amazing to have the time and space to properly nail down and r...
Read more