Skystead Ranch News

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


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!


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!

[h2]Next Fest[/h2]
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.

[h2]EGX[/h2]
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!


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!


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!




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!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toastielabs/skystead-ranch

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!



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.



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

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

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

We kicked this week off with a bang as Steam Next Fest began! For those of you who don’t 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 won’t be there in person, but we will be "manning" the stall remotely from our office in Gateshead through Discord.

Today’s 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!


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 isn’t 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 won’t 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!



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. Let’s 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

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