Isles of Sea and Sky News

IndieCade Festival 2023 is here!

Join us for a two-week celebration of independent games, now live on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/sale/IndieCade2023

Schedule: https://www.indiecade.com/festival-2023/sessions/

What We’ve Been Up To

• We’re making spine tingling progress with Milestone 4, currently on a certain creepy green and purple chain of islands you may all be familiar with. Check out a couple of mysterious and spooky peeks in our latest Kickstarter update, IF YOU DARE 😈👻🎃!!
  
• INDIE GAMES RULE!!! We made an outrageously fun and over the top Tiktok in the style of the Bill Nye the Science Guy intro! All three of us (Craig, Dan, and Jason) put our heads and skills together to make this, and it was a pretty monumental task! Help us out by liking / sharing it on social media! (Please… we put too much effort into this for it to flop lol).
  https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8Msyhfs/
• Jason has started The Player Experience Blog on our website. Here’s a look at his most recent post with an interesting and in-depth look at a post-mortem of the new demo update.
  

The Leftfield Collection

• We are unbelievably stoked to share with you that Isles of Sea and Sky will be part of The Leftfield Collection at EGX London from October 12-15! If you’re going to EGX, come try our new show demo!
  

SXSW Australia

• We are also exploding with excitement to let you know that Isles of Sea and Sky will be a part of SXSW Australia from October 15-22! If you are going to SXSW Australia, you can also come try our show demo!
  

Thank You!
We value your feedback and suggestions, so please don't hesitate to reach out to us with any questions or comments. Follow us on TikTok and Twitter and join our rapidly growing community on Discord to join in on the conversation.

Sign up for future monthly updates!

Wishing you spooky sailing and stormy skies,
Cicada Games

NEW DEMO!!!

• In case you missed it: Recently we released a big new update to the public demo! (Version 5.2)
  
• We’ve been keeping up to date with player feedback on the demo and releasing lots of tweaks and improvements along the way! 
  
• Find all the patch notes in our Steam announcements to see what’s been updated!
  
• Try the new demo and let us know what you think!!!
  

Speaking of player feedback, here are some incredible responses that we received about the latest demo update:

“The previous demo made me excited for the full game. This new demo increased that excitement tenfold!” -Tonite

“Isles of Sea and Sky is a game I cannot sing enough praises about. It is an absolute masterclass of design on every level that I highly recommend to anyone.” -SapphireDrew

"After speedrunning the game for so long, Isles of Sea and Sky's latest demo reminded me of why I fell in love with this game to begin with. It truly refills the sense of mystery and wonder that keeps you exploring to learn more about the world." -Adventium_

 "When I first played..., I was reminded of my childhood. Playing this new Demo, the same feeling remained if it didn't get stronger… [it] added a new layer of mystery... that has me really excited for the full game!" -Pendragon

"I love when a game surprises me. There's so many mysteries and secrets in the game that a surprise awaits you every turn. The demo is a good reminder that this game is very special and I absolutely cannot wait for the release! " -dackid

 "Every demo update... continues to iterate, evolve, and improve the game, bringing me a sense of joy and wonder each time. The team's passion and dedication has been evident to me from the first moment I first washed up on the beach in-game. I can't wait to experience the masterpiece that will be the full game!" -CyberSe7en

“[Isles of Sea and Sky] manages to take everything I love about gaming and condenses it into one awesome package, it's not even out yet but I feel like I've gotten more from it than even the highest budget titles.” -MartianBlobfish

“I really liked how there were no instructions so that you learned by just butting your head against things. I didn't need any outside help but it still felt challenging. I think the cleverest the game made me feel was figuring out when things were connected that weren't on the same screen.” -archcorenth

Thank you for all the wonderful feedback!

What We’ve Been Up To

• Milestone 4 continues to progress by leaps and bounds. Check out a new teaser screenshot from Milestone 4 on Kickstarter.
  
• We continue to helplessly flail on social media. Here’s a little round up, help us out with likes, subscribes, follows, winks, uptweets, revotes, chain emails, swiping right, MySpace, etc:
  
• Check out this banger on Tiktok (How It Started vs. How It’s Going)
  
• Another fun Tiktok about a fire elemental bug.
  
• A sneak peek at a river puzzle on Twitter.
  
• A recent post on r/Games Indie Sunday.
  

The Leftfield Collection
We are unbelievably stoked to share with you that Isles of Sea and Sky will be a part of The Leftfield Collection at EGX from October 12-15! If you’re going to EGX, come try our new show demo!

Thank You!
We value your feedback and suggestions, so please don't hesitate to reach out to us with any questions or comments. Follow us on TikTok and Twitter and join our rapidly growing community on Discord to join in on the conversation.

Sign up for our mailing list!

Wishing you smooth sailing and clear skies,
Cicada Games

Friend, are you weary of talk of blockbuster space-faring RPGs and blockbuster D&D adaptations and blockbusters in general? Do you yearn for the older, simpler days before the great Unrealification and the invention of sex scenes, when people called a spike pit a spike pit, and you could count all the different colours in a screenshot on your fingers? Do you, in fact, reject this framing of retro-styled 2D pixelart games as "older" and "simpler", regarding it as condescending and false? Look, shut up already. I'm trying to tell you about Isles of Sea and Sky from developers Jason Newman, Dan Collver and Craig Collver.

Read more

Due to large changes that impact save files, this version will require new saves. If you would like to continue with a save file for v5.1 of the demo, v5.1 will be temporarily available on the beta branch (See below for more details about how to access it).

Bugs

• Removed the ability to water clip to get the star on the Eastern Shoal.
  
• The Shadow Twin should now properly push against objects when the player moves.
  
• Several collision issues with special sprites have been fixed.
  
• Most if not all item % issues should be fixed.
  
• Dirt piles should properly interact with switches after using undo and reset.
  
• An issue with the correct dirt pile color loading on Rolling Rock has been resolved.
  
• Fixed an issue where certain tiles would sometimes load incorrectly.
  
• Some item pathing issues were fixed.
  
• Other small fixes.
  

System

• Features that are resolved (e.g. music puzzle, sokoblock puzzle, etc.) are now removed from the room contents display on the right side of the game map.
  
• Start button on gamepad now properly quits out of options menu when in game.
  
• L button and select buttons on gamepad added to more parts of the game as confirm / cancel respectively, to ensure game can be played using only the left side of the controller. This is meant to help with accessibility for some players, and maximizing ability to chill with drink in hand for others.
  
• Back end improvements.
  

Gameplay

• Big Keys have been replaced with Rune Stones: We have seen a large number of players confused by how big keys worked vs. small keys. The game establishes immediately that keys are temporary, and then has to do a lot of heavy lifting that wasn't always effective to change that perception about big keys which are permanent.
  
• Sokoblock puzzle revamped.
  
• • The puzzle has been reworked to avoid self sabotage when the player is still trying to experiment and figure out the puzzle, as well as frustrating backtracking when the player has figured it out. Both of these run extremely counter to two of my core design philosophies: 1. When approaching something new, the player should be able to experiment and learn in a non-punishing environment. 2. Once a player knows how to solve something, it should be reasonably easy to achieve their goal. There should not be frustrating and tedious steps after a solution has been realized. The puzzle also does not require the reset button any longer. This is another benefit as I don’t really want to have to introduce one time mechanics like that.
    
  • Not more than one block can start in a perfect position now. I.e. the gold block in a room
    
  needs only to be pushed forward into the closest spot.
  
• The pattern puzzle has been tweaked to hopefully make the connection between the two parts of the puzzle more obvious.
  
• Rolling Rock: Layout tweaks and updated tileset to match the theme of some other small islands in the full game.
  
• Another star and ancient key have been added to the demo.
  
• Dirt piles now properly fall into pits when digging into them from a covered pit.
  
• Stoney Caverns C1: Upward arrow block replaced with a dirt pile.
  
• Crystal Cavern panning speed increased.
  
• Star Lock in Stoney Caverns C1 increased cost to 23 stars.
  
• The first music note on Stoney Cliffs has been made slightly easier to discover by accident.
  

Art

• Sokoblock symbols added to the gold door so that the positions can be seen even if all symbols are covered.
  
• Inert arrow blocks have a new design in order to further differentiate themselves from activatable arrow blocks and help with colorblind accessibility.
  
• Added some juice to the digging animations, as well as making them more clear while digging.
  
• Added artwork to the main character sprite after gopher gloves are obtained.
  
• Revamped the god gem UI with new effects.
  
• Items in player’s collection on file screen are now simply drawn from left to right.
  
• Runestones have been added to save file UI.
  
• Added an art effect for “hiding stars,” e.g. the music puzzle now glows to indicate a hiding star.
  
• Other visual tweaks and polish.
  

Sound

• Stoney Caverns ambiance has been separated into the ambiance channel. The volume of Stoney Caverns music and ambiance can now properly be controlled independently.
  

[h3]Accessing v5.1[/h3]
If you would like to finish up an in progress game on the old version:
How to access the beta branch.
Password: WowwieZowwie