The campaign is now live, and it works a bit like Kickstarter. If we get 200+ orders, they get made and you get a plushie, if not, they don't get made and you get a refund. Easy! We're unlikely to ever do merch like this again, so if you want a SkateBIRD plush? I'd snag one one now!
I already have one (the production test), and as you saw before, it's extremely cute and sits well in the hand. Would recommend! He sits above my desk now. Also that little skateboard is velcro'ed on, so you take take it off and play with it.
Skate Heaven is here! The game is DONE
Thanks for sticking with us through what ended up as quite the journey, everyone. And now we're here! We got it all in!
This patch features Skate Heaven, a new level with a bunch of new quests and fun little closer for the game. It's maybe our biggest level? Certainly one of our more varied, in terms of terrain types. It being the play park for a rich legendary skate-bird gave us a lot of leeway to go harder on things, so we had some fun with that.
There's also selfie stick mode! I highly recommend not attempting to just skate normally with it on, though, cus woof, it'll definitely cause motion sickness in folks. That's there for the handful of people doing photography in-game, since now it'll let them put the camera at the angle they want for a trick and it'll (mostly) just stay there while keeping up with them. It's a similar tool to the drop cam, just for different shots.
But yep, again, thanks everyone for following along with what turned out to be a ridiculously fun development process. Never in a million years thought that silly little skate demo I kickstarted back in 2019 would become anything like this. Heck, there's even a plush skatebird on its way out, this being the production sample they sent me:
If this update has any weird bugs crop up, we'll fix 'em, but beyond that- thanks again for all your support, and, (hopefully!) see y'all next game!
SkateBIRD's a year old, so we're 50% off!
So yeah! We've been out for a year, how about that! Thanks y'all for playing our ridiculous game! We've done a bunch of updates, added a bunch of stuff, so now it's time to celebrate the birb's birthday and be cheep for week.
Another tiny 1.7 bug fix
- Fixes issue where the "beat Playground" wouldn't unlock, even though "100%'ed Playground" would unlock - If you already beat the level but are missing the achievement, simply return to the level and you'll get the achievement
Minor patch to fix 1.7 mission unlocking oddity
- You can no longer take the Seed Swap mission before taking the mission that builds the magazines you have to ride on for said mission - Fixed placement of Daniyah's chat bubble in Craig's mission to be less confusing
1.7 is LIVE! New level! Secret skaters!
Ok! This patch has a whole lot bundled up in it, but the headliner is AN ENTIRE NEW LEVEL. It canonically takes place after the story, and starts unlocked. So you can either play it first, or play it last, whatever floats your boat. It's a fun side story about the outside world.
There's also now a secret skater, from a Highly Recognizable Game/Intellectual Property. It unlocks when you beat the game. Have fun with that. I'm not gonna drop spoilers here, y'all can be surprised or spoil yourselves as you see fit.
Oh and there's pride clothes, cus, you know, Pride! Enjoy the rainbow birds in rainbow clothes.
Next patch will be a big level
Just wanted to drop an update so folks knew what was in-progress. See? New level! Or at least in-progress new level:
It's a Playground! Big ol' modern plastic-based playground jungle gym sort of thing. There's also some neat skating under it, which feels like a park built under a big ol' overpass:
Then the birds start bringing in their own stuff to improve it, and so on. It's fun!
Anyhoo, it ended up being one of our largest levels, so development on it's just taking a bit longer. This update cycle also ran straight into DICE and GDC, and we collectively lost at least 2 weeks to work and travel and talk prep surrounding all of that. Still though, see? Level! Yay!
The main design's essentially done. I just need to figure out one more bird-addition to shiny up one tiny corner of it, then I start implementing the missions and story and all that. Then the lengthy process where we test, refine, localize all text, test on consoles, and so on. Then, hooray, new level!
The OST has FLAC
I'd had FLAC (high quality audio) in the depot, but it wasn't actually getting through to folks. Fixed that by nudging some depots around. Enjoy your FLAC! It should now download as you'd expect, assuming you've enabled the Steam setting to download high-quality music.
Version 1.6 (small point release)
- Fixes the ability to play OGG/WAV files, after a review pointed out that wasn't working (thanks Melchiah!)
It's a bit weird, and will only work on the Steam/Itch builds. If you're using the Windows Store build, it protects the folder, so I THINK you can't do this. But, if anyone gets it working on there despite, let me know!
You just need to drop .OGG or .WAV files into steamapps/common/SkateBIRD/SkateBIRD_Data/StreamingAssets. There's a little .txt in there called "put your ogg or wav music for SkateBIRD here.txt" if you just want to search it, which contains basic instructions. Please note that it'll always have at least one track of built-in not-OGG/WAV music, even if you disable everything (you'll see why), so just leave at least one track enabled to control that.
Please be aware that if you put a lot of files in here, it can make the game load VERY SLOWLY, due to the load method being pretty inefficient. It uses Unity engine functionality that links into some kind of browser back-end for external asset loading.
Let me know if anyone has problems. It's a fringe function that we didn't explain anywhere, due to the platform limitations and poor Unity loading performance. Still, it should work!
Version 1.5 (small point release)
- Combo multiplier should be visible again - The bounce-on-fans-between-rooftops mission goal in "Dye Hard" (in level: Scared Of Heists) should now work for all kinds of bounces
