Merchant of the Skies News

Hello Merchants!

Today I wanted to give some info on upcoming patch update and announce our next game!

[h2]First, patch details: [/h2]

The patch is coming out on Dec 18, 2020. The main feature is going to be production limits: you will now be able to set how many items (tops) can be produced by separate buildings on every one of your islands. That will make the caravan system much more reliable and predictable. For example, you will be able to set bread production to 20 and limit flour production to 20, then caravan will be able to wait for 20 flour and there won’t be a chance that your flour production overflows the storage and the bread won’t be able to be produced. Hopefully this will solve a lot of the caravan/production related issues up to this point :)
Apart from that, expect one new ship, a flying turtle.

And, of course, a few bugfixes to the issues that were reported by you, our dear players.

[h2]Last, but not least[/h2]
We are happy to say that we are working on another peaceful game, called Luna’s Fishing Garden!
Luna’s Fishing Garden is a cozy fishing and building game.

Check it out / wishlist it here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1477790/Lunas_Fishing_Garden/

Catch more than 20 types of fish, each with their own behavior, trade in the resources to Luna, and use them to build a garden of your dreams, all taking place on an imaginary Pacific archipelago. Designed to be a relaxing experience, players can play at their own pace and experience the game how they like it.

Check out the trailer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHDHKwGB_s8

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Thanks for reading and hope you’ll be able to enjoy the content update on Dec 18!

Cheers,
Vladimir

Those of you who followed Merchant of the Skies from the beginning know that the core of the game has been mostly made by 2 people. Modern day technologies made game creation very accessible, but it does not mean that it's an easy job. Thanks to your support, we've managed to bring this project to full release.

A few weeks ago, Yogscast announced a festival to highlight games made by smaller teams. We are happy to announce that Merchant of the Skies is part of the selection. During the festival, you'll be able to discover different, but ambitious, games that were made by small teams just like ours.

To celebrate this, Merchant is going to be on discount for the next 6 days. For those of you who did not get it yet - now might be a good time :)

Hope you enjoy the festival and, as usual, thanks for your support.
Best,
Helen & Vladimir

Hello Merchants!

The day is today! Merchant of the Skies is launching on Nintendo Switch™ and Microsoft Xbox. You can get the game on eShop and Microsoft Store now. To celebrate this, we are publishing the promised content update which involves a small, but relevant bit of lore that we wanted to include into the game.

[h2]Please welcome the musical battle with Octo MC![/h2]

During your time in Fieri archipelago campaign, you will be able to encounter the statues of Griette. Issue a challenge and see what happens next!



Apart from being a part of the world lore, this minigame will help you progress in the early/mid-game if you are stuck.

[h2]Detailed patch notes:[/h2]

Gameplay:
Added an octopus minigame! Challenge the ancient octopus to a musical battle and get rewarded if you win or pay the price if you lose. To summon Octo MC, go to any statue of Griette in campaign and issue a challenge there. You don't need to make a new game for that.

[h3]UI, UX[/h3]

• Navigation map can be scrolled further to the right / left
  
• Autosaving will happen once per 5 minutes now, should reduce the wait times
  

[h3]Gamepad adjustments[/h3]

• Toast panel cancelled on any button press
  
• When you are using right joystick to hover across the map, you can see the info about visited islands if you center camera on them
  

[h3]Bugfixes[/h3]

• Item purchase tooltip @ wisemen fixed
  
• Fixed the possible negative balance if you had weekly summary display turned off
  
• Fixed another small memory leak, game should be more stable now
  
• Fish tooltip fixed (mentions water rather than apples now)
  
• Unowned mansion island won't recharge you anymore (need to buy it to use it)
  
• Removed dark bar glitch from some UI tooltips (occured on some resolutions before)
  

Unfortunately, we are partially dropping support for Linux 32. The fully released version is still going to be available on Linux 32 (so if you’ve played it on Linux 32 – everything stays the same way it was before), but we can't handle the updates for it because Unity has dropped its support.


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[h2]What's next?[/h2]
While working on the patch and playtesting for consoles, I had a chance to take a deeper look into game mechanics. To all people who were saying that it's hard to arrange caravan system for reliable production on forums: you are totally right, but I could not figure out a good way to adjust it without rewriting the game.

It's clear to me that we'll need to add production limits to the buildings. I want you to be able to set how much (max) building can produce. For example: set the lumberjack production so that it won't cut more than 60 lumber, and sawmill would not produce more than 20 wood. That would allow for better caravan scheduling, I'm sure. I'm planning to add that feature before Christmas. If you have any other feedback / ideas - let me know on Steam forums. Not sure how much I can add, but I write everything down.

As usual, thanks for your support and let me know if there is anything else.
Best,
Vladimir

Hello Merchants!

Just wanted to tell you that starting today, Nintendo Switch™ version is available for pre-order starting now.

[You can pre-order the game here], depending on your region.



The final release date for console versions, together with Steam content update is set to July 30, 9:00am PST.
As a reminder, the upcoming content update is going to add a character that we wanted to include into the game, together with a small minigame that would make your progression a bit easier in the mid-game. This is paired with a few QoL enhancements and minor bugfixes.

However, having tested the game on both Xbox and Nintendo Switch, I realized that I want to do one more update after this. When you try to establish a caravan system currently, it’s hard to keep track and avoid overproduction of one resource, except if you are extremely careful. I want to deal with that by adding production limits to the buildings (i.e. lumberjack would not cut more than 40 wood). Expect a production limit patch (probably with a few other changes!) closer to the end of 2020.

Best,
Vladimir

Hello Merchants!

We wanted to announce two big things today
1) Merchant of the Skies is getting a content update.
2) Merchant of the Skies is coming to Nintendo Switch™ and Microsoft Xbox.

Both of these go live on July 30.

As you may know, I have hinted on working on console ports for some time. Today this all becomes official. The update is going to feature a creature that we wanted to add. Speaking from the gameplay perspective, it’s not a huge addition and rather a story gimmick which makes campaign a bit richer.



You won't need to start a new game to find this creature. We are also going to add a bunch of quality of life adjustments, more on that in actual patch notes on release :) Both of the console ports are going to get this latest version of the game. You can pre-purchase the games here in order to download them before launch:

Microsoft Store (available now)
Nintendo eShop (available on July 21).

The content update and console releases are going to be available to play on July 30. Happy trading!

Best,
Vladimir