Skystead Ranch News

We've made it! The launch date for Skystead Ranch is here! Skystead Ranch is now live on both Steam and Epic Games for everyone to install and play!

A massive thank you to each and every one of you who helped us get to this momentous day for our little Northern Indie Games Studio.


Whether you're a long-time fan, someone we met at Comic-Con or EGX, or just a supporter who stumbled across our little Kickstarter campaign or game store page, we want to send you a massive thank you and all our love, from all of us here at ToastieLabs. 💖



The game will finally be available for everyone to play! We invite you to play Skystead Ranch along with us as we are Broadcasting on the store page where we will be live-streaming the game ourselves for the next hour or so! If you haven't already, make sure to join our Discord where the discussion with the devs can continue through the weekend.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570/Skystead_Ranch/

Tell your friends, tell your family, tell whoever you like! This is just the beginning of the next chapter for Skystead Ranch and the success you help bring will allow us to make the game bigger and better as we go further into 2025.



If you are still here to learn about Skystead Ranch, let us tell you a little more about the game.
Skytead Ranch is a creator collector where you control your own ranch to create the perfect homes for the cute creatures we call Skylets!



Each Skylet has its own unique set of needs and requirements; it's up to you to learn about them all and make the island a perfect balance to attract the Skylets you want on each island!
With elements of farming, cooking, fishing, and terraforming; you have all the tools at your disposal to provide for all the cute Skylets that come your way!



As we said, this is just the beginning. We still have a variety of things to work on and implement so there's more to look forward to.

• Nintendo Switch porting in March*
  
• A Beach island with 10 new Skylets (Thanks to the stretch goal on Kickstarter!)
  
• The player house interior
  
• Chests with inventory
  
• Functional feeding troughs and sundials
  
• More smaller updates we'll be sure to share in patch notes
  

So make sure to check back for updates on Steam, Discord, and all the usual places to see what's coming up next!

Depending on the success of the launch, we may be able to be even more ambitious, but that is optimistic talk; we'll see how the next week of sales goes! 🤞

[h2]Skystead Soundtrack[/h2]

A lot of smart design went into the music for Skystead Ranch. As you terraform an island, keep an ear out for the subtle music changes during the day as the instruments that play the music will be vary to match the different biomes and terraformed land types!

The store page is available here and will be live from the 23rd of January:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3437920/Skystead_Ranch__Soundtrack/



Once again, we cannot thank you all enough for your support. The game legitimately would not be as large as it is today without all of your support. So a massive thank you from all 5 of us here at ToastieLabs, we can't wait to see what the future holds with you along for the ride.

Make sure you stop by the Steam store page today and tonight to watch the madness of our live stream as the whole team will be swapping in and out to play Skystead Ranch and hold a few last-minute giveaways.

- As always, sent with love from the ToastieLabs team

It's been an incredibly busy first week of 2025 here at ToastieLabs and we want to share a massive Happy New Year and a heartfelt thank you to all of you riding this crazy train with us into the final stages of development before release.



[h2]7 Days to Dev[/h2]
With only 7 days to go, Rob is non-stop with the bug fixing. The majority of the game features are in and the QA testing done by the team as well as those with early access has been vital to narrowing down as many of the bugs as we can to ensure the game is ship-shaped by the 17th.

Big ticket items this week have been; the tutorial with an influx of brand-new voice lines and ironing out game flow to ensure new players get all the guidance they need; and the Keepers Sky Shop - the base functionality was implemented but there was a mixture of bugs which we have managed to narrow down and eliminate by the end of working day today! (not that Rob has been sticking to standard working hours 😅)
The additional time spent on fixing the shop gave Rob the time to implement the shop progression - today's update made it so the shop will only start with a few basic items, and slowly unlock more as you play and progress.

In short, fixes and QA is the top priorty and we're confident with the progress we're making!

A massive thank you to everyone who has access to the game for your feedback, it has been a great help.


I really recommend that you jump into our Community Discord Server!

We still have new activities being shared every day to celebrate and countdown to release! We also have a schedule of livestreams right here on the steam store page, make sure you stop by on Monday, Wednesday and Friday to see the devs playing the game and even making new art to be implemented.

Finally, make sure you visit the Competition rooms in our Discord as we have a giveaway for 3 people to win a free copy of Skystead Ranch for Steam and keep an eye out for an extra competiton this weekend!


[h2]Content Creator Outreach[/h2]
We have been hard at work with our self-publishing. That means Lee, with the help of both Laura and Cameron, has been reaching out to countless content creators and press websites. Search "Skystead Ranch" on YouTube, Twitch and where ever else you consume your content to see the people we've been reaching out to play Skystead Ranch!

All of their reactions are unbiased as we are simply giving them access and asking if they are interesting in playing and covering with Beta access - a massive thank you from the team to everyone who has picked up the keys and shared our game with thier communities. ♥


A that's it! We're nearly there. In 7 days, Skystead Ranch will be available to purchase and play. Over 2 and a half years of Development, loads of support from our community, and countless hours of work (not literally, we could get the data on how many hours we've put in 😉) - the day is very nearly here.

You can still support us before the big day by making sure Skystead Ranch is on your wishlist and share our game with your friends!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2399570/Skystead_Ranch/

Thank you, make sure you're ready to Ranch on the 17th of January!

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.


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!


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!

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!

[h2]Controller Support[/h2]
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).


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

[h2]Wormy![/h2]
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!


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

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!


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!




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.

[h2]105 Buildable Objects and 114 Items! 😲[/h2]
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.


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!


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.


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

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!


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!


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.

[h2]Cooking and Island Updates[/h2]
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.


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!


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.


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.

With love, the ToastieLabs team