Skygard Arena’s all-new gameplay! Dev Blog #7 (May 2024)

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!

Introducing Pillars, new objectives at the center of battles!

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!

2 Personas for each 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!

Ultimate skills you gotta work for!

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…

Other changes

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!

Game modes

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!

A major announcement next week…

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 and follow us on Steam and Twitter to stay informed! 🙂

See you soon in the Arena!

Alexandre & Antoine Colin - Game Directors