Christmas Season with Skystead Ranch!

November is always a busy month here at ToastieLabs, we made it even busier this year by adding all of this Skystead Ranch development on top! We're inching ever closer to a finished game, thank you to everyone who has played the Beta so far and given us valuable feedback! Find out more below.

Floor and Building Improvements

The most exciting change has been from Rob who has implemented a long-awaited change to the building mechanics. Changes such as placing flooring under objects and directional arrow UI for objects that face in a certain direction will allow you to get even more creative with your builds and add that extra flair of personality to your Skystead Ranch.
Buildable objects have all been revisited with this "flooring or not flooring" pass to make their occupied space better fit the actual shape of the object. This means odd-shaped objects can now be placed closer to other objects, and most excitingly, the mini bridge can now actually be a bridge to go over your other designs!
Get building and show us what you come up with, we can't wait to see your creations!

Cooking is Finished! (Almost)

We've done it, it's finally complete! Cooking is fully implemented into the game, all recipes, all foods and all whacky combinations have been added to try! (untested) There are still some minor things to do, such as UI implementation to tell you when the cooking is done, adding the recipe book that Laura has created so you can know what you can make and most importantly, actually testing that every recipe is set up correctly in the game!

Recreating the Tutorial

Rob has been re-designing the tutorial as we have been handing out Beta access to our Kickstarter backers! (Thank you again ) Our previous tutorial was from over a year ago as so much has changed in the game that it no longer applies! A lot of work and design thinking is needed to get this perfect but the feedback that has been provided so far from our backers has been pivotal in making sure we hit the mark - thank you for your feedback in Discord, please keep it coming!

Controller Support

Work has been going ahead on controller support as we start to pave the way for Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck support. Jack has been making all the relevant UI changes so you will always know what buttons to press no matter what controller you are using. Rob has been painstakingly adding all of the implementation for the new controller UI, which is a personal favourite of his (sarcasm).

New Skylets!

As always, Jack has been hard at work finishing up the list of Skylets, meet the final 2 Skylets for the release of Skystead Ranch! Fjord (right) is a big, long-necked Skylet who thrives in the colder reaches of your Ranch, their long hair keeping them warm in the strongest of winds. But they are rather shy and can be tricky to entice into a new home! Peggy (left) is the rarest Skylet we know, they will only appear on Skysteads that already have a vast variety of Skylets for them to make friends with as they hate to be alone!
Left: Peggy - Right: Fjord

Wormy!

For any of you who have been following our development from the very beginning, do you remember Wormy? Wormy was one of the 2 test creatures for the very early prototypes of Skystead Ranch to test if the game idea was possible - but they were left behind as we continued with the development and were replaced by Shelly. But not any more! Jack dug him out of the depths of the folder structure where he had been buried and recreated him to better fit the game as it is today!
What a cute little guy he is!

Nintendo Switch Release Delays

An update for those of you who are waiting to get Skystead Ranch on the Nintendo Switch, we are sorry to say that we have hit some unexpected delays with getting the game working well on this console. We are still confident that we will be able to release Skystead Ranch on the Nintendo Switch, but due to these delays and the turnaround time needed for Nintendo, the game will not be released on Switch at the same time as we are releasing on PC. If you are a Switch Kickstarter backer, don't worry we are still hoping to send you keys at the same time as PC backers so you shouldn't be impacted too much. We will update you further with an exact date when we know more. Thank you for your patience! Skystead Ranch is still releasing on Steam on the 17th of Jan, that's only 38 days from the posting of this update! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570/Skystead_Ranch/ Please wishlist the game if you haven't already and tell your friends about us! With love, the ToastieLabs team <3

[ 2024-12-10 14:05:22 CET ] [ Original post ]

Spooky Season with Skystead Ranch

The team have been hard at work as ever making more content, more animations and even more progress towards our release goal in January! Read below for more details and official confirmation of the release date for Skystead Ranch!

Player Animations

We started on this last month, but we are proud to share that we have all of the revamped player animations in-game and working smoothly! It took some fine-tuning from our programmer Rob to get them all lined up as intended, but now the animations are all looking great and transition between each animation smoothly. From running, to digging, to even petting the cute Skylets all around your Skystead!

New Mini-Trailers

Not all work this month has been in the game editor. Lee has been making a variety of mini-trailers to help advertise Skystead Ranch to the masses! If you are here from any of the adverts we've shared on Reddit; Welcome! And don't forget to Wishlist Skystead Ranch now! If you haven't seen any of the trailers but would like to watch them, find them here on our YouTube channel.

105 Buildable Objects and 114 Items!

Laura, once again, has surpassed all expectations and has been adding more and more 3D assets to the ever-lengthening list of Skystead Ranch "things". Rob has finally had the time to start importing all of the assets and setting up the long list of prefabs to be used throughout the game design. We have a staggering 105 buildable objects and 114 items that the player and Skylets can use, and this list is still growing as Laura continues to work into the back end of October! See all of the items that we were able to add in the last week below.
It's not just small items that Laura has been working on, more of the large in-world areas have been re-adressed too! Check out the Fishing pier below, now with added upgrades.
We realised the fishing areas we placed into the game were another area we could add to the player experience by providing players with more choices to upgrade and customise in-world areas.

Game Music

Even more exciting news, we have started the commissioning of the game music for Skystead. We already have 2 pieces back and they are sounding great! With a desire to be more ambitious and creative, we are working with the idea of an over-arching main piece of music that plays throughout and will change as you go from one biome type to another making the background ambient music thematic and changeable. Once we have more music back, we will start adding this to the game and can hopefully show you what we mean!

New Skylets!

If you have been following along with our bi-weekly Twitch streams, you will have already seen some Skylet creations. If you missed it, meet Loona! A cute moth-style Skylet that loves to come out at dusk and enjoys basking in the moonlight.
Tune in next week (1st of November) to watch more of Jack's wonderful creations live on stream.

Release Date News!

As we are getting ever closer to release, we have committed to a release date of the 17th of January 2024. Make sure you mark this date in your calendars and Wishlist Skystead Ranch to help our development and stay up-to-date with all the behind-the-scenes news. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570/Skystead_Ranch/ For those of you who backed us on Kickstarter at the relevant tiers or support on Patreon, Beta access will be coming soon.tm so keep an eye on your inboxes for more info about that in the coming weeks. With love, the ToastieLabs team <3

[ 2024-10-25 14:09:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Only 4(ish) Months Left!

We are so close to the release of the game, it's exciting! Schedules have been re-assessed and we're ready to hit our goals!

New Photo Mode

Almost an ad-hoc idea, Rob implemented the basis of the photo mode in a week and it is looking and feeling great!
You can now take photos of your Skylets to record in your Field Guide. This is an evolution of the original idea we had to simply provide you with a picture in the Field Guide once you have discovered enough info on a Skylet - instead, it will be your job to take your own photos and get a rating depending on how good of a picture you take, neat huh? There is still a bit of work to do on this, such as updating the UI and fine-tuning some features, but all in all, it's good to go!

Much Needed UI Updates

On the topic of UI, we have set Jack to work creating all of the bits and bobs needed to update the general UI in the game, as until now we've just been using coloured blocks and shapes for the most part!
There is always a lot more UI than you anticipate, here are all the elements needed for the Field Guide! Some of these will probably be seen in the main menu or other areas of the game, but the shop, menus and other UI we've probably missed at this point are still waiting to be addressed by Jack.

Cooking and Island Updates

Laura, as always, has been creating a multitude of 3D assets, fully built and textured, ready to use in the engine! A lot of cooking and food items are prepped and ready for Rob to import to the build for testing.
Work has also begun on the next player zone, the mountain top! A whole new style of rugged rocks and lost ruins where cold climate and ancient Skylets will reside.
Importantly, the underside of the floating islands is being addressed too as we are getting near to making the updated Game Trailer and we want the game to look as polished as possible for this.

Player Character Animations!

A really busy month for the artists! Jack has revisited the characters' textures and animations. The texture has stayed mostly the same in terms for design, but with the addition of Substance Painter to Jack's toolset, he has gone over the original design and given it a bt more life, let us know what you think!
Every character animation was out-of-date with the changes to the game we made since the animations were originally made last October. This means Jack has had to go back to the start and re-rig and re-animate every single animation needed.
A lot of work indeed! But Jack has made amazing progress and we have loads of animations imported and ready to be thoroughly tested, thank you, Jack!

New Skylets!

For those of you who missed our live streams on Twitch, at the end of August, Jack finished up the next Skylet, the Hootlet!
An Owl-like Skylet, the Hootlet stands almost as tall as people and really enjoys the night sky! Keep an eye out for them in the un-lit parts of your island.

Thank you!

As always, thank you all for your support! Share Skystead Ranch with your friends and make sure it's added to your Wishlists! Beta is getting closer along with more demos to try out. Keep an eye out for more news on this in the future.

[ 2024-09-20 13:52:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Feels like we're almost there!

There has been a lot of back end progress this month that makes us feel like the end is in sight! But there is still plenty to do so stay tuned for more and more updates and get get ever closer to release.

Spells and Saving

A large part of having a magical crook to farm and terraform your Skystead, is to be able to cast spells. As of the creation of the prototype, all spells have started unlocked for the player to use, allowing you to make whatever you like right from the start of the game. Although freedom of choice is important and fun, the current setup wasn't particularly good for game progression, we want you to feel like you are achieving goals and unlocking rewards. therefore we have begun work on tying the spell unlocks to the tutorial and to the game shop. As you progress through Skystead Ranch, more spells will become available leading to more variety of Skylets being attracted to your floating islands!
As you can see, there is still a lot of work to be done on the shop layout to make it more attractive, but the functionality is there and the remaining work shouldn't take too long, touch wood! Another of the spells we wanted to address was the ability to destroy items. This was already in the game but the issue we had was the aiming this spell was notoriously difficult as unlike the other spells at your disposal, there was no visual indicator to help you aim your spell.
A small temporary UI has been added to show you where you are aiming, this effect will also snap to a near by object, making your aiming that little bit easier as well. Small changes have been made to the particle effect too, see if you can spot it in game. A small update on the saving and loading from last month! More corrections and fine tuning has been made to the functionality - you can now delete saves to keep your game files clean! It's the little things that matter.

Importing Work

A lot of work behind the scenes has been happening with Rob importing all (well, a lot) of the assets that our Artists have been working on over the past few months into the game engine. Our Patreons with access to our Trello boards will have noticed the art cards moving from left to right as they are being QA'ed and put into game!

Plushies

Most of the new items are cute little plushies of the Skylets! These plushies will be linked to the Field Guide progress. The concept is, once you have 100% of the information on a Skylet, you will unlock the ability to build a plushie of your favourite little friend that you have spent so much time learning about.
Here are a couple of examples, have a look in Sandbox mode if you want to see more!

Player Character Bag!

Remodelling and Retexturing work has been done on the bag that your player character carries on their hip. This was a task that needed doing to provide the promised reward to those of you who backed our Kickstarter back in October with one of the Pet tiers (or above) - A huge thank you once again to those of you who helped us reach that goal! Jack spent some time editing the model of the Bag to make variations for the Cat, Dog and "Animal Lover" Tier rewards that you will have in game only if you backed at one of these tiers.
When tackling this task, Jack also took a moment to retouch the original texture for the basic bag design to better match the new bags which are now being textured in Substance Painter instead of directly in Blender. If you would like to see Jack making these bags, you can find the VODs of the Livestream where Jack worked on there here.

Bigger Assets than before!

Our artist Laura is back from her holiday and working harder than ever! She has been working on the "large assets" that are found around the Sky Islands. The first of the tasks was to finish and/or break the large assets Jack has made. These include the Lift and Water Wheel that will be unlocked throughout the game and will eventually provide you access to new islands.
The lift itself was a little tricky in the fact that we had to find a way to create a working elevator that does not look modern or use electricity. We managed to find a number of references in both real life history and other fantasy settings to create this finished product, that we think, looks like a working lift whilst keeping that mystical yet rustic flair.
We say "working" but you can't ride the lift just yet! The largest, and arguably most important of the big assets, is the player house! You may be aware from previous posts that the house itself was finished a long time ago with work even being made on the interior of the house too. But what we wanted to address was the house upgrades. The player house will be able to be upgraded in size as well as add on important room extensions, each that will serve its own purpose, from a greenhouse to grow crops in a more controlled environment, to a library to keep a record of all your hard work and progress.
We wanted the house upgrade's to represent their purpose from the outside as well as inside, and we hope we've achieved this here, let us know what you think!

New Skylets!

As always, the bit you've been waiting for. New Skylets! Meet Wendi and Rhoss. Wendi is based off of the Wendigo from folklore but made 100x cuter! A hound like Skylet with a skull hiding its real face. This Skylet can only be found at night and appears to have many mysterious markings, I wonder what they mean?
Left: Rhoss, Right: Wendi Rhoss is not fully finished, hence the lack of eyes to see where it's going! But don't worry, I'm sure by this time next week he'll be rolling around as happy as ever. A rolling rock covered in moss - Rhoss. Creative right? This little fella was designed because we thought something that rolled around the sky islands instead of walking or running would be super cute and we just wanted to give it a go!

Thank you!

As always, thank you all for your support! Share Skystead Ranch with your friends and make sure it's added to your Wishlists! Beta is getting closer along with more demos to try out. Keep an eye out for more news on this in the future.

[ 2024-08-10 14:42:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

Heating up in Summer!

Summer is here and the weather is not the only thing getting hotter! We have begun work on some of the exciting and much-needed areas of the game such as the long-promised inside zones and the vital, highly-requested, save files! More details below.

Inside Zones

Rob has been hard at work adding the interior areas for the player house and cave on the beginning Skystead Ranch Island. Both areas are completely separate instances so some programming magic has been needed to ensure smooth unloading of the main playing area whilst loading the interior zone instance - this is made more complex with the save files which have also begun over the last month! A lot of work went into the player camera to ensure you can see inside as you rotate the camera. We took inspiration from games like Sims and worked out how to make the walls between the character and the camera disappear to allow you to see inside. We're sure some improvements can be made so we will be looking for your feedback when you get hands-on with future demos.

House

If you have played any of our demos, you will be familiar with the player house that you have been able to walk up to but not enter. Well, now you can! Our artist Laura spent a couple of weeks designing the tileable wall assets so Lee and Rob could get down to designing the layout of the player house and considering its purpose. Layout below:
*This player house links directly to player progression which will be started next on the roadmap As you can see, a lot more work is needed to finish the house, but the starting idea is now in the game. You will start with a small room for your basics, a bed, maybe some storage and a little decoration. Then as you progress you can make the room bigger and even add more rooms for utility! A Greenhouse to grow complex plants in your own house, a kitchen to progress further in the cooking mechanic and even a trophy room to showcase all of your fully unlocked Skylets (currently just a shrine to Shelly, we will add every Skylet to this room we promise!)

Cave

Unlike the house, the cave is a zone for Skylets and farming, just like the outside islands. The cave was an idea from very early development as we like the idea of a darker zone where all the Skylets who normally only come out at night will be able to live all day long without worry of the sun rising.
As caves are generally dark and damp, we have decorated the area with a variety of wonderful and whacky mushrooms, moss and other fungus-like vegetation - some of it even glows in the dark! The keen-eyed of you will have noticed a big crystal-like gem in the screenshot, we are planning on adding a little bit of game lore and player progression to things you will find within the cave - more about that in future updates!

Saving and Loading

This is a feature we knew we'd need no matter what - but something we are taking even further due to taking your feedback on board about wanting to have a Sandbox mode.
Unlike our previous games, we are developing separate save files for Skystead Ranch within the same game, allowing you to have many different Skystead Ranch save files on the same account! This is important for allowing you to play around in Sandbox mode and then switch over to the story mode without worry of losing either saved island. Due to the more complex Save Files, we are learning a lot and there is still a lot to do to get saving and loading working correctly. Check back in future updates to see how we've gotten on - good luck Rob!

New Skylets

Onto the cutest bit! New Skylets! Jack has been Modeling, Rigging, texturing and animating like a madman!
Left: Thaw Right: Skipling Last week alone saw the implementation of 2 brand new Skylets! Thaw is an ice golem-inspired Skylet that is related to the Bau and other elemental Skylets, it'll probably be a bit trickier to find than the others due to its slippery nature. The Skipling is the last of our Kickstarter backer Skylets, a huge thank you to our backers who supported us at this tier and helped us get their own designs into Skystead Ranch! This cute little bird will skip around your Skystead and has an eye for the shiny stuff! Keep your precious shiny items out of its reach or it might just take them to its nest for safekeeping.

Thank you!

As always, thank you all for your support! Share Skystead Ranch with your friends and make sure it's added to your Wishlists! Beta is getting closer along with more demos to try out. Keep an eye out for more news on this in the future.

[ 2024-07-03 13:56:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're in Alpha!

That's right! We have officially moved into Alpha with Skystead Ranch. That means a select few people can play Skystread Ranch right now! If you are one of those with access, thank you so much for your feedback so far, it has been invaluable. For everyone else, Beta is just around the corner so more and more of you will be able to get early hands-on play testing experience of Skystead, and we can't wait for you to see what we have done.

Cooking and Fishing!

We have officially committed to adding Cooking and Fishing as mechanics to the game! A huge shout out to our volunteer, Cameron, who prototyped the mechanics to demonstrate the work needed to add them to Skystead Ranch. Our artist Laura has already begun making various models to process the ingredients for cooking! (Note: These are still a work-in-progress and missing textures)

What purpose will fishing and cooking serve?

To ensure that the added mechanics fit the game and aren't just added on for extra content, we are integrating both the fishing and cooking into the Skylets behaviour, likes and dislikes - because, after all, your Skystead Ranch is all about your Skylets! By adding the ability to crush, mix, chop and cook food, we are unlocking the potential for a much wider variety of food options for your Skylets, allowing you to spend more time with your favourite Skylets to discover what each wants the most and allowing each to have the best Skylet diet possible! Fishing is still a WiP too, so more info on that soon!

Gameplay Changes

Using your valuable feedback from the Steam Farming Fest, we have made a multitude of changes to Skystead Ranch - so thank you to everyone who filled out the feedback form or chatted with us in Discord!

Sandbox Mode

Added as a way to showcase the game during the farming fest, we asked if you would like to see a Sandbox mode in the full game, and you overwhelmingly said "Yes!" so we've kept it and made it neater on the Main Menu.

What is Sandbox mode?

Essentially a way to play Skystead Ranch without worrying about unlocking anything or having a need for resources! Enjoy the Ranch life with unlimited resources and access to everything from the get-go to build and terraform any scene you like without having to maintain a farm or manage your Skylets.

Longer Day and Night

A small change, but important based on your feedback, is the day and night cycle has been made longer! This allows you to get more progress made per day and enjoy the nighttime Skylets for longer at a time. This will be more important when we add more and more night-time-based Skylets! There is still work to do on this as we need to re-calculate the growth times of all crops and trees to align better with the new day lengths.

Tutorial

We already knew we needed a tutorial in Skystead Ranch, but thanks to your comments, we have pushed this up the timeline drastically! Originally planned to be developed in September, we have already begun work on the Tutorial now!
Currently, the tutorial takes you through the basic controls and how to use the Crook, but we are still working on the next stages, such as resource management and meeting the Skylets. Voice-over work for the Tutorial will be added again at a later date.

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone for your continued support and interest in our Skystead Ranch development! Make sure you wishlist the game if you haven't already, and keep an eye out for more news soon!

[ 2024-06-06 12:14:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Farming Fest is over!

Thank you so much for stopping by during the Steam Farming Fest! We hope you enjoyed playing the demo as much as enjoyed making it! 2134 unique downloads and over 300 wishlists! Thank you all for taking part! Your support and engagement mean the world to us here at ToastieLabs. If you haven't Wishlisted the game yet, you can still do so here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570

Bug Fixing and Feedback

A huge thank you to everyone who submitted the questionnaire and provided valuable feedback. All of your responses have been logged and will be reviewed for the next stages of development.

What's Next?

Now the Farming Fest is done, what are the next steps? Firstly, we're prepping for the private Alpha access for all of your Kickstarters who backed the relevant tiers. This Alpha will be similar to the Farming Fest but with bug fixes, balancing and more! This is just the beginning!
A lot of work is taking place over the next couple of months to ensure the game is ready for future Demos and the Content Creator outreach. You can stay up-to-date with our development progress every week over on our YouTube channel or in our Community Discord server. Thank you all once again, let's keep Ranching!

[ 2024-05-07 12:37:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

Farming Fest So Far

Thank you so much for stopping by during the Steam Farming Fest! It has been great so far and we're only halfway through the week. 2000 of you have picked up the demo for the first time this week and for a small indie studio like ours, that means a lot! Thank you Make sure you wishlist the game once you've given it a try! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570

Activities

We still have our Farming Fest extracurricular activities running in our Discord!
Make sure to stop by to chat with the devs and other players!

Starting Game Economy

We spent some time this week editing and balancing the in-game economy! Nothing too drastic just yet, but we have been editing the build values of all of the buildable items and how many resources you get from your crops and trees!
We recognise there isn't a reliable method to gather the stone resource just yet, so we are looking to design some kind of "Rock tree" that will allow you to farm both types of building resources.

Bug Fixing and Feedback

Various bugs have been listed in our Discord, and our programmer Rob has been hard at work addressing the most important of these, so thank you for your help finding and diagnosing these pesky problems! Please keep them coming! Don't forget to hit that "Questionnaire" button in-game too, and let us know about your experience. Feedback is very important at this stage of development. Thank you all once again, let's keep Ranching!

[ 2024-05-02 15:41:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Steam Farming Fest is here!

It's time for the Farming Fest and we're taking part with Skystead Ranch!
We have been working hard over the past month to add and improve upon the farming aspects of Skystead Ranch. You can try it out all week by downloading and playing the Pre-Alpha demo for free! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570/Skystead_Ranch/ Our game is still in the early stages of development so you will see many areas of the game that are still in progress, this gives you the unique opportunity to provide direct feedback on Skystead Ranch! If you follow the "Questionnaire" button from the game's main menu, you can let us know your thoughts, which we will review and take on board with the rest of the game development! Thank you in advance for your valuable input!

Discord Fun

Alongside the free demo, we have a giveaway and activities in our Discord all week long, make sure you join our Community Discord to get involved!

Developer Livestreams

We are going live at least twice this week right here on the Skystead Ranch Steam store page! Make sure you stop by on Tuesday and Thursday* to say hi to the devs and talk to us about our experiences with Skystead Ranch! *Any additional live-streaming dates will be announced here on Steam.

Let's Play!

No more waiting around! Download the Demo now and get Ranching on your very own Skystead! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570/Skystead_Ranch/

[ 2024-04-29 17:12:01 CET ] [ Original post ]

Farming Fest

Big news! We're taking part in the Steam Farming Fest this month! An opportunity to celebrate one of our favourite game genres - Farming! As Skystead Ranch has a large element of Farming we thought this would be the perfect opportunity for you all to try out the current game in a demo format. That's right, at the end of this month, from the 26th of April to the 6th of May, Skystead Ranch will be available to download and play as a free Demo! Make sure you try it and let us know what you think.

New Skylets

Since last time, we have 6 exciting new Skylets in various stages of development! The new skylets are to fit a variety of gameplay roles as we introduce new themed zones. Some are very small, some can even fly, but all of them are as cute as can be! From left to right: Sizzle, Puffle, Tor, Bigby, Snarl
"Shiny" skin variants are also in the works as we are also improving upon the rare Skylet spawning! We have been changing up the colour pallet and adding emissive textures to give them that extra rare glow!

New zones

Our artist Laura has been hard at work making 2 new zones for you to play in the demo!

House Zone

The House Zone is situated above the starting island and comes with your very own humble abode! The purpose of this island is to be more of a player hub, where you can upgrade your house, customise the area with decorations and even do some fishing and cooking! (Fishing and cooking aren't implemented just yet)

Forest Zone

The second of the playable zones, like the starting island, is designed for you to farm, upgrade and discover new Skylets! The forest zone will be more lush than the first island with vibrant trees, dense undergrowth and all the wonderful Skylets that come with it!

Performance Improvements

With all the new additions to the game from the art department, we have been making sure we don't fall behind on the technical side too! Our programmer has been hard at work ensuring the frame rate, loading times, and other performance requirements are as polished as they can be. One big step was reworking the 3D grass model! Updates to the grass shaders allow for lifelike movement without taxing the drivers and a change in the way the grass is rendered allows us to have a lot more grass density for a lot less performance cost. Just look at that sweet grass!

Steam Deck and Controller Support

Our motivation for performance improvement was twofold. It is important for us to provide a better game overall, but we are also excited to make sure Skystead Ranch is console-ready too! We officially have a Steam Deck here at ToastieLabs! What that means is we are now able to officially support Skystead Ranch (and our other games) on the Steam Deck as we can do in-house QA testing on the Deck which we weren't able to do before.
With plans for Skystead Ranch releasing on the Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch, we have begun work on controller support as well as classic keyboard and mouse. Make sure you plug in your controller or play on your Steam Deck this month when the Demo goes live and let us know what you think!

New Controls

"With controller support comes new controls" - Uncle Ben or something

Camera Controls

Taking your feedback on board from the Next Fest back in October, as well as considering the player experience when playing with a controller, we have completely overhauled the player camera for Skystead Ranch. No longer is the game a top-down one-directional camera, but is now a 3rd Person camera with full 360-degree control! We're still working out the kinks when it comes to camera movement sensitivity, but the overall feel is much better for Skystead Ranch and we are very happy with the change. (Even if it does mean more work for the artists to fix the backs of the island that you couldn't see before, sorry Jack and Laura!)

Crook Controls

The next set of controls to overhaul was the crook controls. The ability to dig holes, clear the earth and build items needed to be redesigned to fit with the new camera and controller support system. An updated building UI has been added which makes the building flow much easier!
A lot of work is still needed to make sure this is ready for the demo, so best of luck to our programmer Rob!

Localisation

To all of you non-native English speakers, we are very proud to announce that work has officially begun on localising Skystead Ranch. The store pages and the base game are now translated into 11 additional languages! Please note: All of the localising still needs a thorough QA so there may be an issue or 2 until we get that all fixed for you.

Localised Languages:

• Chinese Simplified
• Chinese Traditional
• Dutch
• French
• German
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Portuguese
• Russian
• Spanish

Your Turn!

Thank you for following our progress with Skystead Ranch! We invite you to play the demo from the 26th and let us know what you think! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570/Skystead_Ranch/ The game is still in early access so your feedback is very important to us. After trying the game, press the "Discord" and "Questionnaire" buttons on the game's main menu and let us know what you think in as much or as little detail as you like. Thank you!

[ 2024-04-19 15:59:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

January Development

We've hit the ground running as we are starting 2024! To make the game as good as we can, we started this January by stripping down the demo you got to try last October back to the basics. This allows us to have a second pass on everything, and ensure all files are in the correct place and following the right structure - overall, allowing for a better, more optimised game! This is also the perfect opportunity to take your feedback on board and revisit some of the game fundamentals like the art style and game feel.

Publishers?

Alongside the technical development, we are still in talks with various organisations to see about getting a publisher for Skystead Ranch, we are still hopeful of finding a publisher that aligns with our company values. We can't say much more on this at the moment, but will keep you all updated with any news we can announce.

New Artist

The biggest news for ToastieLabs and Skystead Ranch this year so far, is our newest 3D Artist Laura! Going from 1 artist to 2 will greatly increase the quality and quantity of the assets we can create to flesh out the fantastical world of Skystead Ranch! Laura is already settling in well with the team and has started strong with these new 3D models for the game! Her amazing work lets Jack focus his efforts on making many more unique Skylets.

World Block Out & Art Pass

A large part of the development is revising the world layout, we concluded from the game Demo, that the starting world layout was far too large for tutorial purposes, with this in mind we have blocked out a brand new island layout, with the player house completely separate to the Skylet play area! We are excited about the possibilities this unlocks from a gameplay point of view and are excited for you all to try it for yourselves in future demonstrations.

We put additional early development effort into the starting island to allow us to pass on the revisited art style to the publishers we are talking with. It's looking more and more like how we envisioned Skystead to look when we initially designed the game concept. Specifically the revised toon shaders we are using for the Skylets and improved lighting make for a much more cosy experience than we demonstrated in the demo. We also have a couple of new Sky Ships if you look closely. Make sure you follow us on Steam and on our socials to stay up-to-date with the development process as we continue to make Skystead Ranch! We're still on track for release in early 2025!

[ 2024-02-05 10:56:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Thank you!

We have not only reached but surpassed the goal to a staggering 133% of our target, to a satisfying 20,000 exactly! We are overwhelmed by the support we have received; it has been a wild journey this past month and we are grateful to have been able to spend it with such amazing people. Rest assured that any pledges over our target will really help us move forward as we go full throttle into game development! In the last 60s, we hit our first stretch goal; as promised we can confirm that Skystead Ranch will get an additional Beach Island including a new playable area, an additional 10 Skylets, new Sandy and Deep Water floor types, as well as a sprinkling of items and plants to accompany the new content. Thank you so much to the last-minute backers, we truly didn't believe we would hit this goal!

Next Steps

So the Kickstarter is over, along with all of the crazy events we have done this month. What do we do now?

1. Rest

First off, most importantly for us here at ToastieLabs, we need some time to rest and recuperate! After the super busy month we've had this October we have certainly earned it. We are making sure all of the team have the time off they require to ease back into work. We've had 4 DLCs released for our other games this month, on top of EGX, MCM, Steam Next Fest, and the Kickstarter, so you can imagine just how busy we've been!

2. Other Games DLC and Taking Stock of Skystead Ranch

Once the team is back to full strength, we are splitting into 2 groups to get the first, real step started! The end of the year for ToastieLabs brings with it a few extra game DLCs to release, including Advent Calendar DLCs for the whole month of December - so most of the team will be working hard to get these DLCs made and released on time. We will also be getting the Backer Exclusive DLC made during this time so there will be plenty of time to Quality Test each DLC for release in early 2024!
Meanwhile, Rob will start taking stock of everything we have in Skystead Ranch so we can thoroughly plan what is needed, what can be removed, and what needs a little fixing. Larger game features like Saving and Loading, Skylet AI, and better Player Controls are first on the to-do list.

3. 2024, Full Throttle for Skystead Ranch

Come January 2024, we are hitting the ground running with Skystead development! We will be focusing primarily on the new Skylets we need for Skystead Ranch, starting with the Cat and Dog pets that are needed for you Animal Lovers who have pledged over 50, and the Game Designer custom-skylets for the 2 of you who have pledged the highest tier!
We want to ensure people who have Alpha access from the top tiers will also be able to play with the pets and custom-created Skylets, thus allowing us to get ample QA testing on the additional features the pets bring.

4. Investigate other means of Funding

As this is our largest game project to date, we want to ensure Skystead has the best chance we can give it on release. With that in mind, we are going to investigate the possibility of getting a Publisher on board for the release of Skystead Ranch. We just want to give the game every opportunity possible in terms of marketing so more people will be able to relax with the final release! A Publisher is a nice-to-have for us, but it is not a must-have for our game development, so if we are unable to find a suitable publisher for us to partner with, we will happily continue development as we are. We have done alright on our own so far, so we will only take on a publisher if they are a good fit.

5. Organise the rest of the road map and share it with you all!

This isn't everything! Come summer of 2024 we will have the rest of the development plan fully laid out, and we will continue to be as transparent as we can with you all so you know where we are going next! We will continue to drop update posts monthly here on Kickstarter to keep you updated on our progress.

Where we are Today

Since the end of the Kickstarter Campaign, we have all taken the time to recuperate and are back on track with all of our projects. Make sure you check out Coloring Pixels, hexceed and WooLoop whilst you are waiting for Skystead Ranch! We have also begun reaching out to a number of publishers, so fingers crossed on news regarding that soon. Once again, we cannot say it enough - Thank you for all of your support! You have all come together to make our dreams come true, and we are eternally grateful. We will take a nap now and get back to work very soon. Lots of love - The ToastieLabs Team.

[ 2023-11-13 14:02:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Don't miss out on the exclusive backer rewards! Pledge to back us now!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch

[ 2023-11-01 19:00:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

We Did It!

Thank you so much for helping us to reach our Goal!
We wouldn't be here without each and every one of you; thank you all so much for supporting our project and helping us reach our goal of 15,000! Each and every one of you is an incredible human being. Whether you found us on Kickstarter, from an event we attended like EGX or MCM, or if you have been a longtime ToastieLabs fan, we can't thank you enough for your support. It truly means a lot to a small Indie Game Development Studio like ours. Thank you!

The First Stretch Goal

It may be ambitious, but we still have 2 days to go! Please continue to share our Kickstarter campaign and help us push the total as far as we can! The first of the stretch goals is the Beach Island at 20k. The Beach Island will guarantee that there is an additional beach biome-themed island for you to play with the release of Skystead Ranch. Even more exciting, the new beach biome will bring 10 additional unique Skylets for you to discover in addition to the 30 we have planned for the general release! Let's keep the momentum going and see how far we can get together!

Thank You MCM!

We are back in the North East and we have just about recovered from the super busy, but absolutely amazing, long weekend we spent at London MCM Comic Con! A huge thank you to everyone who stopped by our stall and chatted with us about our game, Skystead Ranch! A double thank you to those who were long-time fans we met for the first time; we didn't realise we were big enough to have anybody recognise us so THANK YOU!
We staggeringly raised over 4000 in the MCM weekend alone! Thank you all so much for your kind words and generosity; it was a genuine pleasure to meet you all in person and get to chat with the people who are supporting us and playing our games. An additional shout out to Kim and Hypered, who, although don't develop games with us here at ToastieLabs, were an invaluable help to us in the setting up and running of our stall at MCM - Thank you!

What Happens After the Kickstarter?

So, you have checked the tiers and selected the one that's most appealing to you. But when will get your sweet, super awesome backer rewards you ask? Whether it's exclusive DLC for our game Coloring Pixels, the cool Merchandise kit that'll be sent to you physically, or just organising your Kickstarter Backer Discord role for our Community Discord Server, we plan to get it all organised and sorted for February 2024, so there's not that long to wait for your goodies!
All of you amazing people who have pledged to back us with the Skyship Designer tier and above, we will be getting in touch as we progress with the development of Skystead Ranch to ensure you have ample time to design your own additions to the game. You will be working closely with our artist, Jack, to iron out all of the fine details; we cannot wait to see what you come up with!

Thank you!

Once again, thank you all so much! We are all ready to get to work on the Backer Rewards and the Development of Skystead Ranch, and hope you are as excited as us to see the next steps! Make sure you follow us on Twitter, Discord, and YouTube to stay up-to-date with all of the goings-on here at ToastieLabs and get a behind-the-scenes look at the game Development Process! Thank you. Stay awsome.

[ 2023-11-01 10:40:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Speedrun Competition!

Another week, another chance to win 1 of 3 great prizes! Update your Skystead Ranch demo and you'll notice a "Speedrun" message on the main menu.
This timer tracks how fast you can complete the tutorial task of making the first Shelly happy! Take a screenshot of your fastest times and share it in our Discord, Tweet the image with #SkysteadRanch or share a link to your screenshot on this post for the chance to win 1 of 3 great prizes! The winners will be announced on Friday! Good luck! Prizes: - A Skystead Box filled with goodies - A goodie bag (also filled with goodies) - Your choice of ToastieLabs DLC.

[ 2023-10-23 13:52:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're officially past the halfway mark!

There are only 2 weeks left to back the Kickstarter, so make sure you pledge before the 2nd of November to not miss out on exclusive backer rewards! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch

[ 2023-10-19 16:30:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're halfway through the Kickstarter Campaign but we aren't slowing down!

Game Progress

With the demo live, large changes and updates to the game build have slowed down in order to prevent accidentally adding new bugs while people play. However! There have been a variety of smaller updates, these are mostly fixing small bugs that could be found in the demo, (like the ability to run up the cliff at one specific spot and get out of the map!) but one big update was added during one of our livestreams! Our programmer, Rob, live-streamed the addition of adding "Shiny" versions of the Skylets! These shinies will get an official Skystead Ranch name in the future, but for the purpose of the demo, there is a 1/100 chance that a Skylet will spawn with a sparkling effect, and when tamed, have a different colour pallet altogether!
Let us know how many Shinies you have found!

Two Down - Next Fest and EGX

Both Next Fest and EGX finished this weekend and we are happy to say both events have been an absolute blast to take part in!

Next Fest

Next Fest allowed everyone to access Skystead Ranch from home and came with a couple of fun broadcasts - one of which, we managed to find 3 shinies in 1 playthrough! If you missed the live broadcast, you can get a recap here on our YouTube channel.

EGX

EGX was a totally new experience for us here at ToastieLabs. Our first ever live event where we got to showcase our game live at a convention and chat with hundreds of people who stopped by to play! We attended EGX with a remote setup which meant we were covering the booth via a video call, this was great fun, even if we gave some people a jump scare when they realised we were live on camera.
We were overwhelmed by the response of people visiting our booth, both machines were occupied constantly and even had a few queues form. If we had known we would have such a great response, we would have made the EGX demo shorter! Thank you to everyone who stopped by for both EGX and Next Fest and we look forward to what's next!

One to Go - MCM Comic Con

MCM Comic Con is the final event we have lined up, and this time we are attending in person! If you are going to Comic Con in London this month, make sure you look for our Skystead Ranch booth and stop by to say hi! We are giving away free goody bags and will be available to chat with you all weekend!
We still have a lot of preparations to finish for the convention, but we are working hard and are sure to be ready by next weekend!

Weekly Activities

We have continued our fun and games over on our website every day! Make sure you check out the webpage every day this month to take part in the fun we have planned!

Kickstarter

As we hit the halfway mark today, we are so proud of our progress! We are so close to hitting 50% pledged and we know we can all come together to get the campaign to its goal!
Click me ^ it's not a Rick Roll, I promise... Your support (even just sharing the link on your Socials) still means the world to us and will allow us to provide the best game we can for everyone. Thank you so much once again to all those who have already backed the campaign! <3 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch

[ 2023-10-18 15:57:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

Steam Next Fest

Thank you to everyone who has played our game Demo and backed our Kickstarter! Next Fest has been a blast, with so many of you downloading the demo and wishlisting the game for when it releases! Thank you!

Broadcasts

Both of our Steam Broadcasts were great fun! Our Game Designer, Lee, played through the demo on 2 separate days with thousands of you stopping by to watch. We even managed to find a couple of rare shiny versions of the Skylets!
If you missed the broadcasts and would like to see the devs playing Skystead Ranch, you can find an edited version of the stream on our YouTube channel.

Kickstarter

We are running a Kickstarter campaign this month alongside the Next Fest, EGX and MCM Comic Con events we are attending to promote Skystead Ranch. Thank you to everyone who has pledged to back the Kickstarter already! You are all amazing! We are just getting to the 50% mark as we reach the halfway point of the campaign so we can't stop now! Share the Kickstarter with your friends, consider pledging again or even buy an early Christmas Gift for someone in the form of a Kickstarter pledge and gift them the game and rewards tied to the tier you choose! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch
Thank you again from all of us here at ToastieLabs, your support means the world to us <3

[ 2023-10-18 10:46:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Thank you

As EGX is coming to a close, we just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who stopped by to try our Game Demo and Chat with us! A massive thank you to the tech support team as well for helping provide a seamless and really entertaining remote setup for us to attend EGX all the way from the comfort of our office.
If you haven't already, check out the Kickstarter here and try the Demo for yourself! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch

[ 2023-10-15 17:15:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

3 Weeks To Go!

There are just three weeks left in this Kickstarter campaign! That seems like a long time now, but the past 9 days have flown past for us, especially with the plans and activities we have in the coming weeks! Today we celebrated passing the 40% funded mark as we surged past 100 backers. Thank you so much for your continued support. It truly does mean the world to us; you are all incredible people <3

Steam Next Fest and EGX

We kicked this week off with a bang as Steam Next Fest began! For those of you who dont know, Steam Next Fest is an online-only event where many game companies show off demos for their upcoming games. Since our demo has been live for over a week now, it would seem silly not to join. The event runs all week but we decided to do two livestreams on Tuesday morning and Wednesday morning, both of which Lee got upwards of 2000 concurrent viewers! As great as that has been, the event we are most excited about this week started today at the ExCel in London. EGX is one of the UK's biggest gaming events, where tens of thousands of people congregate to play games of all types, new and old. More importantly though, this year, Skystead Ranch has a stall with two PCs set up to play the demo! We unfortunately wont be there in person, but we will be "manning" the stall remotely from our office in Gateshead through Discord. Todays first day of EGX was incredibly heartwarming. Our stall had people attending all day; in fact, we barely had time to reset the demo between visitors, and had people playing until after closing time. The attendees got genuinely excited about the game and were lovely (despite us being sat awkwardly in a webcam window). If you happen to be visiting EGX this year (as we know some of our community members are), then make sure to check our stall out and hop on the left machine for a chat if you like!
The EGX team did a great job handling the construction and setup of our stall, look for yourself!

Deluxe Edition Deep Dive

In this update post, we wanted to go into depth on the Deluxe Edition tier on Kickstarter, what you can get, and what to expect. We want to be as transparent as possible, and a few bullet points in our graphics don't seem to be enough. After all, at the time of writing, it is our most popular backer tier - we know it's you Coloring Pixels fans out there isnt it? So, on top of everything in the basic The Game tier, you will be rewarded:

• 5 unique in-game cosmetics. We have some ideas on what we could do with this, from custom crook skins to visual effects cast from the character. Nothing is set in stone though, so if you have any suggestions let us know and we might just make it! We want to make sure that you have the option to equip them individually or all at the same time; we wont be giving you 5 different types of shirts that you have to choose from.
• Digital Wallpaper Collection. A set of HD files in various aspect ratios so you can liven up your desktop background, tablet, or phone screen! I know Jack is looking forward to making these.
• Music Soundtrack. We have had some great feedback on the soundtracks that we have had composed for our demo, and for the final release, we are hoping to have a lot more types of music available. Different sets of tracks for the time of day and which part of the island seems like a logical next step for us. We will bring it together in a handy collection for you to listen to at your leisure!
• Skystead Ranch-themed exclusive DLCs for three of our other games. We know this is what all the backers of this tier are after. We are happy to confirm that these DLCs will be full size, so 20 levels for Coloring Pixels, 21 for WooLoop, and a full world on hexceed, which we know varies in the level count but it will be on par. When the campaign is successful, we will begin working on these DLCs immediately. Jack will do Coloring Pixels, as always, and Lee and Icy will share WooLoop and hexceed.

We hope to target the release of these DLCs for early next year, whereas the other parts of this tier will likely be available much closer to the game's release.
Thank you to all of the backers of this tier, there are so many of you and we value each and every one of you. If you have any more questions about this tear, any of the other tiers, or Skystead Ranch in general, please get in touch as we will happily answer any questions! In the next few announcements, we are hoping to do a deep dive into some of the various in-game features that are in the demo and additional ones that we are working on for the full release. Stay tuned!

Thank You so Much!

We know, we know, another thank you, but it cannot be said enough! None of this would be possible without every amazing person that is reading this now. We are so lucky to have you with us on this incredible journey. Lets get this Kickstarter goal met and make something fun together! again THANK YOU! We leave you with a screenshot of the Skystead Ranch Community Minecraft server we launched this week as part of our daily activities to celebrate all things Skystead! We have built many challenges to complete, including a treasure hunt, jumping puzzle, maze, and a race course, and there is also something that looks oddly familiar in the layout of this island... - With love, from the ToastieLabs Team <3

[ 2023-10-14 13:24:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Kickstarter

Ending in 21 days: - Make sure you back before November 2nd to get exclusive backer rewards. Don't forget that when you pledge, your payment won't be taken until the Campaign ends, so there's no need to worry about waiting for payday before pledging! Back us now and share the link with your friends: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch

[ 2023-10-12 12:07:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

Watch the Broadcast Live!

Day 2 of our Live streaming during Next Fest! Stop by again to watch us play further into Skystead Ranch, this time we'll see what other cute creatures we can discover!

Play Along

Don't forget, the demo is live on Steam now for you to play for free! Add the Demo to your Steam Library below and let us know what you think. Share your thoughts here on steam or join our Discord Server! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570

Back us on Kickstarter

We need your help! The Skystead Ranch Kickstarter is here and won't be around for long! Check it out and make a difference while you still can!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch Click it ^ then come back here and click it again. Check out the tiers on offer and make your choice, there are many different rewards available from in-game cosmetics and pets to actually designing something new for Skystead Ranch for everyone else to use! Thank you so much for your support thus far, we hope you enjoy Skystead Ranch as much as we do

[ 2023-10-11 09:00:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

Watch the Broadcast Live!

We're so excited to show you all the game Demo for Skystead Ranch! Tune in now to watch Lee, the Game Designer for ToastieLabs, play through the Demo of Skystead Ranch and answer any of your questions regarding the game, the events we are taking part in or whatever else you'd like to ask!

Play Along

Don't just watch. Experience Skystead Ranch for yourself today! The Demo is available to play all month long so make sure you download the Demo and let us know what you think once you've had some hands-on playtime yourself! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570

Back us on Kickstarter

We need your help! The Skystead Ranch Kickstarter is here and won't be around for long! Check it out and make a difference while you still can!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch Click it, please... for me? ^ Check out the tiers on offer and make your choice, there are many different rewards available from in-game cosmetics and pets to actually designing something new for Skystead Ranch for everyone else to use! Thank you so much for your support thus far, we hope you enjoy Skystead Ranch as much as we do

[ 2023-10-10 09:00:32 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's Week 2 of Skystead Month!

The Kickstarter for Skystead Ranch is live and doing well; we are over a third of the way to our goal! As you might know, we are hosting daily fun and games for you all to take part in and this post is to share with you this week's schedule! Check out the exciting page on our Website for the full update on what's going on and how to take part, as well as an archive of all the games and activities we did last week! https://www.toastielabs.co.uk/skystead-activities

Back us now on Kickstarter!

Back us on Kickstarter right now! If you can, share with your friends and family, or even ask for an early Christmas present! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch

This week's schedule

As usual, we have some huge events this week!

• Steam Next Fest runs all this week. Make sure to check out our two Next Fest Demo streams where Lee will be playing the Demo!
• Thursday to Friday, we are attending EGX with our Remote Booth. If you are in London this weekend, make sure to head over to the ExCel center and say hi!
• We are hosting another competition to win more exciting prizes! This time, head over to our discord server and join #competiton-time for an easy one-click to enter for the chance to win 1 of 3 prizes!

Full details for the competition are available on the website! Best of Luck!

[ 2023-10-09 16:43:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Skystead Ranch Demo

What is Skystead Ranch?

Transform a desolate sky island into a vibrant sanctuary. Using your enchanted crook, cultivate your garden, befriend quirky creatures, build a home, and unlock secrets along the way. Each choice adds a personal touch to your unique Skystead Ranch!
Skystead Ranch is a farming/ranching/adventure game where you grow farms, decorate sky islands, and tame a wide variety of interesting creatures we call Skylet. Play the demo now and let us know what you think! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570/Skystead_Ranch/

The Demo

This demo is just a sneak peek of what's to come. Think of it as a proof-of-concept; The 3 playable zones you can explore in the demo will be a small part of a larger floating world with the ability to travel between multiple, vast biomes! Each brings an exciting variety of new, unique Skylets for you to discover and tame! If you like the thought of that and can see our vision in the Demo, make sure you Wishlist the game here on Steam and check out our Kickstarter below!

Live On Kickstarter!

Now that you've had a taste of the demo - we need your help! The Skystead Ranch Kickstarter is here and won't be around for long! Check it out and make a difference while you still can!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch Click the link... Go on, do it, do it, do it ^ Check out all the tiers on offer and pick which one you like best. If you can't help out directly but still want to help us make the game, even just sharing the Kickstarter page with a friend is a huge help! Thank you for checking out our game demo and being amazing

[ 2023-10-09 11:00:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's Skystead Month!

The Kickstarter for Skystead Ranch goes live tomorrow! As part of the celebrations, we are hosting daily fun and games for you all to take part in! Check out the new exciting page on our Website for the full update on what's going on and how to take part! https://www.toastielabs.co.uk/skystead-activities Today we have 2 huge events!

• The Demo for Skystead Ranch goes live for everyone at 8 p.m. BST
• We are hosting a competition to win exciting prizes! Submit screenshots of your own designed farm/garden in Skystead Ranch with the hashtag #skysteadranch for the chance to win 1 of 3 prizes!

Full details for the competition are available on the website! Best of Luck!

Kickstarter

Follow the Kickstarter today! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch

[ 2023-10-02 11:28:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Game Progress

Since last month, we have made so much progress with Skystead Ranch! The Demo is very nearly complete, just in time for the Demo launch date and Kickstarter next week!

Tutorial Voice Over

We have contracted a voice actor with a magnificent Scottish accent to provide a full voice-over for Skystead Ranch! Currently, that's just the game tutorial plus a couple of smaller lines here and there for when the player does certain actions.
The simple but considerable addition of a voice actor has greatly increased the quality of the tutorial as you now have a helpful guide to start your adventure with.

Sound Effects!

On the same topic, we have added a variety of sound effects! These range from ambient noise for crackling fires, running water and the flying Skyboats to individual voices and sounds for all of the various creatures you will encounter whilst you play!
Play the demo to find out how each cute creature sounds!

Getting Demo Ready

Serious QA testing has been taking place over the past few weeks, you may have caught some of the testing live on our Twitch channel! Make sure you follow us on Twitch to get notified of when we go live as we will be streaming a lot more Skystread Ranch content over the coming weeks. The QA Testing has been vital for getting an in-depth list of bug fixes for our programmer Rob to work on. From minor audio bugs to game-breaking tutorial bugs, we have fixed so much in order to make the Demo experience as smooth as possible for everyone who plays!

Weekly Schedules and Next Fest

October is going to be busy! Keep an eye on all of our socials as well as this forum here in Steam as we are going to be posting a schedule every Friday to let you know what competitions, activities, livestreams and more we will be hosting on a daily basis all throughout the month of October!

Next Fest

A part of this plan is the October Next Fest! Starting October 9th, we will be taking part in the October Next Fest to demonstrate what Skystead Ranch has to offer! Mark the week in your calendar as there will be Steam Broadcasts, a playable Demo and so much more to take part in all throughout the Next Fest week of festivities!

Kickstarter

We are very close to the campaign going live! There are only 8 days to go until you can support the game development and get some rewards in return!
Click me ^ Ensure you follow the campaign to get notified the moment we go live so you can check out all of the exclusive backer rewards on offer! Your support (even just sharing the link on your Socials) still means the world to us and will allow us to provide the best game we can for everyone. Thank you so much once again to all those who have already followed the campaign! <3 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch

[ 2023-09-25 16:12:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

Kickstarter

We are happy to finally announce that our crowdfunding campaign is now available to follow on Kickstarter! The campaign starts on October 3rd and runs for 30 days, so follow us now before you miss out!
Click me ^ Ensure you follow the campaign to get notified the moment we go live so you can check out all of the exclusive backer rewards on offer! Your support (even just sharing with your friends) will mean the world to us and allow us to work together to provide a bigger and better game for everyone. Thank you so much to all those who have already followed the campaign! <3 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch

Game Progress

Since last time, we have worked hard on two main aspects of the game flow! The tutorial and overhaul of the placeholder UI we have been using until now. Progress was sidetracked slightly by implementing a debug and camera mode to allow us to set up scenes and Skylet animations for the trailer that was released today!

Tutorial

We have begun work on a very important introduction to Skystead. We want to make sure the tutorial we offer is succinct enough that players can understand the early game flow without holding their hands too much.
An important part of this process we discovered, is ensuring the player is getting the needed feedback for when an instruction has been followed, which brought about the addition of these progress bars you can see below, either represented with percentages or number counts.
The tutorial is not fully completed yet so we will be continuing to share the progress over the coming weeks!

UI

All of the UI we have shown so far on previous posts and on the Dev Vlogs have just been placeholder UI elements! We have started with the creation of our own UI assets, allowing us to create the bespoke icons and tools we need to navigate the game whilst following the game brand and style.
The biggest part of the game UI will be the in-game book, or "Field Guide", whose purpose is for the player to discover and make notes on every Skylet they find. Our hope is to make the Field Guide feel like a dietetic book that the player will use to progress through the game, therefore over the coming weeks you will see the UI grow into a more recognisable book aesthetic.

Trailer

We have also been hard at work on the game Trailer! Make sure you head back to the store page or go over to our YouTube channel to check out the Trailer for the game Demo! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCIAaqTS7k4 This trailer is just for the game demo, an updated trailer will be released towards the final release of the game. Check back in the coming weeks to stay up-to-date with everything Skystead Ranch!

Follow us on Kickstarter now!

[ 2023-09-04 13:57:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Skystead Progress

We are very excited about the progress we have been making, both with the game's development and the new, significant steps we are taking to promote Skystead Ranch! Progress has continued on the Creatures AI, which we have decided to call "Skylets" - A name we find both fantastical and adorable! Alongside this is the Field Guide, which will be a large part of the game flow, a book the player has in order keep updated records on the wonders and behaviours of the various skylets they encounter! Here is a sneak peek of the Field guide in progress - this is still very early development and so the finished result will look much different to what you see here, but the premise will be the same - the more you discover about each particular skylet, you will gather more information and images for the guide!

Player Character

A new thing for us here at ToastieLabs, is our very own player character for you to play as! With the skills of our artist Jack, and the brainstorming of the rest of the team - we have come up with this player character and begun creating the 3D model to use in engine. See if you can spot all the little details we have considered for the game needs in these 3D renders! Full textures and animations are still a work in progress.

EGX

Skystead Ranch will be at EGX London for you to play! From the dates 12th-15th October 2023, find Skystead Ranch in the "Rezzed" area at the EGX convention in London alongside many new exciting games!
Buy your tickets online now and you can try our game, let us know what you think!

MCM Comic Con London

ToastieLabs will also be attending MCM London Comic Con! From the 27th to the 29th of October, we are attending Comic Con in person so you can stop by our Booth to say hi and pick up a free goody bag!
We are working hard on making sure our visit is worthwhile! The goody bags will only be available from our booth and will include exclusive games, sweets, toys, and other goodies such as these laser-cut wooden tokens!

Crowdfunding Announcements Soon

Our main drive for advertising Skystead Ranch is to get your help in funding the rest of the development of Skystead Ranch. Likely we will be able to continue the development Of Skystead Ranch if the crowdfunding is unsuccessful, but the intention of the crowdfunding is to let you help us elevate Skystead into an even bigger and better game than we can achieve alone! With your help, we can add more features, more content and more fun to the final product whilst providing you with exclusive rewards. For more information on our crowdfunding campaign, keep checking back over the coming weeks for more announcements and details on how to get involved. Thank you! We hope to see you soon!

[ 2023-08-03 13:47:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

Skystead Ranch!

Skystead Ranch is a farming, building, animal-focused island adventure! Take your place as the proud new owner of your very own Skystead Ranch! A lot of work is ahead to transform this collection of overgrown floating rocks into your very own beautiful animal sanctuary. The more you beautify, the wilder the variety of wacky and wonderful creatures will arrive to investigate their potential new home, caretaken by you!

Who are we?

We are ToastieLabs - a Small, Independent Games company from the UK. With only a small team of 4 and a cosy office in the Cold North, we all share a passion for games and making people smile. With every game we release, from Coloring Pixels to WooLoop, and now Skystead Ranch, we committed to providing experiences that are available to everyone, relaxing and high quality. We love supporting our releases with feedback and comments from our amazing community, and Skystead Ranch will be no exception!

Roadmap

Next Fest Demo

Like our previous titles, we are very excited to give you all hands-on playtime with a demo of SkyStead Ranch - Coming this October, you'll be able to play an early access, demo version of our Game! We will be looking forward to getting some feedback, so get ready to let us know what you think and what you'd like to see!

Crowd-Funding

We need your help! We are still just a small independent games company and this is our first ambitious, large project! To ensure we make this game the best it can possibly be, we are hoping to run a crowdfunding campaign during October's demo showcase. Since we recently expanded to include a 4th member, we wanted to stretch our imaginations and make something even better than before! The design of Skystead Ranch has flexibility at its core so we can easily expand and shrink the scope of the game based on how much support the game gets. We have a minimum spec for the game that we are confident we can make without any crowdfunding help but we want to give this project every opportunity it deserves! Stay tuned to find out more, we are going to turn October into a month-long ToastieLabs celebration! You won't want to miss out on any exclusive rewards, and free updates to our other games <3

Things to Look Out For!

Other than crowdfunding, which we will be announcing in full detail in the coming months, make sure you check out our game live at EGX London and MCM Comic Con* (to be confirmed) where we will be hosting live booths for you to play our game and meet us in person! Make sure you add Skystead Ranch to your Wishlist to stay up-to-date with all the news and announcements for the upcoming release! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570

[ 2023-06-26 12:07:26 CET ] [ Original post ]