Skystead Ranch News

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!

[h2]Tutorial Voice Over[/h2]
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.


[h2]Sound Effects![/h2]
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!


[h2]Getting Demo Ready[/h2]
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!



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!

[h2]Next Fest[/h2]
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!



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

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



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!

[h2]Tutorial[/h2]
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!

[h2]UI[/h2]
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.




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!

[h3]Follow us on Kickstarter now![/h3]

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!



[h2]Player Character[/h2]
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.





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!


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!



[h2]Crowdfunding Announcements Soon[/h2]
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!

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!



[h2]Who are we?[/h2]
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!


[h2]Roadmap[/h2]
[h3]Next Fest Demo[/h3]
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!

[h3]Crowd-Funding[/h3]
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
[h2]Things to Look Out For![/h2]
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