We’ve been hard at work on the first world of Skystone, located in the ruins of the Aeronaut hometown of Steamcity.  When fungus and haze spread throughout the land, foul creatures were born in its wake, combining genetic material of native animals to quickly adapt to this new world.  The Steamcity Ruins are home to a diverse group of these Mimic creatures, created in the image of animals and insects that once inhabited the city.  Below is a small sample of Mimics that will be encountered in this first area:

Pidgebomber
Located in: Steamcity Ruins

These Mimic creatures resemble a cross between the pigeons and flies that once lived in Steamcity.  When Rooks first encountered this breed, they gave them the nickname “pidgebombers” because of their aggressive use of haze-infused excrement that they dropped from the sky.  When their wings are clipped, these creatures will drop to the ground and spew haze from both ends.

Pustosser
Located in: Abandoned Factory

Most closely resembling a dog, these hairy beasts are covered with haze-filled tumors that hang from their skin.  When a pustosser notices a human, they rip one of the tumors from their belly and hurl it towards their enemy.

Slugrat
Located in: Steamcity Sewers

With similarities to slugs and rats, these furry menaces cling to ceilings and walls in the ancient sewers, scurrying along all surfaces to attack any humans they can find.

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Happy Memorial Day everyone! We thought it would be a fitting time to introduce you to another person you will find in Nidaria, Lieutenant Driscoll.

He is a veteran of the ongoing war with the Mimics. Lt. Driscoll was en route to a drop point, when the airship he was riding crashed into a Mimic-infested patch of forest. Unfortunately the pilot and Lt. Driscoll’s close friend, Captain Mick, didn’t make it. However, Lt. Driscoll survived the crash, and was rescued in the nick of time. It is said that during game-play, you might wander past the remains of that crash, hidden deep within the Ferric Forest.

When Driscoll recovered, he knew his days of service were over, but was offered a job running the Barracks and being head matchmaker for co-op missions. Wystan (whom we will discuss later) crafted a custom-made, steam-powered wheelchair for Driscoll, which could be propelled by traditional wheeling, or by channeling steam from his blaster cuffs to the axle of his chair.

Lieutenant Driscoll is an easy-going, well-liked guy around town, and always eager to tell you a few stories from his glory days.

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Development Update! Last week, we managed to get personal “Floats” up and running. This was a challenging milestone for RoS, but the results were well worth it.

Floats are the type of housing used in RoS. Much like the town of Nidaria, Floats reside in the upper atmosphere of Skystone, safe from the haze below. Floats are then grouped together into small Clusters.

Each Cluster represents a shared interest, or specific group of friends. All Floats of a specific Cluster are tethered to the Cluster’s hub, a sort of town square. You wont have to worry about Navigating around to different floats on your own, just use your map menu to browse or search for a specific float or cluster hub.

You can deck out your Float with furniture and spoils that you have accumulated over time. Although your Float initially only has one floor, additional floors can be added with the help of Cypress at the Housing Department. Each floor’s wallpaper, flooring, trim, can be customized. When adding a floor, you will have multiple footprints to choose from.

If you’re in your own float (and you have no visitors), you can click the “Edit Floor” button to take you to the easy-to-use Float Editor. You will have options to lock/unlock your doors, only allow friends, and/or kick out unwelcome guests. Your visitors will be able to rate your float based on your design skills, and at the end of the week, the player with the most popular float will be awarded with a traveling trophy.

We could go on and on about all the details on the Floats, but we will save that for later. Plus, we have to get back to work!

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You may have seen this character hanging out in some of our previous screenshots: He is a Nidarian Rook, one of many.

Rooks are members of the prestigious army of Nidaria. They are the first wave of troops to enter new lands, and set up strategic checkpoints for players on the ground. You will find these sharpshooting Aeronauts guarding the Etherillium Coils from wayward Mimics. While on the ground, Rooks will point you in the right direction, and quickly drag you to safety if the Mimics get the best of you.

Not only will you encounter these soldiers on the ground, but you will also see them in the town of Nidaria. Some can be found on duty, dealing out quests at Mission Deployment. Here you will be able to take on the latest challenges issued by the General. If you are skilled enough to complete them, you will be rewarded for your hard work.

This is one of the many ways that you can take on “quests” in RoS. All of your missions will be organized in your handy Quests menu, where you will be able to view all active and completed quests, as well as get detailed information about each. Don’t worry, if a quest ends up being more then you can handle, you always have the option of abandoning it.

Some of the Rooks that you encounter may also be on break, enjoying their free time on Nidaria’s many levels. If you talk to them, who knows what they may end up chatting about…

Learn to love these gas-masked grunts, because when times are tough, they may be your only hope of survival.

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Within the industrial landscape of Nidaria lies a lush park at its topmost level. Depending on what side of town you are coming from, the park can be accessed by zip cord or air-lift. On this level, you can chat under the shade of the maple trees, check out some rankings (we’ll discuss that another time), or visit the weathered shack known as the “Housing Department”.

This is where the NPC (non-playable character), Cypress, comes into play.

He works (and practically lives) in the Housing Department, the RoS equivalent of the DMV. Even though work is slow, he has to maintain his dreary post all day and night. When he’s not filing papers, he’s either drawing, tinkering, or dreaming of adventure. People started to notice his rare talent, and would ask him to draw things they would encounter on missions. He had an uncanny knack for taking their descriptions and accurately illustrating them on his office note cards. He soon started to frame his drawings in pocket-watch sized lockets, which he fondly referred to as “Sprockets”. When you open one up, the left side displays a drawing while the right side has a brief description of the subject matter.

After a while, he made a name for himself with his Sprockets, and found himself with a fulfilling side job. He soon (after filing all proper paper-work) converted the second window of the Housing Department to be his own personal “Sprocket Booth”. He makes his Sprockets for players by giving them a challenge relating to its content (kill 20 Mimitaur to get the Mimitaur Sprocket). Then when the challenge is complete, he draws up the picture for you from your own experience.

Not only do players collect Sprockets, but so do the NPCs around town (they are pretty popular in Nidaria). Sometimes, if you are lucky and scratch a few backs, an NPC will reward you with a Sprocket from their own collection.

It’s also not rare, yet still unfortunate, that Sprockets get dropped from above and end up hidden on the haze-filled ground below. So, you may stumble upon a Sprocket as you explore the land.

The Sprockets are divided into multiple series, so you could have the “Rooks” Series A, which has 16 sprockets total, but you only have #1,#5, and #9, so keep on collecting. Maybe you are focused on collecting “Lana Westwood” series B, which covers her back-story, and how she got to Nidaria.

This should be an interesting way to introduce the stories, history, myths and other info in bite-sized, collectible amounts. This way, players can slowly connect the dots of the world of Skystone.

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When the Mimics spread their noxious haze across the land, the people of Skystone had no defense against the poison that was blanketing their world. While the early years in the sky were focused mainly on survival, in recent times the Nidarians have made strides in research to help stop the spread of the haze and give them a fighting chance of exterminating the Mimic races. At the core of this advancement is Otto von Tesla, and his use of Etherillium.

Located above the Main Dock in Nidaria, the Victory Lab is home to the great scientist Otto von Tesla, where he creates a variety of Ether-producing equipment for the Rook forces and the players in RoS. Using the rare etherite mineral, Tesla discovered that vacuum tubes constructed with an Etherillium filament would produce a gas-like substance called Ether when powered with an electrical current. Depending on the construction, these Ether-producing tubes had the effect of repelling the clouds of poisonous haze on the ground, as well as a variety of other restorative and fortifying properties.

Using this new Ether technology, the first Etherillium Coils were installed on the ground, boring deep into the earth wherever large deposits of Etherite were found. The Rook forces (and RoS players) now use the Coil installations as drop points and bases of operation in their attacks on the Mimics.

While the Ether produced by the Coils is dangerous to Mimics and their haze, it does not have any ill effects on humans or earth-based creatures. In fact, Otto discovered that by adding other elements with Etherillium in the filaments, the Ether given off by Tubes could actually be restorative and fortifying to humans that were carrying them. Realizing this would be helpful to the Rook forces (and players) on the ground, Tesla created portable Tube Circuits so people could easily equip and swap between Ether Tubes on the go, helping to boost their abilities when needed. Players in RoS can bring Etherite Geodes (found in Co-op Missions) to Tesla at the Victory Lab, where he can craft a variety of Ether Tubes with stat-boosting properties.

As with most technology, Ether Tubes can’t last forever, and their lifespan will gradually decrease as they are used in a player’s Circuit. When a tube burns out, its fortifying properties come to an end, and there’s nothing to do but toss it away. Thanks to the ingenious plug-and-power nature of the Ether Circuit, however, players can carry a variety of Ether Tubes and replace the burned-out Tubes as needed. Depending on the situation, players may want to remove all of their Ether Tubes and replace them with defense-boosting or attack-boosting models. Players will need to keep an eye on the circuit’s power gauge though, since using high-powered Tubes that exceed the battery’s safe operating levels will put the circuit into OVERLOAD! Tubes will still work when the circuit is overloaded, but their lifespan will drop considerably faster than if they were used in normal operation. It’s good for when you need a quick burst of high-powered stat boosts, but not very efficient for everyday use!

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While we haven’t updated the blog for a while, we’ve been busy making some progress on RoS — most recently with getting the town of Nidaria functional with mutliple players, chatting, and NPCs. In the screenshot above you can see a handful of players chatting on the Dock, with the NPC Captain Meelie hanging out near the edge. The fireman’s pole next to that Balboa fellow takes you down to the Barracks for co-op matchmaking, and off-screen to the right is the Command Post and a chain-lift over to the shopping level.

Co-op and Adventure modes are still going strong as well, which will be getting some more attention soon as we start fleshing out an entire level of each. We also recently finished our Character Creator, which lets players customize their characters with clothing, accessories, and facial features. The gallery below has a few samples of what we’re able to do with the Creator, and while we only have a fraction of the final clothing options right now (all the characters are wearing the “Basic Aeronaut” line), we’re already getting lots of possibilites for distinct avatars!

[Show as slideshow]

Be sure to check back next week for more information, as we’ll start showing the blog some love with more information on Etherillium, the Victory Lab, Sprockets, and more!

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Nidaria

(pronounced /naɪˈdɛəriə/)

From the word Cnidaria; the phylum that contains all species of jellyfish, for which the city was modeled after.

Nidaria was cobbled together during the last two decades before the Mimic haze engulfed the land. It can then be said that work on Nidaria commenced around 20 BH (Before the Haze). Its launching marked a new era of life for the inhabitants of Skystone. This dirigible became a beacon of hope, and the last refuge for man as the land below vanished beneath a thick veil of haze.

At the base level is The Boiler which pumps ether-infused steam to the Bell at the top of the city. The Bell maintains buoyancy and support for all its levels, and acts as a tethered hub for all the surrounding houses. When Nidaria first set sail, The Dock was the only level found above The Boiler. Since that time, more levels have been added to accommodate the growing number of refugees from around the land. While most levels are maintained by the Aeronauts, a few have been built up by both Crags and Ferrics. These welcomed additions add cultural flair to this ever growing, sky-bound city.

Nidaria Development

Although much can be said about each individual level of Nidaria, we will have to save that for another time. Instead, let’s explain some background into the development and evolution of this floating city.

From the start of it all, we knew there would need to be a town, and based on the story, it would have to be located up in the sky. Our first step was to create a style guide that would include all visual inspiration needed for the design of the town. It was divided into 4 main categories:

1. Tensile/Fabric Architecture
2. Neo-Victorian Details
3. Rust/Grass Surface
4. Industrial Sub-surface

Draft 1

The first draft had a town scattered across multiple chunks of land connected by bridges and all at the same altitude. The perspective of the scene would all be done from a top-down axiometric viewpoint. This would be a contrast to the 2D platforming levels found during gameplay. After a rendered version of one of the levels was created, the flaws in the design started to appear. The top down perspective became jarring when both vertical and horizontal movement was allowed. Movement between areas was also dull when using only bridges as connection points. On top of all that, houses were almost completely covered by their canvas roofs.

Draft 2

The next redesign had five goals in mind:

1. Give the town a more vertical orientation
2. Multiple town levels reflect the multiple-floor setup for houses
3. Lower camera angle to add more depth to each composition
4. Divided town into smaller chunks to ease loading time
5. Better understanding of how town works and looks from a distance

In this draft, we organized the town completely vertically, with a single elevator that can take you to any section of the city. Each Section was built with an inflated bladder that supported a giant surface cog. We now had a full understanding of how the town looked and worked, and we gave it the name, Nidaria. For this draft, a vanishing point perspective was used to allow the faces of each house to be in full view. We also locked the camera to only pan left and right, allowing vertical movement only when the players traveled between sections.

We were getting warmer with this new town, but there were still a few issues to be dealt with. Although we thought we would be improving movement between sections by giving them elevators, it still resulted in the same dull feeling, maybe even worse than the bridges. Also, the design became a bit monotonous with each section being built off a similar bladder/cog template.

Final Design

First off, thanks to Chris Pasley from Kongregate for convincing us to try one more time to see if we could create an even better town experience for the players. This resulted in reorganizing the town to allow multiple paths to take, and multiple ways to travel between sections. We now have incorporated air-lifts, zip-lines, elevators, stairs and ladders as modes of travel. Each Section is individually designed to reflect who built it, how it was built, and why it was built. We are now very happy with the final product, and hope you will be too when RoS is released on Kongregate.com

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We’re kicking off our development blog with a recap on the various game modes that we’ll have available in Remnants of Skystone, and going into a little more detail than we previously have on our site and in press releases. Read on for more details!

Adventure

At the core of the Remnants of Skystone design is the single-player adventure, where players can take their character down to the ground below and work their way through five expansive areas. Each of the three character classes have a different move-set with special abilities, which players will have to use to navigate through the side-scrolling platforming environments. While exploring the map, the player’s goal is to defeat the Mimic creatures that have taken over the land, while working their way towards the Mimic boss at the core of each area.

As the steampunk Aeronauts, players can blast their way through the environment with steam-powered jetpacks, and use their Blaster Cuffs to fire ranged steam shots at enemy Mimics. When playing as a tribal Ferric, a player can grab onto ledges and climb up sheer walls and across ceilings. The sharp armor on their arms that aids in climbing is also used to slash away at enemies at close range. As the mountain-climbing Crags, players will swing through the air using grappling ropes, and attack Mimics with short-range flails. Since there are so many special moves here and so many ways to play, we’d hate to have players choose only one character class and miss out on two-thirds of the experience. Our current plan is to let users create multiple characters tied to their account, and let them work their way through the Adventure using each of them at their own pace. Along these lines, we’re planning for some elements to be unique to each of a player’s characters (each character will have separate stats, for example), while other elements can be mixed and swapped between them, like clothing and Ether Tubes. We’ll save the details on those for a future post!

Co-op Missions

In a similar style to the single-player Adventure, players can team up with others online to take on various Co-op Missions on the ground. Each of the areas from the single-player experience will have their own separate maps for Co-op, with a somewhat different emphasis: While the Adventure areas had been cleared of the poisonous haze and the plant life that creates it, the Co-op Missions take place in the overgrown outskirts of each area, which are only partially cleared of the poison and fungal plant life. These areas will have a larger focus on environmental puzzles and cooperating with your teammate to clear your way through the area, while competing with one another for the most spoils. Players can choose whichever of their characters they like, so an Aeronaut can team up with a Crag, or a Ferric with a Crag — any combination works.

The Floating Town of Nidaria

When the ground was overtaken with Mimics and the poison haze, the Aeronauts built a floating city of platforms, and were soon joined by the Crags and Ferric in this midair refugee post. In the game, players will be able to visit this town in the sky to meet up with others — to hang out and chat, or to challenge one another for Co-op Missions. A myriad of shops are also scattered across the city’s platforms, where players can purchase new items and more, as well as NPC characters who offer quests to complete during the Adventure or Co-op. Look for more information on Nidaria and its many amenities in an upcoming post!

Player Houses

When players first create their game account for Skystone, everyone will get their own house tied into Nidaria, which other players can visit whenever they like. We’ll have a variety of furnishings available in town, so players can customize their living space however they like — as a relaxing spot between missions, a hangout with a funky look, or even a decked-out house for block parties. We’ll also put a “display case” in every player’s house, where visitors can check up on any awards or collectibles earned by the house owner.

But wait, there’s more!

There’s still a lot more to Remnants of Skystone that we haven’t talked about, from the leveling system to the collectibles to the Victory Lab. In future posts, we’ll expand on each of the above modes in greater detail, as well as hit on some other features and the finer points of customization and ability boosts that we’ve only briefly touched on here. The exact details are still subject to change as we continue to refine our ideas and adjust gameplay, but we hope these broad strokes have helped bring you up to speed, and hint at things to come for Remnants of Skystone!

Want to give us some feedback on what you’re most looking forward to in the game? Select the features below that spark your interest — we’d love to hear what people want to do in the game!

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Welcome to the launch of the Remnants of Skystone development blog! Since the initial game announcement last October, we’ve been fairly quiet about game details — but that doesn’t mean we haven’t been busy! As we’re moving along in development, we thought it would be a nice opportunity to share what we’re working on and shed a little light on some aspects of the game.

What exactly is Remnants of Skystone? It’s an upcoming side-scrolling platformer playable online, which also includes MMO and community elements. We’re lucky enough to be working with Kongregate as part of their Premium Game Program, and RoS will be one of the first batch of Premium Games to launch exclusively on their site this year.

In the game, players enter a world in which alien Mimics had long ago infested the land and spread their noxious poison throughout the countryside. The people of Skystone retreated to an airborne town high above the poison haze, and are now ready to launch their attack on the Mimic infestation.

Players can customize their own fighter — choosing from three classes each with unique abilities — to explore areas on the ground and exterminate the Mimic threat. Players can also mingle with others in the airborne town, and team up with another player for co-op adventures on the ground. Each player also starts the game with their own dwelling, and can furnish their home with store-bought goods and adventuring spoils. Players can visit others’ houses to chat, and to rate their decorating style.

We’ve got more information in store for the launch of the blog, so read on if you’re interested in learning more. Our galleries contain some early concept art and mockups if you’re interested in a sneak peek, and you can keep up-to-date with our blog entries by signing up for email updates or checking the RSS feed.

Thanks for stopping by, and we hope you’ll come back for more as we update!

Matt Neff and Tony Solary
Flipline Studios

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