Play game
Skyglow's itch.io pageGame Title
Skyglow
Developer Name
Team Orion
Short Promo Blurb
A 2.5D side-scrolling platformer where players must reduce light pollution by returning stars to the sky.
Full Description
Play as Thalia, an adventuring cat, to help anthropomorphic animals along her journey whose lives have been disrupted by Mr. Mayor, who has been stealing the sky’s stars to power artificial light sources. Skyglow takes the player through three main levels where you meet Motholomew, Frogert, and Shellie. These three main quests highlight the different impacts light pollution has on animals. As you collect stars on your journey, look towards the sky and see what you can find!
Promo Image(s)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1DhQR6qkTZOJoCP1Be-fN8I8xwtxeNvDZ
Promo Video
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uZwyPreaZnWTtGdwriMffD_Bcl2GPLvx?usp=drive_link
Artistic Statement / Use of Theme(s)
The focus of our game, Skyglow, is to raise awareness for the issue of light pollution. Compared to the other types of pollution, light pollution is not as frequently discussed but has equally detrimental effects on animals, our atmosphere, and the environment. The name “Skyglow” comes from the environmental term “skyglow,” which describes the unnatural brightness of the night sky due to artificial, man-made lighting. Our game's story is centered around removing artificial lights scattered around the environment and returning them back to the sky, fitting the Climate Jam’s theme of “Changing the Story.”
From an artistic perspective, the narrative design of Skyglow allows the player to impact change on both an individual and societal level. Controlling the main character as she returns stars back to the sky is aimed at combatting the narrative that individual efforts do not matter, encouraging players to take a look at how doing even small things— minimizing outdoor lighting, turning off lights at night, keeping curtains and blinds draped— can have a positive impact on the environment around them. On the other hand, educating and persuading the environmentally ignorant mayor towards the end of the game also allows players to create change on a communal or societal level. Having players experience the impact of change serves Skyglow's goal of being a call to action, calling for players to take advocacy in their own hands through individual efforts and inspiring policy changes regarding light pollution.
Development Summary
At first, Skyglow was ideated to be an exploration-based and story-based game revolving around discovering stars in the player environment and putting them back in the sky. While we kept this idea of star discovery and returning stars to the sky, we ultimately had to make a major change by dropping the exploration idea in favor of a platform-based story game. This better suited our game’s narrative pacing, as we were able to make more clearly defined stages that focused on different light pollution issues.
When creating the dialogue and story, we wanted to be conscious of the realistic impacts of light pollution. To achieve this authenticity, we let our research come first and inform the problems and plot points of each level. We were most surprised by many of the impacts that light pollution had on animals; even obvious ones, like moths being drawn to lights at night, had a surprising amount of depth when considering new context, like their usage of moonlight as a navigational compass.
From a technical aspect, learning how to share a GitHub Repository and develop games when collaborating with nine people was our major challenge. This was the source of most of our pitfalls, ranging from miscellaneous coding errors to almost losing our entire project. It was a new experience for many of us, so it naturally took lots of adjustment and communication; however, it made the reward of developing an efficient workflow all the more worth it. Having nine people working on our project also helped greatly with scaling up the goals and length of our game.
Our 2.5D perspective was also a challenge, as we had to change the position of the camera, and thus almost every asset in our game, quite late in development. However, the benefit it gave of drawing the player's attention to the environment and atmosphere of our story was in line with our goal of calling attention to the impact that light pollution has on wildlife and the environment.
While many design ideas and choices came and went from our project, one of the most difficult things to cut from our project was having the environment change over time. Our original plan was to have the environments gradually blend between and within each level. While it admittedly may have produced a more immersive product, we believed our efforts within the constraints of the jam were better focused on creating efficient, tessellating backgrounds that still did not sacrifice any aesthetic appeal. Additionally, we had to cut parts of the levels to be shorter, as we wanted to preserve player enjoyment over shorter periods of time and focus more on the story.
Release Plan
Our game is currently finished but we do plan on polishing it a bit more in the coming weeks. We are planning on adding more sound effects, more cutscenes, and bugfixing a bit more.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Really like this game so far and I do want to come back to it later! Super pretty and the sound design matches the overall aesthetic super well (also the characters are adorable). My only issue is that I wish there were a more integrated way to see what you can interact with, like the item being highlighted or something. Love it so far though!
I thought this game was a great take on the prompt! It was engaging and fun, and I loved the art style and music, both independently and together, feeling that they worked together cohesively. I loved the story that was built, and while the gameplay was rather simple, it was entertaining. I can't wait to see more! The main note I had was that the dialogue was a bit difficult to read, so maybe a different font could be beneficial. Also, I noticed that sometimes it looked like Thalia was clipping into some of the platforms rather than standing on top of them.
- Love the models and the stamp style character portraits
- The dialogue font is fun but hard/slow to read, I wish it was saved for emphasis or you had the ability to turn it off
- I wish it was clearer what was interactable, I was running around spamming E because I didn't know what I could interact with or where I needed to be to interact with it. The 'E to interact' tooltip looks like a control tip, not "I can interact with this object," since it's at the top corner of the screen instead of near the object.
- Love the ambient night sounds that come in, I'm always a fan of responsive sound design even in small ways
- There's many times where I'm travelling downwards but I can't see if there's a platform below. I'm not sure if these are intentional leaps of faith, but if not, you'll want to check that your objects are in view of the camera relative to where the player can be
- I love the constellation mechanic!
- Charming visual style and characters
- Really neat way of communicating light pollution's effects on animals
- I wish the level design created gameplay that was more than just jumping from platform to platform. This is a really developed genre with a ton of references if you want to lean into providing a mechanical or puzzle challenge. Alternatively, if you're going for something low key, you're going to want to juice that one interaction as much as possible i.e. make it feel really good and reactive to move around in this space, have objects react to you when you land on them or pass by them, sound, ect. A piece of advice I once heard [this was about a one-button rhythm game] was that at the end of the day the game is just one button, so you have to make that one button feel as good as possible
- I wish there was more of an incentive/reason to open the notebook or it was included in the natural flow of the game. There's some good stuff in there but it's easy to miss.
- Softlocked after respawning when the camera moved so my character went off screen
- Really solid concept when it comes to communicating this climate issue. A more polished version of this would be a wonderful addition to the world.
Gameplay: Overall plenty simple. It's your typical railroad "platformer." From my perspective, there's nothing really new or reaching out to me to show that this game is different from others. I'd like to see you push boundaries and not follow a standard.
Movement: Smooth and simple to figure out.
Music: Soothing and calm. Enjoyed it!
Graphics: 2D and 3D was an interesting experience. Artistically it worked quite well for you! Personally I would have liked to see some sort of shader on the 3d model at least to match the 2d art.
Narrative: Well written, and throughout the game it all fit with the climate theme.
Overall: For timeline we had, you guys did a phenomenal job! Hope you keep working on it.
Skyglow was truly a great experience. The theme and message was so powerful and well-developed, and I could definitely see all the thought and effort you guys put into incorporating the jam’s topic. The art was beautiful, especially the backgrounds and character models. The music was also great, and I loved how different sections had different music. The only thing I’d add to the music is adding more of a crossfade when transitioning between sections, as it felt a little sudden. As for the gameplay, I was impressed how the even though environment was seemingly nonlinear and branching at times, I never got lost and every action I took felt guided by the game. The only thing I’d suggest adding would be some way to preview looking downwards. Since the character is on the bottom half of the screen, there were times when I had to drop down somewhere without actually being able to see where I was going. I loved the stars/constellation mechanic as well as the journal (really really cool to link websites), though I would maybe add a queue when a journal entry is added since I didn’t actually realize it had information in it until the latter half of the game.
Overall this game was a very impressive experience, and I enjoyed every bit of it. Great job!
This game was really nice. The presentation is ambitious and wonderful, and its come together really nicely in the timeframe of the jam. The 3D designs on top of painterly 2D backgrounds with a limited color palette is an art direction that works really well, with super lovely music to tie it all together. I also think that the themes of the game are woven very neatly into the context of the fictional world, and I really enjoyed the little story of each animal character that tie into how different animals react to light pollution in the real world. There were a few things that I noticed while playing through it; I think that respawning to the checkpoint when you fall from certain areas should be done automatically rather than manually by the player, and I also think there should be a visual difference between the spinning platforms and the regular platforms as those caught me off guard (such as a hinge in the middle of the platforms, just to name one suggestion). I also noticed a bug where I couldn't click the back button to revisit previous notes whenever unlocking new ones.
Overall, fantastic work to your entire team! This project turned out lovely and it would be great to see this polished further in the future!
The game is so cute and sweet I loved every minute of it. The animations are nice, but I would hope they correspond to the specific task like the animation to grab the star looks like you're opening a chest. The 2.5D style of the game was awesome and I loved it but the characters and items seem to not fit into the world, I would suggest adding a cartoon shader to the 3D objects as well. The narration was cute and fun and integrated how some animals are affected by light pollution.
I really love the combination of 2D and 3D. I usually think of only one art style being used in the game and this game broke that. Music is also very catchy. I think it could've been better if the instructions were explained before the game started. I cannot wait to see more polished version. :)
This game is just so lovely and heart-warming!! My favorite thing about this game is definitely the artistic choices. I think the 2D and 3D arts work very well with each other and expresses the topic of the game even better with the narrations. And I think your topic fits very well with the game jam's theme. Oh! And also the music is very nice and fits well with the rest of the game too :) I can't wait to see more game plays/levels implemented if that is in your guys's plans!
It was so whimsical overall! From the character design to the backgrounds, it's a delightful and cohesive experience. I appreciated the respawn mechanic, as I found myself getting stuck multiple times. The journal and constellation features was really cool and innovative! The platforming was cleanly done, the climbing added a fun explorative twist. I like the connection of the stars in the lamps as light pollution. Excellent work!
This game has taken my heart! The characters, the art, and the overall narrative is beautiful and seamless. Can't wait to see what this team is up to next, I have no complaints!
I love the 2D and 3D art assets in this game! It's very stylized and so pretty, the world looks like it's in a painting! I think the star mapping mechanic is a unique and interesting feature, as well as being able to click on the facts in the book and it will take you to an information page (I thought that was funny lol). I think the moth NPCs are my favorite lol, a fun narrative and I'm excited to see where it goes! I'm super excited to see future releases and further polishing! Some things I noticed (and I'm sorry for repeating what other people have said) but the movement controls are a bit floaty(?). And the ledges and a little wonky as I can spam my way up them. I think the levels themselves felt longer due to the repetitive assets being used. I would love to see the platforms connected to the ground and look in a more natural state. The floating rocks and stumps are a little off-putting and get repetitive after a while. I want to feel the excitement of exploring a new world. 2.5D is a challenge but I think you all are doing a great job! Cant wait to see more!
The art is amazing and characters cool! But the game is a bit too stretched out - i wish it was more condensed, so it felt less tedious.
Wow this is incredibly cute and I love that you credited info sources in the book text. I did run into a bug where I opened controls in menu and crashed everything. (totally understand, not nitpicking at all just in case that would help with your future versions) It is a bit hard to understand what is interactable and what is not because with such cute art I kinda have the instinct to interact with everything.
I absolutely loved playing through this game. At first I wasn't enthused with all the text in the starting room and I found the first book in there to be too small for me (I was also playing in the browser so it may be much better as a standalone app). I really enjoyed the idea you guys had and thought it was executed very well. I liked the characters and after meeting our first friend it started making sense why we are collecting stars and made me want to collect more. I liked the little minigame that had you placing the stars to create constellations, it makes collecting them more interactable and makes the player want to see what happens after placing them all. My only two comments which I'm sure you all are aware of it the 3D environment and the movement system. I found the movement to be a little too slippery and I think it needs some tweaks for it to feel better, and obviously there isn't a a world to parkour across when it comes to most of the game. If you all continue working on this I can't wait to see the finished map, and hopefully a new mechanic or two to keep the parkour interesting.
Amazing art style!! The backgrounds were beautiful, I loved the visible brushstrokes in your surroundings. The 3d models were also great! Floating assets kinda took away form the immersive world but outside of that great job with the art!
The platforming itself seemed a little slippery, which is no problem when the platforms to land on are big (which most of them were). There were a few parts of the game with tiny platforms which did not compliment the movement of the game. There were also a few parts of the game where the player can get stuck and has to respawn at a checkpoint. While the checkpoints did work, respawning at the same checkpoint a couple times could get boring since the platforming was not especially hard. Finally, some more signifiers for what objects have certain properties would be helpful. It as hard to predict which walls would be climbable and which platforms would rotate.
The story was great, the characters had personality and made me invested in collecting all of the stars. However, the frog and the turtle's dialogue was the same both times I talked to them. I don't know if this is because I missed a star, but backtracking was very hard unless you restarted at the last checkpoint, so I just kept going forward.
Although I have mostly issued the problems I encountered with the game, that does not mean I did not enjoy it. This game is defiantly one of the best I have reviewed for this jam so far. The game was compelling, fun to play, and mostly polished. The story was digestible, interesting, and new. The art was stunning. This game is very impressive for the timeline we were given.
Loved the art style and you all definitely put a lot of great work in. Solid sound design and an interesting story overall.
I did run into an issue where at some point during the frog part of the game, the camera got super close and I ended up behind the background and became stuck. I also found it a bit confusing which structures I could climb and couldn't climb. The floating platforms were a bit out of place in my opinion but it didn't take away from the game.
I'll definitely give this game another try in the future.
Yeah this is extremely impressive. Very polished and with a full thought out story. That being said the movement can still be a bit janky and slow at times. It was also bit hard to tell when you could climb, because sometimes I tried to get out of somewhere and it just didn't work. Also there were a few points where you could just kinda fall through have the level very quickly and skip a lot of the platforming to climb down. Also things like the floating tree stumps looked a little odd. But beyond that this was really solid, I love the artstyle and covering light pollution is a really unique part of climate change that isn't talked about much so I applaud you for exploring it.
Wow! Another wow! Skyglow is an absolutely amazing little game, and you should all be incredibly proud of what you've achieved! Picking a more niche topic was a great choice that makes the game stand out and the message more impactful, and the way you've handled it is so great—focusing on three animals affected; having a journal with more information, practical solutions, and case studies; placing collected stars onto a map. The main platforming gameplay is a cute way to connect all these elements (Thalia is beautifully sculpted and her animations are all adorable!) and surprisingly fleshed out. I was already impressed when I was jumping around at the start, and then I found out I could run, and then that I could climb! Seriously impressive in the timeframe of the jam.
Visuals! Huge pats on the back for everyone involved with this. All of the character models are gorgeous and full of character and I personally love the 3D characters and platforms against 2D backgrounds (which are also excellently done). All the other artistic choices complete the overall aesthetic, from the different interfaces down to the font. The sound design also compliments it, and I really love the sound effects for talking to the other characters. It'd be great to see you update the itchio page to have more of this; the background is really lovely, but a custom banner and some promo images and a video would really elevate it. If you do a full release, getting permission from itchio to change the page css would be a great idea.
Overall I'm impressed with how well-developed it already is (especially with the issues you mention of a last-minute camera angle change and github issues almost causing deletion!), and I really hope you do make the polishing touches! In an effort to help, here's the potential areas for bugfixing that I spotted while playing:
I don't think any of these bugs I experienced detracts from your achievement, and while I'm not finished playing through everything, I suspect this will remain one of my favourites of the jam!
EDIT: I've been told to add a sentence specifically praising the climbing animation for being the cutest, and being very fun to do while running around.
Very impressive from a visual and narrative perspective, with some great set pieces. A few areas feel a bit abstract and lack a sense of place, and I was able to softlock myself by accident in one place, but the vibes are immaculate.