Dark Sky News

Hey everyone,

A few months ago, we introduced one of the playable characters, Brae, the hermit philosopher of Wolf Prime. If you missed his story, you can catch up here.

This month, we’re really excited to introduce you to someone new—Floxxy! Floxxy is a fish out of water, an outsider in an unfamiliar world, armed with powerful abilities that can break through enemy defenses. She has a unique mechanic called 'Flux,' which amplifies her powers.



[h3]Background[/h3]
Floxxy is a member of the fish-like species chronozoa that evolved on the radioactive ocean planet of Bryne. Like all chronozoa, Floxxy was born in the Midwater region just below the surface of the ocean. Before she was captured by Mining Guild agents, Floxxy had never been out of sight of her shoal (tribe). She had never seen dry land, or even the ocean floor.



During her long transport from her home world of Bryne to the Guild’s hub world of Obsidia V, she was kept in a small hydrocell with a handful of others. For that terrifying month, instead of the vast sunlit sea, she found herself surrounded by darkness and metal walls. Upon reaching Obsidia V, she was transferred to a Guild freighter, where she was fitted with a mech suit and trained for mine work. During her time on the freighter, she learned the particulars of her new reality: she was to be stationed on a desert planet, where she would spend the remainder of her life working in the solium mines. Beyond that, no future was articulated except that, as a Level Three work animal, she could be “released” by her Guild masters at any time. Although the word release was never defined, it was clearly a euphemism for something undesirable.

Early concept art explorations for Floxxy. In early iterations of Floxxy, we called her “Jinxy”.

Cowed and confused, she and other new arrivals began their new lives in the solium mines of Wolf Prime, wondering what had happened to the workers they had been brought to replace. Over time, Floxxy gained the respect of her fellow workers by bargaining with her superiors for various rights and benefits, most of which were granted in exchange for harder work, their only real bargaining chip. While this trade-off made life in the mines more arduous, it also made it more bearable. During her years in the mines, Floxxy never stopped chafing at the mistreatment of her species, nor dreaming of the freedom to return to her homeworld.

When catastrophe strikes Wolf Prime, Floxxy hears about it through whispered rumors. Most of what the workers know has been gleaned from overheard conversations between GSEC officers, most of whom seem worried. Still, something important is happening, and she hopes that it might lead to favorable circumstances for her and her coworkers.

When the opportunity arises, it is a simple matter of luck. Non-Guild infiltrators offer her an escape from the mines if she will help them locate what they are seeking. She decides to accept their offer, and joins their party, even though it means going deeper into the mines than she has ever been.



[h3]Abilities[/h3]
In battle, Floxxy is a powerhouse. Her mech suit is heavy and slow but designed to take a lot of pressure. Floxxy accumulates Flux whenever a card is exhausted, turning it into energy to power up her abilities. She can spend Flux to increase damage or push enemies, gain movement points, or play cards for example. As a miner, she’s equipped with tools designed to extract valuable resources that can be exhausted in battle and repurposed as Flux, or kept as crafting materials out of combat. Her kit also makes her great at breaking things open, allowing her to easily breach enemy defenses.



Focus: Tanking damage. Exhausting cards to power up moves and defense breacher.

• Slow movement, highest HP pool with Block generation over time.
• Generates Resources with various effects.
  
• Great to breach defenses.
• Can exhaust cards to enhance her abilities.
  

We hope you enjoyed getting to know Floxxy - we have more character blogs coming up and can’t wait to share more about this colorful cast of characters. If you want to talk to us about the characters or anything at all join our Discord!

- Team Dark Sky

Greetings,

For this month’s developer update we wanted to focus on the systems that we have been working hard at refining and putting together.

To give more context, we received great feedback about the ignite status effect reaction from those who played the demo and wanted to further expand on this to create more synergies between party members and builds.

Now we have seven reactions!

How it works:

Some status effects interact with each other. When a unit is affected by both, a powerful reaction can occur, clearing all stacks of the statuses involved in the reaction. So today we’ll walk you through some of the new actions and what statuses you’ll need to make them happen.

Short Circuit:
Static + Corrosion/Sticky
Effect: Short Circuit causes an explosion that deals 3 damage to the unit and applies 2 Static to all adjacent units (including diagonals).

Sick:
Poison + Static/Corrosion
Effect: At the Start and End of the turn, this unit will take 2 Potent damage. (damage that bypasses all defenses) Lose one stack at the end of the turn. 3 Stacks.

Exposed:
Vulnerable + Blind/Slow
Effect: Whenever this unit receives damage, double it, then lower one stack. 3 stacks.

Frail:
Blind + Slow/Sticky
Effect: The next time this unit would deal damage, it deals 0 damage instead.

Boosted:
Power + Energized
Effect: The next attack played will cast twice if able (second cast is free).

Relaxed:
Regen + Impervious
Effect: The next skill played will cast twice if able (second cast is free).
In addition to these status effect reactions, we have also implemented a few other major updates and features: Ability to respec your build - Sometimes you might be tempted to try a different build to play around a new card or character, or simply out of curiosity! So now, after a certain point in the game, you will be able to respec your characters whenever you visit the Ukh’s shop.



Preview enemy intents
After a lot of testing and feedback, we realized that having more detailed information about the enemy’s turn allowed us for deeper interaction with the movement system and opened up more interesting decisions during our turn. So added enemy intent cards to expose all their moves.



Combat UX/UI Updates
Our combat UI was due some updates. Among these changes we designed a new energy counter to make it easier to track energy consumption. And we improved the party placement UI to show the characters’ HP and saved loadouts with all their cards.



That's it for this month’s developer update! We've been hard at work refining the game's systems and integrating your feedback. We’re thrilled to share the new status effect reactions, enemy intents, and UX/UI updates we've implemented. And keep an eye out for our upcoming gameplay trailer - we can’t wait for you to see it!

- Dark Sky Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1454960/Dark_Sky/

Greetings,

This month, we wanted to take a moment to focus on one of the major characters that has yet to be introduced. We are excited for everyone to meet Brae, the hermit philosopher of Wolf Prime.

[h3]Brae Background[/h3]
Brae is a creature of few words, pensive and soulful. The tragedies of his past have made him hard to read, and he seldom shows emotion. In the desolate reaches of a remote canyon on Wolf Prime, a lone figure watches the stars, Brae is an Eogani, a species known for their ability to tap into the genetic memories of their ancestors. Eoganis have a short life expectancy of only twenty years, but their inherited memories give them advanced intelligence.

At four years old - considered fully grown by Eogani standards - Brae met Alma, a fellow Eogani who quickly became his mate. Alma was an archaeologist, skilled in creating vast underground tunnels. Her talents led her to work for the Mining Guild on Wolf Prime, where she began a job that was supposed to pave the way for a bright future. Their plan was simple: Alma would start her job, and Brae would join her six months later. However, fate had other plans. When Brae arrived on Wolf Prime, he was devastated to learn that Alma had perished in a mining accident three months earlier. The news shattered him. Despite his efforts to uncover the truth, the Mining Guild's vague responses and suspected cover-up only deepened his despair. With his trust in people broken, Brae has gone out to the desert to find peace in his final days - an Eogani practice called “decresis,”



He retreated to a remote canyon, building a shelter where no one would find him. His nights were spent gazing at the stars, but the joy and wonder he once felt had turned into a hollow ritual. As a tribute to Alma, who loved gardening, Brae cultivated a small garden to grow his food. He also became the guardian of their eojin, an Eogani egg given to him by Alma during their wedding ceremony, a precious reminder of their love.

Now, at nearly nineteen years old, Brae has resigned his final years to solitude. But like so many his quiet life is disrupted when the ships begin crashing from the sky. A small group of outsiders from Moros stumbles upon his sanctuary, speaking of a mission to save their city. Though Brae is inherently kind and soulful, his joylessness has kept him isolated for too long. He knows Alma wouldn’t want him to spend his last days mourning her. Determined to honor Alma's memory and reclaim a sense of purpose, Brae decides to join the strangers on their mission. It is a chance to see civilization one last time before his time ends.



[h3]Brae Abilities[/h3]
In battle, Brae's abilities are as complex as his emotions. By controlling his body chemistry, he can use his Morph ability to switch between two states: Acid and Base. This allows him to produce various concoctions to spray on enemies or the battlefield, creating hazardous terrain. These substances can weaken enemy defenses, hinder their movement, and can trigger an Ignite reaction when they come in contact with fire, causing great damage.. Additionally, Brae can heal allies with potent medicine. His high health pool fuels his abilities, and his enhanced memory allows him to access the discard pile, giving his party a way to double down on any strategy.

[h3]Abilities Overview[/h3]

• Focus: Terrain abilities, Buffs & Debuffs, Discard Pile play.
  
• Debuffs: Inflicts Corrosion (Debuffs Block gain) and Sticky (Prevents Movement).
  
• Healing: Heals allies.
  
• AoE Abilities: Creates hazardous terrain such as Acid pools (apply Corrosion), Sludge pools (apply Sticky).
  
• Strategic Play: Utilizes the discard pile to enhance strategies.

Brae’s journey from a broken hermit to a reluctant hero is a testament to the resilience of the spirit and the enduring power of love and companionship. As he steps out of the shadows of his canyon, he carries with him the memory of Alma and a newfound hope, ready to face the challenges ahead and perhaps, find a sense of peace along the way.



We cannot wait for you all to meet Brae. We are excited to start introducing more of the characters and world of Dark Sky with you all as we continue to progress towards launch.

- Dark Sky Team

Greetings,

It has been a busy couple of months in the world of Dark Sky. We launched a brand new demo full of meaningful changes such as redesigning and overhauling the combat, updating the deck building and card crafting menus, adding new in-battle indicators and information, updating the HUD and UI, and adding some new content! You can still download the demo for free right now, and be sure to check out our build guide that can give you some unique and powerful builds to tackle the demo with.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1454960/Dark_Sky/

To everyone that downloaded and played the most recent demo and or provided any feedback - we wanted to give a very sincere “Thank you!”. The feedback was overall really positive but there were many suggestions that gave us a lot to think about and consider. We’ll try to summarize the most common feedback and issues here, but if there is something you noticed that is not mentioned in this article please let us know either in our Discord or in the Discussions section over on Steam.

[h3]Gameplay Feedback:[/h3]

• Visibility of targeting and ranges in combat - We’re looking to improve targeting hitboxes, to make targeting more consistent and allow players to select units by clicking on the field and the character sprite. Also, we’re exploring ways to improve feedback on field states, with the goal of better communication for the actions in battle. "Where can I move?” “what can I target?” etc.
  
• Ability to respec - Because experimenting with new builds is fun, we want to give you more freedom and options to adjust your build as you unlock new cards and knowledge about the game systems.
  
• Ability to rewatch tutorials - Right now you only see the tutorials once, so we’re going to add a menu to rewatch past tutorials.
  
• Improve overworld interactions - This is a big one, but we are trying to improve the overworld loot interaction and the loot system overall. More on this coming soon.
  
• Lack of enemy intent information - We’ll be adding 'intent descriptions' with attack details for enemies.
  
• Combat status feedback - We’ll be adding status information when statues are applied to a unit, i.e. Poison, etc. Also, we want to show feedback when cards cannot be played (i.e. Cards should display why they cannot be played “OUT OF RANGE”, “STUNNED”, “NO ENERGY”)
  

[h3]Gameplay Balance and Features:[/h3]

• Character Balance - Currently, our favorite Crucean engineer is being upstaged by Agama. We're looking into better balancing their power levels so that Norton feels more relevant.
  
• Defensive Cards are imbalanced - Defensive and Healing effects across all cards are super powerful and we're working on rebalancing them. I'm talking especially to you, Mending Mesh
  
• Buff second tier upgrades - We plan to make second tier upgrades more meaningful and powerful.
  
• Review Difficulty - We’ll be continuously reviewing the combat difficulty. We want Dark Sky to feel like a challenge, while also being approachable to more story-oriented players.
  
• Controller Support - Our plan is to have full controller support at launch!
  

Once again, a huge thanks to everyone who has played and tested the demo and provided their feedback. If we are missing any thoughts that you had or want to share, please let us know, either in our Discord, or the Steam Discussions section, and we’ll make sure to relay it back to the team.

Stay tuned for more updates on Dark Sky as we build towards launch later this year.

- Ganymede Games and Midwest Games Teams

Dark Sky will be featured in the Turn Based Thursday Fest hosted by Turn Based Thursday team today 12PM Central!

You can head over to https://store.steampowered.com/sale/TurnBasedThursdayFest to learn more and be sure to wishlist Dark Sky and the other awesome games featured in the fest.

Also running on our store page you check out Jorbs and Celerity as they play through our latest demo, which is available now!

-Ganymede Games and Midwest Games Team