Hello there, Tacticians!

Over the past few months, we’ve worked a lot on improving Skygard Arena’s gameplay and mechanics. Let us introduce you to these changes and our design philosophy through this new Dev Blog!


After each of our playtests, many of you let us know that you appreciated how the game centered on objectives spread around the Arena rather than a pure deathmatch.

Therefore, we decided to expand on the objectives system even further and created Pillars. These Pillars are constructions that you can capture with your Champions, as well as damage to wrestle control of them from your opponent. At the start of each turn, you will gain one Victory Point for each Pillar you control.

Thanks to Pillars, players can now focus on different strategies and adapt their tactics depending on how a game is going:

• Champions can teleport from one Pillar you control to another to ambush your enemies and outmaneuver your opponent;
  
• You can either focus on controlling as many Pillars as possible to win slowly but surely, or risk it all with an all-in assault on your opponent’s Core Pillar: capturing it will grant you an immediate victory!

And here’s another major change: Champions now respawn one turn after falling in battle, next to one of your Pillars. This should allow players to come back throughout a game even after losing a Champion!

Ever since we started designing Skygard Arena, we knew we wanted for our players to be able to pick any Champion, customize their gameplay, and play them in a way that really fit them.

However, we’ve noticed that the previous system (that required you to change all Champion’s spells individually) was rather overwhelming for players, who ended up mostly staying with the base kit without exploring other builds.

Each Champion now has access to two Personas, each of which represent one of two aspects of their personality and gameplay. Each Persona changes a Champion’s skillset, allowing you to play them differently.

This means that you should now be able to see gameplay changes on your Champions more easily, and there are still plenty of Champions x Persona combinations for you to explore. We’ve also revamped a lot of Champion skills to strengthen their identity and allow for even crazier combos!


Previously, ultimate skills were automatically unlocked at the start of the 3rd round. This caused battles to feel a bit monotonous: the first two rounds would usually be spent placing your Champions and preparing for the third one, which would trigger a flurry of ultimate skills, changing the course of the game with little to no comeback opportunity.

With our new changes, Champions must now earn ultimate charges to use their ultimate skill. These charges can be obtained in several ways, such as collecting them on special cells in the Arena. Some Champions can also use specific skills to help their team obtain charges more easily.

Focusing on obtaining ultimate charges and unleashing devastating ultimate spells before your opponent might be a winning strategy! But beware, damaging your opponent’s Champions will give them ultimate charges, which could come bite you back…


To keep it short, here’s a couple of major changes summed up!

• We’ve changed team sizes from 5 to 3 Champions. This makes battles more readable, teams easier to build, and forces players to make more important team-building decisions.
  
• We’ve changed the previous Action/Movement points systems, which required too much number tracking, and replaced it with a simpler system: one primary action, one secondary action and one movement per turn for each Champion.
  
• We’re also working on revamping a lot of our items, moving from 3 item slots per Champion with many items having relatively low impact, to 1 very impactful item per Champion. For instance, the Phoenix’s Gemstone allows you to immediately respawn its wielder without having to wait a turn… but drastically reduces their HP. The choice is up to you!

Nothing new on this front: Skygard Arena will offer a single-player campaign as well as a competitive 1v1 multiplayer mode.

The single player campaign will take course over several Acts, and include missions with various victory conditions. We’ve made a lot of progress our adventure’s design and replayability systems, and we can’t wait to show you more in a couple of months!


We wanted you to be able to test this new gameplay as soon as possible… and in that regard, we’ll have a major announcement for you all next week!

Our lips are sealed for the time being, but make sure to join our Discord server[discord.gg] and follow us on Steam and Twitter[x.com] to stay informed! 🙂

See you soon in the Arena!

Alexandre & Antoine Colin - Game Directors

Here we are, at the end of February, with a whole lot to talk about! Without further ado, here’s what we’ve been up to this month.


First and foremost, we’ve made a lot of progress on our solo campaign, both on the levels’ design and on the overall story. For instance, down below is one of the Arenas you’ll encounter in Act 2 of our adventure: a floating shard which belongs to the Silver Kingdom, one of the 5 factions of Skygard Arena.

Far from the Kingdom’s largest cities, this little speck of floating land is close enough to the Guardians’ domain to allow visitors to travel from one region to another. A warm crystal lightens it by night and comforts travelers, as if they were sitting next to a campfire. This quiet and solitary place will prove particularly useful to our Heroes as they find themselves upon it in very strange circumstances…

So, what do you think? Do you feel cozy just looking at this Arena? Feel free to let us know!

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Speaking of letting us know! We recently held a Community Playtest, as announced in our previous Dev Blog. Our testers had the opportunity to try out many new Spells, including Glyphes for Jorn and Champei, both Heroes of the Guardians faction. These Glyphes are sprung on the ground, then trigger when any Hero passes by them! Take a look!

The first Hero, regardless of whether it’s an ally or an enemy, that walks on Champei’s Glyph will be pushed two cells away in the direction chosen by Champei!

As for Jorn’s Glyph, it deals Bleed damage and removes a Movement Point to the first Hero that walks on it.

Both of these Glyphs are basically traps you can use to restrain your opponents’ movement, but also creates unique and wacky combos! Our intent was to create unique and fun Spells that also represented the Gardians’ bond with nature and ability to change their environment. It’s up to you to come up with the wildest strategies with these Glyphs at your disposal!

Our testers had the opportunity to, well, test these new Spells and many more changes during our Playtest, and then shared their feedback with us - major thanks to them once again! We strive to improve Skygard Arena with each new version and players’ feedbacks are crucial in achieving this goal. If you’d like to be part of our next Playtests, make sure to join us on Discord[discord.gg]!

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Last but not least, Gemelli Games is growing bigger! Going further and further in the creation of Skygard Arena also means we’re facing new challenges which require new unique skills within our team. This is why we’ve recently recruited a new Tech Artist who will be joining us soon.

We’re also on the lookout for a Brand Manager to help us with everything marketing-related. If you know anyone that could fit, don’t hesitate to share our job offer[www.gemelligames.com] with them!

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And that’ll be all for this month! Thank you all for your time and support, and see you soon in the Arena!