Last updated September 30 2024
You are a dragon, and you fight other dragons in arena shooter inspired combat, in prehistoric world.
I go by @telekrex some places. I’ve been developing games for 10+ years, mostly on my own. I founded Protoria Studios to publish some of my work. While I do the game developing, Protoria Studios also employs a small team for quality assurance and business solutions. Skyfear is effectively made by 1 person, so keep that in mind when regarding content/services.
Skyfear will be $14.99 USD. It’s not a huge game, but it’s full of atmosphere and fun gameplay. A free to play model would only be possible with both a guaranteed player base and heavy monetization, and as a solo indie developer I don’t feel comfortable gambling on that, or using those practices. The intention is that the game will be complete upon release.
Skyfear will be a game for personal computers. While Windows is the only officially supported OS, it can be emulated on Linux with Wine or Steam’s Proton. I don’t have any experience developing games for console or mobile. Console porting would be expensive, probably, I don’t know. As for mobile, I have never played mobile games so am not sure I could do it justice. Who knows, maybe someday though.
Skyfear might be playable on Mac via Wine, but this is untested. I would love a native Mac port, but this has unique challenges, and I don’t own any Mac computers as of writing this. This is something that could be achieved someday after launch though.
Skyfear will release in early access in 2024, but I want to be clear the game is mostly complete. The gameplay is probably not going to change too much, but there could be content. For details about updates, please read Release Cycle.
As of September 2024, Skyfear is extremely close to a complete game, that will just need testing to refine. The plan is to launch in Early Access and spend the next year or so refining. For details about updates, please read Release Cycle.
Fall 2024.
Covered in spikes and scutes, two bat-like wings, a long serpent-like body, a strong chest, raptor-like legs, and the face of a monitor lizard. It is, by all means, the blueprint of a wyvern. These dragons are smaller than the usual hollywood goliath, they are more like the rhinoceros or komodo dragon sized. Their size allows them to be quick, because the gameplay is all about movement and shooting. They are supposed to be agile, like fighter jets or like bats. When you explore the Lairworld you will unlock body parts to fully customize your dragon such as eyes, horns, skins, vertebrae spikes, tail tips, and vocalizations.
You have a hub called the Lairworld, and then at your pleasure, you enter timed combat matches like an arena shooter, with a variety of maps and modes. Play online with other players or offline versus bots, with adjustable difficulty settings.
Combat combines third person shooter and action-sport-like movement into what feels like a snowball fight. It’s fast and responsive — you can slither around on the ground, jump into the air, fly like a bat, and roll like a fighter jet. Spray fire like a flamethrower or shoot rapid fire projectiles. Use special abilities to spice up a fight, and use perks to add physical advantages to your playstyle.
Completing battles will earn you XP and dust. When you level up in XP, DNA caches from the stars, called spores, will land in the Lairworld from a meteor. Then you can unlock customizations from them by transferring dust. The more XP you earn, the more spores show up, and the more dust you collect, the more spores you can open. So there’s a bit of back and forth between combat and working on your character.
Skyfear hosts battles of up to 6 players. The idea was to have small, up close and personal battles. It’s like a snowball fight. It’s fast, but you have enough room to observe your opponents and make decisions, really get your head into it.
Yes, there is a single player side that features offline bot battles. Extensive work has been put into making the AI challenging, fun, and replayable.
Yes, single player and multiplayer offer the same gameplay and you earn the same progress, with some % adjustments. It’s designed so you can still enjoy it if you don’t have high speed internet, competitive nature, or a group of friends. You can play the whole game solo offline if you like.
There is a server browser. In modern gaming, most games have you sit waiting for 2 minutes before finding a match, meanwhile everyone debates how matchmaking should be done, and the developers always keep their secrets on how its being done. All of this seems unneccessary to me, I’m just going to give you a list of who is playing what and you can make your own choice. Maybe we can discuss matchmaking as a community if someday it is necessary.
Yes, you can do custom games. You can fully customize the game rules, add passwords to make it private, and even change the color of the server name in the server browser to stand out.
Skyfear is not designed to be a live service. Skyfear is designed to enjoyed from Day 1 until whenever you’re done, with or without the rest of the world. Save data is local, but can be backed up to Steam Cloud. If you buy this game 5 years after release, whether players are still playing or not, you’ll still have a whole game to experience if you play vs bots. Both the online multiplayer and offline bots should provide exciting and unpredictable battles. There is zero content in the game that you must spend money to get, and zero content in the game that are delivered in temporary patches. It’s all there on your hard drive. 5 GB download.
Honestly it depends on how competitive you are and how quickly you want to level up. For the average player, I think there’s at least 30 hours worth of unlocking the main stuff, but there’s a skill ceiling to explore and lots of cosmetics to collect. As for maps, there’s a lot more that exist than got finished for release. Depending on demand, more maps can easily be finished and added to the game without disrupting anyone’s progression. See Release Cycle in regards to updates.
For details about updates, please read Release Cycle. While there’s no official plans for, say, specific content at specific times, there’s a lot of potential and a lot of items and maps that got cut. I’ll do my best to deliver some if it’s in demand.
There will be a soundtrack release, at least. There’s some ideas I have for bonus content, or behind the scenes content, but as of writing this there are no official plans for that. Any additional in-game content will most likely be a free update.
There is no pre-order, but you can wishlist it on Steam.
Just 5 GB. See full system requirements here. This is subject to change, but not by much.
Unreal Engine 4.
The graphics stop a fair bit shy of photoreal. It’s about how games from 2009-2012 looked. Reasons for this are a strong focus on performance, readability at fast pace, and a bit of nostalgia as well. In the game’s earlier years, photorealism was attempted but it was very difficult to scale. As a dragon you cover a large area pretty quick, so even though maps like Eden feel like COD’s Nuketown, it’s actually 5x bigger than that if you put the two locations side by side. Readability is also really important in a game with gameplay like this. When you’re dodging firebolts at full speed and hoping to 180 turn and hit your opponent, photorealistic tree branches muddy your vision. I hope the art direction is more visible than the polygons. Perhaps someday there can be a version with improved graphics, if everyone wants that and the technology makes sense.
I grew up with Eragon and Dragonology books, which greatly played a part in the dragon’s design, and some of the user experience. Ridley Scott’s Alien was also looked at a lot. I didn’t want the dragon to be like a puppy, I wanted the player to control something fierce and other-worldly.
Making a prehistoric world was harder than I thought to develop. The Land Before Time gave me a lot of ideas about colors and shapes. James Cameron’s Avatar showed me you can create beautiful worlds with unnatural geometry, and The Shadow of Colossus showed me a video game world can feel vast with the right combination of atmosphere and foliage. I’d sort of describe the game’s aeshetic as prehistoric goth.
Gameplay-wise, Skyfear’s all about vicious feeling and responsive movement. Games that helped develop this feel are Quake, Halo, Call of Duty, Killzone, Vanquish, and Batman Arkham series.
Amidst popular franchises of the PlayStation 3 era, I really admired games that were ambitious despite their budget such as Haze and Lair, and Avatar’s game adaptation. You could tell with these games they wanted to do more than they could. A little arena shooter called Psychokinetic Wars really inspired me to make games.
If you like any of the media I’ve listed here, you will probably really get Skyfear.
The game was originally designed sometime around 2010, then I officially started developing the game in 2015. I’ve spent a lot of that time on other projects as well, having prototyped nearly 30 other game ideas, but from ~2022 ish and onward I’ve been solely focused on Skyfear.
Yes, the game works with the “Xbox” button layout. Any third party copycat controller should be able to play it on theirs. PlayStation controllers would work too, it’s just that their glyphs are not something I can use without a license, where the ABXY glyphs are more open. Although I think most playtesters think mouse and keyboard is the best way to play this game.
No, just Steam. Just buy and hit play.
Nope. Just hit play and the game opens.
No.
No.
No.
Yes. Yes. Sure. If the resolution you want isn’t listed in the options menu, you can probably edit an .ini file somewhere to change it manually. I’ve not yet seen a triple monitor wide setup been tested, but go crazy man
I spent more time on art direction than graphics, and was hoping to capture an aesthetic of 2009-2012 era games. Since most of Skyfear’s gameplay you don’t really need detailed shadows, and you’re 30 yards off the ground, you’re not going to notice any reflecting light effects, so the short answer is “it doesn’t need ray tracing”. But I know there’s a lot of ray-tracing fans out there. I won’t rule it out, it’s something I could look into adding in a later update. But not a need.
Unreal Engine 5 got rid of a few things that Skyfear makes heavy use of, so there would be a lot of rebuilding. Skyfear actually uses a source built UE4.21, so it’s way behind actually. While I admit there are ways this has hurt development, it has lead to more focus on design than on technology. A migration to Unreal 5 would not be easy, but I could prepare myself to do it if it somehow became necessary. It has been discussed internally more than once.
That would be fun! Split screen mode was being explored in earlier years, but as of August 2022, it’s not finished or working. Mainly because it’s not necessary for a complete game, but like UE5, ray-tracing, and other things, I’m not closing the door on it.
Yup! This is perhaps the easiest non PC platform to support, since Valve’s work with Proton handles the software compatibility, and on my end I just need to make sure the in-game experience can account for the screen size and controls. The frame rate is decent on the Deck since Skyfear has been built from the start to run okay on lower end PCs.
Tell your friends about it! Tell your favorite YouTubers about it! Join the Discord server! Wishlist on Steam!
If you’ve read all this, you’re a champ. Hope to see you in the arena <3