Main Menu, Gameplay, Animation, & more | Spring 2026 Update
Skyfear will have several major updates in 2026. This is the start.
The major changes/improvements:
Main Menu
The game will now start you on the Main Menu first instead of dropping you into the Lairworld. Lairworld will now be entered through the Main Menu, and you can just enter and exit as you like, but the Main Menu will now be served first. Hopefully this clears up some confusion for brand new players, and allows old players to get straight to it. The Lairworld button on the Main Menu will also now show you the number of spores you have waiting for you after a Level Up.
Health and Magic
Automatic regen of health and magic has been reduced to 20% by default in most game modes. To balance this, the amount of pickup orbs have been nearly doubled on all maps, and increased in value. This highly encourages players to be smarter about unloading magic and maneuver around the arenas with more intention. It's a much harder lean into classic arena shooter gameplay.
Camera
Player camera position, behavior, and FOV has been adjusted for much better viewing of the combat you're getting into. Should feel much closer to the action, and see more of what you're aiming at, without losing too much of the view of your character. If you *really* need to see how your cosmetics look mid-battle, the recently improved freelook feature can help you there.
Animation
While the full animation update isn't ready yet, I was able to make some improvements with the current assets. Positioning of wings has been adjusted to stay out of the way of the camera more often, and in general feel more responsive and consistent. Changes have also been made to the handling of the neck and firebreath.
Lighting
All maps have undergone a lighting overhaul. Some may be more noticable than others. Lighting has been made more ranged, brighter brights, deeper shadows, and exposure range increased to allow these changes to show up. The game should look less flat and dry than before. Additionally, a second channel of lighting has been added specifically to player models; player models are now lit with a separate, additional light, that allows cosmetics to show up more accurately in dramatic lighting conditions.
Updates menu
The "PLAYSKYFEAR.COM" menu has been renamed to simply "Updates" and now shows these blog posts. Page loading has been improved and more external links were added to this menu as well. You can now get all your Skyfear related information in one menu without leaving the game.
Other noteworthy changes
- Subtle "airspeed flow" visual effect now appears when sprinting in flight
- Fixed position and rotation logic of spray attack particle effect origin
- Fixed an issue with dragon skin stuttering
- Moved text chat and made text smaller
- Added lasting magic fx particles to bolt impacts
- Set bots chatty to false by default, overrides to false by default if setup is coming from single player, overrides to true if session is coming from multiplayer
- Added new Early Access disclaimer to Main Menu
- Fixed an issue with text input not accepting on New Game / Profile Create menu
- Added procedural fall to ground animation on dragon kills, pending new bug reports
- Adjusted loading logic and timing for spore vegation in Lairworld for better performance
- Improved post process sharpening
- Added victory bonus to the battle result screen
- Updated all relevant How to Play documents
- Bots are now both attracted to and fully use HP/MP pickups
- MP/HP pickup logic changed: allows pickup for ANY available room on the player's 1000, no longer requires the full 100/150 that it needs to add, but result will be clamped to 1000. This eliminates the annoyance of player feeling like they're being ignored when they can't clearly see that they've got "enough" HP/MP.
- Perk, Ability, and Magic selection menus now only show the primary XP type requirement needed to unlock the item with a clearer description of the total XP needed.
- New version of Skyfear launch script compiled and implimented with just a few small changes to presentation and code clarity
- FAQ updated
- Various improvements to skin shader adding more variety to roughness and improved color distinctions via tone map
- Reset global saturation and contrast (to 1.0, none)
- Changed compression group for dragon normal maps from "world" to "weapon" which may accommodate it's presence better.
- Added loading buffer UI to Community menu -- pages all load fast after the buffer
See commit log for full notes.
What's next?
- Animation & character model improvements
- New maps and magic types
- Tutorial mode
- Free demo
See roadmap for more.
Developer note
During the work involved in this update, some changes were made to firebreath particles that I'll admit I'm not perfectly happy with. But since the firebreath effects are closely tied to animation, which is intended to be re-done anyway, I'm still going to ship this update and keep moving. I'm aware of the parts of this game that look very clearly undercooked. Working on it!
Steam group
If you'd rather not use Discord, consider joining the Steam Group! It may be be better for scheduling events/play sessions.
Anyways, thanks for reading,
- telekrex, lead developer