Sky: Children of the Light News

It’s been a busy year in and out of Sky—new events and features in the game, multiple Sky Assemblies around the world, and of course, you may have heard about that world record-breaking AURORA concert at gamescom. Now it’s time for more news about Steam Next Fest, and an update on our Wishlist campaign.


[h2]Join Us During Steam Next Fest[/h2]

We’re excited to share that Sky will next be participating in Steam Next Fest from October 9th through 16th! During that window, all PC players can play a demo version of Sky via Steam—no special sign-ups or invite codes are needed.

To play on the Next Fest PC demo, you’ll be able to download Sky from Steam like any other game. We’d love to get your feedback on things like:

• How does the game feel as you play it? Is performance smooth and stable?
  
• Do you have any issues with graphics?
  
• How were controls and UI (user interface)?
  

Both new and current players are welcome to try this version out—feedback from players of all experience levels is vital! We’ll track feedback through a dedicated channel on Discord—join us on the server to send it there so that we can hear from you! That feedback will be vital as we work towards the full PC launch—and on big plans we have for next year, too…

During Next Fest we’ll also be hosting a special livestream! Join us on October 13th at 9:00 am PDT (UTC -7) for a special Steam Next Fest stream featuring Cozy K, Game Designer Julian Jimsa, and Community Manager Stellify on our official Steam page. Julian and Stellify will join Cozy K in exploring the world of Sky, as well as enjoying the Days of Style vibes. Keep an eye on our Steam page too for exclusive material (like, say, concept art) being posted there as part of the event.



The main difference between the demo version of Sky available during Next Fest and the full version is that in-game purchases won’t be available. Otherwise, PC players will be able to play the Next Fest version of Sky the same as players on mobile, Switch, and PlayStation, and there will be crossplay with all other platforms.

(Note that account progress on the Next Fest PC demo will be saved and carried over to the full official launch later on. If you already have a Sky account, link it to a Steam account first while you’re on a mobile device, and you’ll be able to play that account during Next Fest.)

[h2]Steam Wishlist Extravaganza Results[/h2]

There’s no other way to put it: You all were AMAZING. You easily took us past 100,000 and then 200,000 wishlists, and kept going past 250,000 and even 300,000! THANK YOU! As we mentioned in our Wishlist announcement, we’re giving something to the community for each of these four tiers:

1. 100,000: Special Edition Desktop Backgrounds (https://bit.ly/SkyWallpaper)
   
2. 200,000: Sneak Peek Concept Art (if you missed them, we posted them earlier here!)
   
3. 250,000: Traveling Spirit Community Vote
   
4. 300,000: Double Hearts + Double Candles event during the first week of the full PC launch
   

We’re working out the specific dates for when the Community-voted Traveling Spirit and Double Hearts + Double Candles will appear in the game for everyone. But, in the meantime, there’s a very important decision to make—



[h2]Traveling Spirit Community Vote[/h2]

Since we reached 250,000 Wishlists, it’s time to choose a Traveling Spirit! This Spirit will be the second in line to visit after Sky’s official launch on PC. All Spirits currently eligible to return as a TS are listed on the voting form; whichever Spirit gets the most votes compared to any other will be chosen.

Voting begins today, October 5th, and continues until 10:00 am on October 16th PDT (UTC -7), the last day of Next Fest. Happy voting!

https://bit.ly/WishlistTSVote

[h2]Phew![/h2]

Next Fest, livestreaming, more Steam PC players, a Traveling Spirit vote—that was a lot for one blog article. With everything going on, and some bigger plans on the horizon, we can’t wait to share what’s coming up. We’ll see you at Next Fest!

We did it, Sky kids! Sky officially surpassed 200k wishlists here on Steam and we're now well on our way to the 250k mark! As promised, we're here to deliver some lovely work from the thatgamecompany art team.

Sky content goes through a lot of iterations, discussion, and change before reaching players. These four concept pieces are from our ideation phases, and may or may not appear in-game or end up altered before making it into Sky. We hope you enjoy the peek at this part of our process!



[h3]Concept Piece #1[/h3]



[h3]Concept Piece #2[/h3]



[h3]Concept Piece #3[/h3]



[h3]Concept Piece #4[/h3]





If you missed our earlier post about wishlist milestones, you can find it here.

Among all the things we’re getting ready for this summer, one of the most exciting is happening next month. From August 23rd-27th we’re heading to GamesCom!

Across five days in Cologne, Germany we’ll be bringing a little piece of Sky in the real world. The team will be in a booth in Hall 9, so if you’re in the area, come by and see us! And when you do, set aside a few minutes to try out the first hands-on version of Sky on PC, which we’re excited to be able to share ahead of Sky’s official PC launch!

And if you can’t attend in person, don’t worry, there are still big ways you can take part in the event. We decided to throw a party for everyone in Sky for the occasion. Of course, the best place for a party that huge is the Coliseum—and heck, if we’re going to get thousands of players together in Sky’s best concert venue, then there really should be a concert.

So we’re excited to announce the AURORA Encore Concerts! These will run from August 27th through September 3rd PDT (UTC -7). During this encore event, the original Season of AURORA IAPs will be offered again for purchase, and the Cure For Me outfit and mask originally offered by the AURORA guide will be available. There will be a couple new items too, including a free emote for everyone!



[h2]Join In a Record-Breaking Concert[/h2]
Mark your calendars now—On Friday August 25th at 3:00 pm CEST (1:00 pm UTC), we’re calling all Sky kids to join the AURORA concert and set a new world record together! Come join us to create a new milestone that reaches even beyond the realms of Sky! Our engineers are pulling out all the stops to expand the Coliseum capacity to ten thousand players at once, and it’s only fitting that this record is centered on an experience celebrating the connections we all share.

This special world record concert will be hosted by the ever-awesome Sky content creator Sarah "NastyMold" Hayes, with new minigames like tug-of-war to join in with thousands of your fellow Sky kids.

Join us for the countdown to the concert here on our website!


[h2]Be Part of Special Community Celebration[/h2]
On Saturday August 26th, the halls of the Coliseum will once again open for a special version of the concert that we’ll be excited to announce during GamesCom. NastyMold will be back too, hosting special activities as we build up to the celebration concert. Stay tuned for more details as the day of this event approaches!


[h2]Get Ready for Sky PC Beta[/h2]
You probably noticed how we mentioned having a version of Sky ready to try on PC during GamesCom. That means we’ll be starting a limited Sky PC beta on Steam soon—very soon. If you have a PC and want to take part, we’d love to have your help!

All things PC beta will be organized through Discord and in English, so join our server and then head this way to sign up.

The PC beta will be focused on catching and squashing bugs—grab your nets and join us on this bug hunting expedition!


[h2]Creating Sky Milestones Together [/h2]
Don’t forget—our Steam Moth Recruitment Recruitment Drive is still underway! Whether you’re a current player or anxiously awaiting PC launch to join the Sky community, head over to our Steam page and add Sky to your wishlist. This guides more moths to the game, and we have cool rewards to share when total wishlist numbers hit certain tiers!

We’ll be sharing more details about GamesCom, the concerts, and more, so keep an eye out for more announcements in the weeks ahead. We’ll see you in the skies—and we hope at GamesCom!

You might have heard a few weeks ago that Sky will soon be coming to PC. We’re pretty darn excited about that here on the Community team, and while the rest of the studio is hard at work, we thought we’d have some fun of our own in the lead up to launch.

To get the PC launch countdown started, we decided to borrow Design Team’s game design hats (don’t worry, we’ll give them back!) and make a little game out of Steam wishlists.

Enter: The Steam Wishlist Extravaganza, or The Steam Moth Recruitment Drive—whichever you prefer.

On Steam, the more wishlists a game has, the more new moths will find their way to Sky’s kingdom of enchanting scenery, adventures in the clouds, and Dark Dragons offering hugs (or…something…) to everyone they meet. We’ve set up a handful of wishlist targets, and for each one cleared, we’ll be doling out exciting gifts to you, the players!

Participating is simple:

• Head to the Sky page on Steam: bit.ly/SkyPCSteam
• Select the green “Add to your wishlist” button. If you’re not logged into a Steam account, you’ll be prompted to log in, or create a new account for free
  
• Insert Confetti Cousin emote—you boosted Team Wishlist!
  

Tell your friends too! Anyone can wishlist Sky, including current players.



And what are these gifts to reveal?

[h3]100,000 Wishlists: Special Edition Desktop Backgrounds[/h3]
[CLEARED] Perfect for PC and any other device you’d want a high quality Sky background on, handmade and delivered fresh from the Art Team.

[h3]200,000 Wishlists: Sneak Peek Concept Art[/h3]
At this milestone, we’ll sneak into the Art Team’s desks I mean ask the Art Team to also share some of their latest concept art from their brainstorming work for upcoming content. It’s all stuff in early stages so will likely change a lot before ever making it to the live version of Sky, but it’s great for hypothesizing, taking OC inspiration, or wondering just what kind of shenanigans we get up to before something is ready for beta.

[h3]250,000 Wishlists: Traveling Spirit Community Vote[/h3]
At a quarter of a million wishlists, we’ll run a huge poll for players to choose a Spirit to return as a Traveling Spirit. Vote for your favorite, and the winning Spirit will be the second one to visit after Sky’s PC launch.

[h3]300,000: Double Hearts and Candles[/h3]
When we reach this exciting milestone, we’ll add to Steam launch celebrations by holding a special Double Hearts + Double Candles event in Sky during the first week of PC launch.

If these numbers seem high, fun fact: The number of people who have joined the official Sky Discord server is about 525,000. Just mentioning, you know, in case that’s a helpful reference for how close these could be…

That said, we had these rewards all planned for each milestone, and then the community beat us to the punch on the first one—right now we already have over 100,000 wishlists on Steam, which is really awesome! As a thank you, we’ve prepared four backgrounds that are ready to use, perfect for your devices (especially PC, of course). Download here: https://bit.ly/SkyWallpaper

Tio, our Social Media Crab, will be keeping us all updated as we reach each wishlist level, so stay tuned to Discord and our other social media channels for updates. In the meantime, be sure to add Sky to your Steam wishlist and help us share Sky with new people (future moths!) all around the world. See you in the skies!

If you’ve been following our blog lately, you’ll know that we have a lot in the works, not least of all a PC launch and a new addition to Sky we’re referring to for now as Project Aviary. But as you might know we enjoy a good crab dance party, so today we’re announcing a series of Sky Assemblies being held across the world to celebrate Sky’s 4th birthday together, in-person.

We’re excited to announce that Assemblies will take place in five different countries, spread out for several weeks starting from July 15th and continuing into August. If you’ll be in one of these areas, we hope you can join us!

Below is some of the basic information for each Sky Assembly, in order of date (all times published in local time zones). Stay tuned to our social media channels for details about each one as it approaches. You can also find information on our website at thatskygame.com/sky-assemblies.



[h3]Seoul[/h3]

When: July 15-16 (Sat.-Sun.) 10:00 am - 6:00 pm
Where: On.S Cafe, 59 Jandari-ro, Mapo-gu, Seoul (South Korea)
Activities Include: Sky photo booth, themed food and beverages, and gifts (for starters)
How to Join: As those following our Korean-language channels have seen, free tickets are required, and registration to apply for tickets is now closed. Due to high interest, applicants will be randomly selected; ticket winners will be announced on our Korean channels by the end of the month!



[h3]Tokyo[/h3]

When: July 17 (Mon.) Two sessions: 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm and 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

• A special 4th Anniversary exhibition is on July 16 (Sun.) with five 90-minute slots held between 11:30 am - 7:00 pm. This is separate from the Sky Assembly and will not include designated Assembly activities.
  

Where: GG Shibuya Mobile Esports Cafe (Shibuya PARCO 6F), 15-1 Udagawacho, Shibuya City, Tokyo 150-0042 (Japan)
Activities Include: “Daily Quests,” a Sky art panel presented by Lead Artist Yui Tanabe, and more. (The special exhibition on the 16th also includes activities, videos, and a photo spot, and a pop-up store on the 5th floor runs from June 30 - July 18.)
How to Join: Tickets are free and required to attend. Follow our Japanese-language channels for additional information!



[h3]Los Angeles[/h3]

When: July 22nd (Sat.) 11:00 am - 4:00 pm
Where: The Fig House, 6433 N Figueroa St., Los Angeles, CA 90042 (United States)
Activities Include: Lots of things, not least of all Sky-themed outdoor games, crafts, meeting the devs, and of course, crab dancing
How to Join: Simply join us at The Fig House on the day of the Assembly! Entry is free.

A number of us from the studio will be coming to this one too, so we’re looking forward to meeting folks there! We’ll share more information here on our news page and our English-language channels as the event gets closer.



[h3]Sāo Paulo[/h3]

When: July 29th (Sat) 2:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Where: Garage, 164 Rua Madalena Vila Madalena, SP 05434-010 (Brazil)
Activities Include: Sky quiz, in-game scavenger hunt, a Crab Workshop, and more
How to Join: Tickets are required to attend. Head to https://bit.ly/AssemblyBrazil to reserve free tickets and see a detailed schedule

This event will be hosted in Portuguese by Tio from the TGC Community Dev team, but further updates will be shared on our English-language channels ahead of the event.



[h3]Jakarta[/h3]

When: August 26th-27th (Sat.-Sun.) 12:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Where: 3Point Tebet (3-min. Walk from Tebet Station), Jl. Tebet Raya No.90, RW.3, Tebet Tim., Kec. Tebet, Kota Jakarta Selatan, Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta 12820 (Indonesia)
Activities Include: Sky photo booth, food and beverages, games, and goodie bags
How to Join: Reservations required. Attending is free but a deposit fee of Rp 50,000 is needed to reserve your spot; the deposit will be returned after you arrive at the event.

Follow our Indonesian-language channels for additional information about registration in upcoming weeks!