Merchant of the Skies cover
Merchant of the Skies screenshot
Linux PC Mac XONE Switch PS5 Steam Epic
Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Strategy, Adventure, Indie

Merchant of the Skies

Merchant of the Skies is a part of Tiny Teams festival!
Those of you who followed Merchant of the Skies from the beginning know that the core of the game has been mostly made by 2 people. Modern day technologies made game creation very accessible, but it does not mean that it's an easy job. Thanks to your support, we've managed to bring this project to full release.

A few weeks ago, Yogscast announced a festival to highlight games made by smaller teams. We are happy to announce that Merchant of the Skies is part of the selection. During the festival, you'll be able to discover different, but ambitious, games that were made by small teams just like ours.

To celebrate this, Merchant is going to be on discount for the next 6 days. For those of you who did not get it yet - now might be a good time :)

Hope you enjoy the festival and, as usual, thanks for your support.
Best,
Helen & Vladimir

Merchant of the Skies - Octopus Patch and Console Release
Hello Merchants!

The day is today! Merchant of the Skies is launching on Nintendo Switch™ and Microsoft Xbox. You can get the game on eShop and Microsoft Store now. To celebrate this, we are publishing the promised content update which involves a small, but relevant bit of lore that we wanted to include into the game.

Please welcome the musical battle with Octo MC!



During your time in Fieri archipelago campaign, you will be able to encounter the statues of Griette. Issue a challenge and see what happens next!



Apart from being a part of the world lore, this minigame will help you progress in the early/mid-game if you are stuck.

Detailed patch notes:



Gameplay:
Added an octopus minigame! Challenge the ancient octopus to a musical battle and get rewarded if you win or pay the price if you lose. To summon Octo MC, go to any statue of Griette in campaign and issue a challenge there. You don't need to make a new game for that.

UI, UX



  • Navigation map can be scrolled further to the right / left
  • Autosaving will happen once per 5 minutes now, should reduce the wait times


Gamepad adjustments



  • Toast panel cancelled on any button press
  • When you are using right joystick to hover across the map, you can see the info about visited islands if you center camera on them


Bugfixes



  • Item purchase tooltip @ wisemen fixed
  • Fixed the possible negative balance if you had weekly summary display turned off
  • Fixed another small memory leak, game should be more stable now
  • Fish tooltip fixed (mentions water rather than apples now)
  • Unowned mansion island won't recharge you anymore (need to buy it to use it)
  • Removed dark bar glitch from some UI tooltips (occured on some resolutions before)


Unfortunately, we are partially dropping support for Linux 32. The fully released version is still going to be available on Linux 32 (so if you’ve played it on Linux 32 – everything stays the same way it was before), but we can't handle the updates for it because Unity has dropped its support.


___

What's next?


While working on the patch and playtesting for consoles, I had a chance to take a deeper look into game mechanics. To all people who were saying that it's hard to arrange caravan system for reliable production on forums: you are totally right, but I could not figure out a good way to adjust it without rewriting the game.

It's clear to me that we'll need to add production limits to the buildings. I want you to be able to set how much (max) building can produce. For example: set the lumberjack production so that it won't cut more than 60 lumber, and sawmill would not produce more than 20 wood. That would allow for better caravan scheduling, I'm sure. I'm planning to add that feature before Christmas. If you have any other feedback / ideas - let me know on Steam forums. Not sure how much I can add, but I write everything down.

As usual, thanks for your support and let me know if there is anything else.
Best,
Vladimir

Nintendo Switch pre-orders are live!
Hello Merchants!

Just wanted to tell you that starting today, Nintendo Switch™ version is available for pre-order starting now.

[You can pre-order the game here], depending on your region.



The final release date for console versions, together with Steam content update is set to July 30, 9:00am PST.
As a reminder, the upcoming content update is going to add a character that we wanted to include into the game, together with a small minigame that would make your progression a bit easier in the mid-game. This is paired with a few QoL enhancements and minor bugfixes.

However, having tested the game on both Xbox and Nintendo Switch, I realized that I want to do one more update after this. When you try to establish a caravan system currently, it’s hard to keep track and avoid overproduction of one resource, except if you are extremely careful. I want to deal with that by adding production limits to the buildings (i.e. lumberjack would not cut more than 40 wood). Expect a production limit patch (probably with a few other changes!) closer to the end of 2020.

Best,
Vladimir

Merchant of the Skies content update and console launch on July 30!
Hello Merchants!

We wanted to announce two big things today
1) Merchant of the Skies is getting a content update.
2) Merchant of the Skies is coming to Nintendo Switch™ and Microsoft Xbox.

Both of these go live on July 30.

As you may know, I have hinted on working on console ports for some time. Today this all becomes official. The update is going to feature a creature that we wanted to add. Speaking from the gameplay perspective, it’s not a huge addition and rather a story gimmick which makes campaign a bit richer.



You won't need to start a new game to find this creature. We are also going to add a bunch of quality of life adjustments, more on that in actual patch notes on release :) Both of the console ports are going to get this latest version of the game. You can pre-purchase the games here in order to download them before launch:

Microsoft Store (available now)
Nintendo eShop (available on July 21).

The content update and console releases are going to be available to play on July 30. Happy trading!

Best,
Vladimir

Coldwild Games Monthly Report - June 2020
Hey!

Just wanted to give a brief update of Coldwild Games:

[previewyoutube="vpDlQalqT94;full"]

* the summer content update is still in the making
* expect an announcement on July 15th
* I decided that I want to do at least one more update afterwards, talking about this. Thanks for everyones forum feedback!
* Mailing list! I am going to be sending out the cool games / books / movies that I have experienced every month, feel free to join here: http://eepurl.com/cYW9x1

Cheers!
Vladimir

Coldwild Games Monthly Report - May 2020
Hey Merchants,

Just wanted to say that we are still alive and kicking :) This month is spent working on the next update and initiating work on console ports.

You can see more here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tIFjX42PLA

Best,
Vladimir

Merchant of the Skies - 1.6.5 - memory leak
Hey Merchants!

Thanks to a random youtube comment, I think I figured out the source of crashes that troubled some of you. I'm pushing a patch that should prevent a big part of game crashes on some computers. Thanks to everyone who let me know and I hope you keep enjoying the game.

I'm back to my vacation, will answer all the inquiries after May 18.

Cheers,
Vladimir

Merchant of the Skies - 1.6.4 - Caravans
Hey Merchants! Thanks for playing the game and for submitting your feedback! It has became clear that caravan system is not sufficiently good enough for some of you, and I wanted to fix that.

Caravan System enhancements:
1) Can look at ship inventory from caravan navigation menu
2) 4 new caravan actions
3) Caravan action limit increased to 15 (from 6). Go crazy, but not too crazy.

The new actions offer a bit more depth to caravan system planning. I think this screenshot summarizes it well:


  • You can now order caravan to buy items (and wait for this) until it has the specified item amount in the storage
  • Same goes for loading. Just wait for any possible item at the island
  • You can unload any specific island on the islands
  • You can also avoid waiting for selling all of the goods in one point. Useful if you have a lot of goods and want to do chain-selling without asking caravan to wait.


These are a bit advanced, so use them at your own discretion, since you can freeze the ship somewhat (i.e. if you order to buy lots of items, but the storage is full with other ones). I know there are still a lot of things that can be added into the caravan system, but I don't think I'm going to go further with any enhancements any time soon.

Added money cap of 2000000000, both for bank and player money. Can't really go over that.
Autorechage module now works in mansion too.
Ship inventory during trade is 6 slots wide now; needed to prevent atakebune inventory going over the trade window :)

Bugfixes


  • Fixed a bug with music / ambient sound playback. Fixed it, sound should play better. The bug with option reopening now disappeared for sure.
  • Fixed a bug when caravans would sell apples with lower cost
  • Fixed a bug when you could get a drago seed during sandbox mode


Languages


  • Thai Language support
  • Various translation improvements (mostly German translation adjustments, let me know how it feels now)


In addition to that, I am publishing Coldwild Games monthly report for April. A bit longer than usual, but I am talking about Merchant of the Skies development, how are we doing and what can be expected next. Check it out here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkCQxmPRz5w&feature=youtu.be

Thanks for staying with us and for your support. Let me know if you have any questions!
Best,
Vladimir

Merchant of the Skies - 1.6.3 - sound fixes
Hey Merchants!

Thanks for your support and bugreports so far. I wanted to push an update that deals with some of the sound/music issues, as well as typos. Changelog:

Adjustments


  • Reduced barrel size in UI by 2x to prevent it taking too much space on screen
  • Fretta fuel consumption per second increased to 1 from 0.1, max fuel to 1000. It is still intended to be a ship for idling on the map, just hopefully won't be as OP as fuel will be quite expensive to maintain. Old
  • ships will stay the way they used to be, but new purchases will be adjusted. Thanks to everyone who reported it.
  • Translation adjustments


Bugfixes


  • various typo fixes (thanks to everyone who keeps reporting them)
  • resource descriptions are properly shown in island information (when you have a quest there)
  • readjusted music / sound setting values; sliders now actually represent sound change more accurately (you might need to retune them)
  • sound won't jump up when you open settings screen
  • the music will actually start playing right away now if you tune it from 0% to any new value (rather than wait for a new scene)


Thanks for your feedback and bug reports, support and patience so far. I am continuing to look into map navigation improvements.
Best,
Vladimir

Simplified Chinese translation is now available!
Hello Merchants! We're happy to say that thanks to our fans and players, 天空商人 now supports simplified Chinese language. Hope you enjoy the game! If you find any mistakes in the translation - please let us know and we'll fix them as soon as possible.
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