It certainly has been a while, which I would like to deeply apologise for. This is going to be a long one, so either skip down to the TLDR; or buckle up.
What's going on?
I made an announcement a little over a year ago talking about some of the big plans I had for the game, which involved bringing in premade levels, leaderboards, etc, and working with others to make the game an even better experience. It was grandiose, but I felt I could pull it off assuming everything went well.
Well.. Here I am, a year later, with not much to show for it. The game's update is nowhere close to done, and the more I have worked on it, the harder it has been to justify putting all these hours into a game that frankly did not do well. It has led to long periods of burnout for me, which I am only recently starting to come out of.
Platformers were, even from the beginning, not a genre I truly enjoyed working with. It is a genre with lots of beautiful, interesting, and fun games in it, but time has told me that this is not the genre for me to work with.
What all this is leading me to say is that I am officially stopping development on Towards the Sky.
The game will remain in its current state, and the future will show what will happen to the game's presence on Steam.
Now what does this mean for Unus Lupus?
While I am stopping development on Towards the Sky, I will still continue making games and releasing them here on Steam. Game development is still my biggest passion, and nothing can extinguish it.
Starting 2023, I will start working on a VR Horror game that I have had in my mind for years now, but have always put off working on because of Towards the Sky.
To those who have stuck by the game and bought a copy, I would like to give you my heartfelt thanks. While the game may not look like much, it was my first game and will always hold a special place in my heart.
TLDR;
I am officially stopping development for Towards the Sky, leaving the game in its current state, due to burnout and a lost interest in working with platformers. Instead I will be taking a break until next year, and start working on a VR horror title.
The future of Towards the Sky
Hello current and hopefully future players!
Before I begin to announce some of the changes coming to Towards the Sky, I would first like to apologise for the lack of updates the last couple of months. Life has kept me busy and unfortunately that meant setting aside some things, and in this case it was Towards the Sky.
So what is going to happen with Towards the Sky
New and more varied gameplay
The gameplay of Towards the Sky right now is lacking. While the levels are unique, they are easy to speed through, and the gamemodes are not very encouraging in terms of replayability. With that in mind, I hope the following choices will inspire excitement in players, both current and future.
With that in mind, I will be introducing the following: Premade levels: I will be designing multiple levels by hand. The amount of levels is currently not known, but I will do my best to create levels that are interesting and increasingly difficult. With these premade levels, players can also see relevant stats for that level, such as completion time for speedrunners, or total level completion for the perfectionists.
An improved version of the random level generator Towards the Sky started out as a randomly generated game, and it would be unfair to our playerbase if I fully removed this feature, something I have no intention of doing. Instead I will be working hard to rework the level generation scripts, with better randomisation and additions to make each level feel more different and unique. The extent of these additions is not certain yet.
Seasonal levels and events Every gamer knows that holidays and seasons bring new gameplay options and rewards to most games currently out. We hope to bring this to Towards the Sky as well, with levels, UI themes, and reward events, that will give players reason to come back and revisit the game for years to come.
A complete visual overhaul.
One of the most frequents pieces of feedback I have received regarding Towards the Sky, was the visuals. In the beginning of the development processs, the budget was nonexistant and my artistic skills were non-existant. That has now changed, and I am working with a skilled 3D artist for new models, and hopefully some visual effects that can improve the look of the game.
Another thing being overhauled is the UI and menus. I will be introducing customisable UI, to allow players to change the look of the UI to fit their preferences. This will include being able to change fonts, text colour, and possibly more, depending on how much I can implement.
More content outside of regular gameplay
Another piece of feedback I have received from players, is more achievements and bonus content. In order to meet this, I am introducing the following. and more:
Skill trees: Allowing the player to buff their character permanently, with points being given at the conclusion of each level. The nature of these buffs are currently not decided, but I hope they will prove a needed boost to the player.
More achievements: Who doesn't love achievements? Our achievements, while plentiful, lack some variety. As new gameplay is introduced, I will be working on more achievements that players will find interesting enough to complete.
Game customization: Development permitting, the player will be able to customise their ingame experience, both in regards to the UI as mentioned above, but also different skyboxes, effects, and more.
Audio to be added: Towards the Sky started out as a soundless experience. However, after much consideration, I have decided to add a selection of music and audio to the game, all of which will ofcourse be mutable for those who were happy with the lack of such.
Mac and Linux support
Towards the Sky has, since its release, been exclusively a Windows game. That will be changing with the new version, as I will be working hard to make the game playable on both Mac and Linux.
More Steam features
Remaking the game on this scale means I will hopefully be able to include more Steam features. What this will include I cannot say at the moment. It will hopefully also mean more inclusion of Steam Community features, for better community engagement and more things for players to collect and share.
What will happen to current player progress, pricing?
Player Progress
Unless there is interest from players, we will most likely be purging the gameplay stats, and removing the old achievements, or adapting them to the new game.
Pricing
Until the new and improved version of Towards the Sky is released, pricing will not change. The new price for the game will depend on the assestment I make at the end of the development process. This means that players who find this announcement interesting should pick up the game while it is still cheap, as every copy sold goes straight back into the game development process.
Lastly, a thank you.
If you are reading this, you actually made it all the way through the announcement. Thank you, for taking an interest in the future of Towards the Sky. I realise i have made some mistakes, but hope to correct them to the best of my abilities, and make Towards the Sky a game I can look back on in years and be proud of. If you are currently a player, I hope you will be looking forward to the changes of the game. If you aren't yet, I hope this announcement inspires you to play the game, either now or after the future update.
If you have any questions regarding this announcement, or about Towards the Sky in general, you are always welcome to write to me at towardsthesky@unuslupus.com .
Update 1.0.2
After playtesting the game for a good while again, we ran into a rather important bug, notably that the stats page did not show the stats properly regarding level completions. We can only imagine how annoying that must have been for our players, and we deeply apologise.
The fault lies with a mistaken reference to the Steam Stats, which unfortunately means we do not have adequate counters on amount of levels completed. That said, this has now been fixed, and we hope you will give the game another go in the near future and show off your progress to friends.
We look forward to hearing your thoughts on the game, and remind you that player feedback is our best tool for improving the game. If you have any ideas, feel free to send them to towardsthesky@unuslupus.com so we can try them out and maybe implement them for next release.
Version 1.0.1 out now!
Update 1.0.1 is finally out!
A thing we have been lacking as a studio is a proper image for ourselves, so we got one made by an amazingly talented swedish artist! We've added it to the splash screen, and hope that the logo will eventually represent quality and dedication to game development in the future.
We apologise deeply for the lack of updates lately, we have been working hard to spread the word about Towards the Sky, and have such been unable to work on the game.
We're back now though, and working hard to implement some new improvements and fix some bugs. Some of them are sadly still escaping us, including the issue regarding mouse movement sensitivity on the tutorial level. That said we are looking into this and will hopefully find a fix for it soon.
We've listened to some of your issues, and have tried out best to fix them. Here are two of the biggest we've heard about in the past: - Jumping while under the effects of the gravity orb no longer halts your vertical momentum - Fixed some issues with the main menu buttons not working for controller (Notably the tutorial menu)
Aside from that, we have made a number of small changes to the scripts used in our games, and hope this will lead to some performance boosts to all our beloved players.
Thanks again for playing Towards the Sky. We greatly appreciate all of our players, and hope to bring you the best experience we can.
