Today we finally release a new version of Super Sky Arena. It has been over five years since the last release and now we revive our early access to finish this game at last!!! [h1]This has been five years in the making[/h1] It took us quite a while to get to this point. Essentially, when we first started working on this game, we intended to create our own multiplayer-focused shooter inspired by Starfox. But whenever we talked about leaving Early Access, we felt like something was missing. First of all, Starfox has a great single-player campaign, but also, multiplayer-only games are hard to pick up. So we wanted to have something that could be enjoyed alone. This led us to take several attempts at a single-player mode, which all grew way out of proportion for a small, two-developer hobby team, and therefore eventually were scrapped. During this time, we also grew quiet in our communications, because we never felt like we had a good direction while our real-life jobs took over most of our time. This created a feeling that we are not able to finish something that we are proud of. We are very sorry that it took us this long to post any updates and that we have abandoned this project for a while. We hope that you still look forward to what we have in store and especially what we came up with for this new update! [h1]Introducing the new challenge mode[/h1] Challenge mode is our way to introduce the game to new players and especially engage solo pilots. You have three lives in total to play through multiple missions. Each mission earns you points which, eventually, you can showcase on a global leaderboard to compare your skills with the community. Today, we release the very first version of this game mode! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/10216462/44c3258407c2ec5750c88c4bb0a6a54cbed905cf.png[/img] We are still missing the leaderboards and also the galaxy only has 4 missions, for now. Our goal is to create many varied missions on our existing planets, which lead you on an adventure across different game-modes, planets and custom rules. This allows us to showcase what Super Sky Arena has to offer with funny custom rules and challenging missions for you to tackle. Please note, this is not a full-blown single-player campaign or story mode. Since this is a hobby project, that would be way out of scope. But we felt this is a great compromise which we can actually manage to get done :) But there is even more in this update! [h1]Customizations, crystals and player XP[/h1] [url={STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/10216462/ba2e3612187335fd76389be1d340a05aca87da65.png][img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/10216462/ca55eeefa112c666aede24bff4843f044b92de3e.png[/img][/url] Throughout all planets, you will now find beautiful crystals which you can collect. After every round, you will receive XP which, eventually, leads to leveling up your player profile. Each level comes with new customization options you can select for your characters, for that unique touch. We are launching a couple of customizations and during early access, we plan to add many more. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/10216462/81bc154393c12035bd270db809017a8b23152226.png[/img] [h1]Improved visuals for planets and weapons[/h1] We spent quite some time improving various visuals, for example by adding new light effects and completely new planet shaders. Everything looks much more polished now. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/10216462/8326f3b5c13523b6dc65642c0382e2704d0fa360.png[/img] [h1]And more...[/h1] [list] [*] We started a [url=https://discord.gg/hmZewNgjd7]Discord server[/url] and linked to it in the main menu. Come join us and leave feedback so we can create a fantastic game together. [*] Bots can now use secondary weapons. I mean, it has taken them a long time to learn, but they now feel much more like real enemies. [*] New maneuver mode. Loopings have to feel great, but they were much too complicated before. Now you can trigger a looping by pressing your secondary weapon key while you are boosting. This is the first iteration and we want to improve it so your ship won't crash into stuff anymore while doing a maneuver. [*] Various bug fixes and improvements. It has been five years, so we did a lot of stuff everywhere and we already forgot some of it ourselves. But the game has improved a lot overall :) [/list] We hope that you enjoy this new update and are looking forward to finishing this game. Our goal is to leave early access this year and if you want to join us on that journey, please do join our new [url=https://discord.gg/hmZewNgjd7]Discord server[/url]. We promise that the next update won't take us 1955 days, as a screenshot of the update timer from the previous version showed so prominently in the main menu: [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/10216462/127edf48aa60f2b648dbc66b55f8d447e1295611.png[/img] Best wishes, Simon and Oliver