Skystead Ranch News

It's time for the Farming Fest and we're taking part with Skystead Ranch!



We have been working hard over the past month to add and improve upon the farming aspects of Skystead Ranch.
You can try it out all week by downloading and playing the Pre-Alpha demo for free!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570/Skystead_Ranch/

Our game is still in the early stages of development so you will see many areas of the game that are still in progress, this gives you the unique opportunity to provide direct feedback on Skystead Ranch! If you follow the "Questionnaire" button from the game's main menu, you can let us know your thoughts, which we will review and take on board with the rest of the game development!

Thank you in advance for your valuable input! 🥰

[h2]Discord Fun[/h2]
Alongside the free demo, we have a giveaway and activities in our Discord all week long, make sure you join our Community Discord to get involved!



[h2]Developer Livestreams[/h2]
We are going live at least twice this week right here on the Skystead Ranch Steam store page!
Make sure you stop by on Tuesday and Thursday* to say hi to the devs and talk to us about our experiences with Skystead Ranch!

*Any additional live-streaming dates will be announced here on Steam.



No more waiting around! Download the Demo now and get Ranching on your very own Skystead!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570/Skystead_Ranch/

Big news! We're taking part in the Steam Farming Fest this month!

An opportunity to celebrate one of our favourite game genres - Farming! As Skystead Ranch has a large element of Farming we thought this would be the perfect opportunity for you all to try out the current game in a demo format.

That's right, at the end of this month, from the 26th of April to the 6th of May, Skystead Ranch will be available to download and play as a free Demo! Make sure you try it and let us know what you think.


Since last time, we have 6 exciting new Skylets in various stages of development! The new skylets are to fit a variety of gameplay roles as we introduce new themed zones.

Some are very small, some can even fly, but all of them are as cute as can be!

From left to right: Sizzle, Puffle, Tor, Bigby, Snarl



"Shiny" skin variants are also in the works as we are also improving upon the rare Skylet spawning! We have been changing up the colour pallet and adding emissive textures to give them that extra rare glow!




Our artist Laura has been hard at work making 2 new zones for you to play in the demo!

[h2]House Zone[/h2]
The House Zone is situated above the starting island and comes with your very own humble abode! The purpose of this island is to be more of a player hub, where you can upgrade your house, customise the area with decorations and even do some fishing and cooking! (Fishing and cooking aren't implemented just yet)



[h2]Forest Zone[/h2]
The second of the playable zones, like the starting island, is designed for you to farm, upgrade and discover new Skylets! The forest zone will be more lush than the first island with vibrant trees, dense undergrowth and all the wonderful Skylets that come with it!




With all the new additions to the game from the art department, we have been making sure we don't fall behind on the technical side too! Our programmer has been hard at work ensuring the frame rate, loading times, and other performance requirements are as polished as they can be.

One big step was reworking the 3D grass model! Updates to the grass shaders allow for lifelike movement without taxing the drivers and a change in the way the grass is rendered allows us to have a lot more grass density for a lot less performance cost.

Just look at that sweet grass!




Our motivation for performance improvement was twofold. It is important for us to provide a better game overall, but we are also excited to make sure Skystead Ranch is console-ready too!

We officially have a Steam Deck here at ToastieLabs! What that means is we are now able to officially support Skystead Ranch (and our other games) on the Steam Deck as we can do in-house QA testing on the Deck which we weren't able to do before.



With plans for Skystead Ranch releasing on the Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch, we have begun work on controller support as well as classic keyboard and mouse. Make sure you plug in your controller or play on your Steam Deck this month when the Demo goes live and let us know what you think!


"With controller support comes new controls" - Uncle Ben or something

[h2]Camera Controls[/h2]
Taking your feedback on board from the Next Fest back in October, as well as considering the player experience when playing with a controller, we have completely overhauled the player camera for Skystead Ranch.
No longer is the game a top-down one-directional camera, but is now a 3rd Person camera with full 360-degree control!

We're still working out the kinks when it comes to camera movement sensitivity, but the overall feel is much better for Skystead Ranch and we are very happy with the change. (Even if it does mean more work for the artists to fix the backs of the island that you couldn't see before, sorry Jack and Laura!)

[h2]Crook Controls [/h2]
The next set of controls to overhaul was the crook controls. The ability to dig holes, clear the earth and build items needed to be redesigned to fit with the new camera and controller support system.

An updated building UI has been added which makes the building flow much easier!


A lot of work is still needed to make sure this is ready for the demo, so best of luck to our programmer Rob!


To all of you non-native English speakers, we are very proud to announce that work has officially begun on localising Skystead Ranch.
The store pages and the base game are now translated into 11 additional languages!
Please note: All of the localising still needs a thorough QA so there may be an issue or 2 until we get that all fixed for you.

[h2]Localised Languages: [/h2]

• Chinese Simplified
  
• Chinese Traditional
  
• Dutch
  
• French
  
• German
  
• Italian
  
• Japanese
  
• Korean
  
• Portuguese
  
• Russian
  
• Spanish
  

Thank you for following our progress with Skystead Ranch! We invite you to play the demo from the 26th and let us know what you think!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570/Skystead_Ranch/

The game is still in early access so your feedback is very important to us. After trying the game, press the "Discord" and "Questionnaire" buttons on the game's main menu and let us know what you think in as much or as little detail as you like.

Thank you! 💖

We've hit the ground running as we are starting 2024! To make the game as good as we can, we started this January by stripping down the demo you got to try last October back to the basics.

This allows us to have a second pass on everything, and ensure all files are in the correct place and following the right structure - overall, allowing for a better, more optimised game!
This is also the perfect opportunity to take your feedback on board and revisit some of the game fundamentals like the art style and game feel.

[h2]Publishers?[/h2]
Alongside the technical development, we are still in talks with various organisations to see about getting a publisher for Skystead Ranch, we are still hopeful of finding a publisher that aligns with our company values. We can't say much more on this at the moment, but will keep you all updated with any news we can announce.


The biggest news for ToastieLabs and Skystead Ranch this year so far, is our newest 3D Artist Laura! Going from 1 artist to 2 will greatly increase the quality and quantity of the assets we can create to flesh out the fantastical world of Skystead Ranch!

Laura is already settling in well with the team and has started strong with these new 3D models for the game! Her amazing work lets Jack focus his efforts on making many more unique Skylets.




A large part of the development is revising the world layout, we concluded from the game Demo, that the starting world layout was far too large for tutorial purposes, with this in mind we have blocked out a brand new island layout, with the player house completely separate to the Skylet play area!

We are excited about the possibilities this unlocks from a gameplay point of view and are excited for you all to try it for yourselves in future demonstrations.



We put additional early development effort into the starting island to allow us to pass on the revisited art style to the publishers we are talking with. It's looking more and more like how we envisioned Skystead to look when we initially designed the game concept. Specifically the revised toon shaders we are using for the Skylets and improved lighting make for a much more cosy experience than we demonstrated in the demo. We also have a couple of new Sky Ships if you look closely.

Make sure you follow us on Steam and on our socials to stay up-to-date with the development process as we continue to make Skystead Ranch! We're still on track for release in early 2025!

We have not only reached but surpassed the goal to a staggering 133% of our target, to a satisfying £20,000 exactly! We are overwhelmed by the support we have received; it has been a wild journey this past month and we are grateful to have been able to spend it with such amazing people. Rest assured that any pledges over our target will really help us move forward as we go full throttle into game development!

In the last 60s, we hit our first stretch goal; as promised we can confirm that Skystead Ranch will get an additional Beach Island including a new playable area, an additional 10 Skylets, new Sandy and Deep Water floor types, as well as a sprinkling of items and plants to accompany the new content. Thank you so much to the last-minute backers, we truly didn't believe we would hit this goal!




So the Kickstarter is over, along with all of the crazy events we have done this month. What do we do now?

[h2]1. Rest[/h2]
First off, most importantly for us here at ToastieLabs, we need some time to rest and recuperate! After the super busy month we've had this October we have certainly earned it. We are making sure all of the team have the time off they require to ease back into work.

We've had 4 DLCs released for our other games this month, on top of EGX, MCM, Steam Next Fest, and the Kickstarter, so you can imagine just how busy we've been!

[h2]2. Other Games DLC and Taking Stock of Skystead Ranch[/h2]

Once the team is back to full strength, we are splitting into 2 groups to get the first, real step started! The end of the year for ToastieLabs brings with it a few extra game DLCs to release, including Advent Calendar DLCs for the whole month of December - so most of the team will be working hard to get these DLCs made and released on time.

We will also be getting the Backer Exclusive DLC made during this time so there will be plenty of time to Quality Test each DLC for release in early 2024!



Meanwhile, Rob will start taking stock of everything we have in Skystead Ranch so we can thoroughly plan what is needed, what can be removed, and what needs a little fixing.

Larger game features like Saving and Loading, Skylet AI, and better Player Controls are first on the to-do list.

[h2]3. 2024, Full Throttle for Skystead Ranch[/h2]

Come January 2024, we are hitting the ground running with Skystead development! We will be focusing primarily on the new Skylets we need for Skystead Ranch, starting with the Cat and Dog pets that are needed for you Animal Lovers who have pledged over £50, and the Game Designer custom-skylets for the 2 of you who have pledged the highest tier! 💖



We want to ensure people who have Alpha access from the top tiers will also be able to play with the pets and custom-created Skylets, thus allowing us to get ample QA testing on the additional features the pets bring.

[h2]4. Investigate other means of Funding[/h2]

As this is our largest game project to date, we want to ensure Skystead has the best chance we can give it on release. With that in mind, we are going to investigate the possibility of getting a Publisher on board for the release of Skystead Ranch. We just want to give the game every opportunity possible in terms of marketing so more people will be able to relax with the final release!

A Publisher is a nice-to-have for us, but it is not a must-have for our game development, so if we are unable to find a suitable publisher for us to partner with, we will happily continue development as we are. We have done alright on our own so far, so we will only take on a publisher if they are a good fit.

[h2]5. Organise the rest of the road map and share it with you all![/h2]

This isn't everything! Come summer of 2024 we will have the rest of the development plan fully laid out, and we will continue to be as transparent as we can with you all so you know where we are going next! We will continue to drop update posts monthly here on Kickstarter to keep you updated on our progress.



Since the end of the Kickstarter Campaign, we have all taken the time to recuperate and are back on track with all of our projects. Make sure you check out Coloring Pixels, hexceed and WooLoop whilst you are waiting for Skystead Ranch!

We have also begun reaching out to a number of publishers, so fingers crossed on news regarding that soon.

Once again, we cannot say it enough - Thank you for all of your support! ❤️ You have all come together to make our dreams come true, and we are eternally grateful. We will take a nap now and get back to work very soon.

Lots of love - The ToastieLabs Team.

Don't miss out on the exclusive backer rewards! Pledge to back us now!


https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch