Sky: Children of the Light

What I’ve Been Playing – Web Slinger Edition

Another day, another time I remeber I was going to post more often about gaming habits. Maybe one day I will start posting about Toy habits too. for now, I’ll stick to games. Let’s look at the pseudo staples.

Fortnite

Oh Fortnite, how I love to hate thee. The whole of the OG Season has come and gone since my last post, which is kind of sad, I didn’t realize it had been that long. Granted, it was a shortened season. I went back to my “trying to wind down” strategy on the Battle Pass, If I finished it before the season ended, I would buy in, since you get more V-bucks back than it costs. And I did manage to make it to level 50 something. Weirdly, after the end of the season, I was awarded the last two bonus styles that I had not earned. So that was cool, I guess. The Mix-up skins really didn’t interest me beyond sort of the customizable one.

The season itself was interesting, but it kind of sucks that the already mostly non-existent lore of Fortnite has basically just, completely vanished. There was some sort of build-up in Chapter 4 about a time machine, then suddenly we are back on a modified “OG” map. Except it was like, Ch1 S5 or something, so not even the original original map. I have no nostalgia like many folks for this early map, but the map was ok-ish. Kind of too much wide open spaces for my liking. Plus I like a lot of the newer mechanics and gimmicks.

But now things have moved on to Chapter 5, and I’m kind of torn, because, the pass skins seem kind of neat, but I am just kind of, tired of playing again. Plus they have added three new modes, each with their own ball of FOMO and grind. The game doesn’t respect my time, so I have no interest in playing it anymore. I’ll probably try to write up some thoughts on the new modes, so far I have just done the LEGO mode. They are all kind of neat, but I’m just, not really feeling it.

Sky: Children of the Light

The best part of the PC version is that it’s much easier to manage a few alts to get hearts. Hearts are a PAIN to get, and you can’t even buy them if you wanted to. Plus there was a “Double Hearts” event for Heart gifts, so I managed to buy several of the heart currency items. Which was cool, for a bit. Then the Fireworks event going on gave out a budget version of the Heart currency Fireworks staff. And a traveling spirit came along, offering a much nicer black-colored cape, versus the Heart currency black cape. So in the end it was a bit fruitless, but at least I am bit closer to completing the trees.

Otherwise, it’s just been the normal stuff, though the new Aviary home area seems like it could be pretty nice. It is much larger and more robust for features as a central hub than the old bare-bones island.

Spider-man

Black Friday week, Fanatical was doing their “Better than Steam Sales” sales, plus coupons and such. I bought a couple of games, though so far I have only been playing through Spider-Man Remastered. I’m maybe, 60-70% through the main game. I have not done any of the DLC but I can’t imagine the DLC is that complex. It’s been a lot of fun, though combat is starting to get a bit repetitive. Traveling around the city is a little repetitive as well, though at least I can fast-travel if needed.

The Taskmaster Drone missions are “kind of bull shit”. But that’s just recent frustrations talking. I may have to look into getting the Miles Morales game around the holidays if there is another blowout sale moment again.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village

Speaking of Black Friday deals, Google was doing $!/month for 6 months or something on the Play Pass thing. I’ve been considering subscribing to it anyway at regular price, so this is a good way to test it out. The Layton ports were all part of that deal, so I have been playing through the first one again. It’s kind of nice that I don’t really remember the puzzles, so they are, for the most part, fresh and new. The port seems to work pretty well, though considering it was on the touch-screen-based Nintendo DS, that makes sense that it would work.

Sky: CotL – Without a Cape aka “Hard Mode”

Nov 20th, 2023

by Ramen Junkie.

No comments yet

I have been setting up a couple of secondary accounts on Sly, to send Hearts to myself, because you need a zillion hearts and there isn’t any reliable way to accumulate them with any speed. Even having alts, it’s slow as heck.

With the Steam version of the game, this is a lot easier to do, especially since I have several machines capable of running the game. Ideally, I might automate this task, but for now, I am fine with doing it manually. I probably won’t do it consistently either since sending hearts takes 3 candles, which are easy to get, but it does require some actual playing.

For my latest alt, I decided to try something different. When you first enter the world of Sky, you have no cape. Which means you can’t fly or glide, you can only walk and run and sort of hop around. A minute or two into the game, you are prompted to collect your first Winged Light, which unlocks the cape and most of the game’s mechanics.

A thought occurred to me.

What if I just… Didn’t?

I landed on the Idle of Dawn, a fresh unwinged moth. You can’t swim around the first mountain, there is wind blocking the way. So I proceeded through the story cave and came out, prompted to collect my cape. The game strongly encouraged this because the Winged Light (WL) is in a little cratered area, you have to be able to fly to get out.

Or do you?

You can’t swim off the main area here, I tried that. So it was back to the edge of the mountain. To my surprise, you can simply cop up the edge of the crater, and escape, no WL needed.

There was another obstacle though, the desert area that follows is also surrounded by a tall rock wall, too tall to even fly over with one WL. The proper path is to collect your first Spirit, then unlock a Spirit Gate, and climb up a rock cliff, where you jump into the clouds and fly to the next area.

Fortunately, there is a cloud wall along the right side edge of the desert. And fortunately, you still bounce up in the clouds, even without a cape. So I was able to scale the wall. But then I also glitched out and fell into an out-of-bounds (OOB) area just under the terrain.

After exploring a bit, I headed towards the glitched area under where you are supposed to leap off the rock face. Fortunately, the geometry of the world worked out, and I was able to ride clouds from here, out of the OOB area, and up to the temple at the end of the zone. First major hurdle passed!

The second zone, the Daylight Prairie was pretty easy to pass through. All of the needed activities can be passed without flying. You can burn the bells from the ground and ride the mantas up to the temple. The main thing I needed to keep track of was not to collect any of the WL along the path. Fortunately, you have to actively press a button to collect them.

My other concern was in the temple. To pass to the next area, you do a deep call and ride some butterflies up. My worry was that the butterflies would not carry me without a cape. Fortunately, they did.

The Hidden Forrest presented the first real challenge. Shortly after entering, it starts to rain. The rain constantly drains your energy. Now, for those who don’t know how energy works in Sky: CotL, its your cape. The more WL you have, the longer you last before you burn out and once you burn out, you can rapidly perish.

Having no cap, I had no energy.

I managed to skirt around for cover and recharging well enough. I got stuck though at the end of the zone. You have to hop between some flying jellyfish to get to the temple. Maybe, MAYBE on mobile, I could have done it, the momentum is funny and weird on PC, and after many failed tries, I could not make the jumps, at all. So I had to cheese it a bit by bringing my main account on and handhold flying my alt up to the temple.

The butterflies also carry you off at the end of the Forest zone, which was good.

The Valley of Triumph was also very simple to run through. The trickiest part was avoiding the WL on the downhill slide areas. Unlike every other WL, these are automatically collected on contact. And I did NOT want to collect any.

After the Valley was the Golden Wasteland. I was worried this one would be impossible, because of how much can damage you. There are several points where you have to trudge through sludge that drains you. While I took long routes to find short paths across the sludge, a few times I came close to completely draining.

Then there was the Krill. The huge dragons that patrol around. Apparently, I have gotten good enough to just, know their paths, because they were no problem.

The Vault zone afterward was pretty straightforward as well. I was worried it may have been tricky because some of its puzzles are easier with flight. Easier, but its not required. There are little jump pads you can light and use in most cases. Or you can wait for someone else to do them.

Upon reaching the final summit, I was greeted with another barrier. You need to have unlocked 20 Spirits to enter the final zone. I had done zero, intentionally. I logged in on my phone again and pulled the alt past the barrier.

I am happy to say, I have gotten very good at Eden as well. I had almost no trouble passing through the entire area. This means, taking no damage as well. When I go through Eden on my main with a mighty 11 wing flaps unlocked, I can usually take like 2 hits before it becomes a problem. With zero, any damage would basically one-shot me down to injured and near death.

I made it almost all the way and picked up some accompaniment along the way. I imagine they were intrigued by my lack of a cape. Then, right at the very end, things got messy. I took a hit, and while crawling to the safety of light, the Krill that patrols right before the exit spotted me. Somehow, I managed to crawl to cover before it struck.

But then my new friends showed up. And it spotted them, and they would get to cover, but then they would get hit by a rock and lose WL, and trigger the Krill again.

And despite my better judgment, my instincts said, “Help them, help collect their lost WL, they were helping you.”. Which just made things worse possibly.

The Krill never did strike and finally left, but it was a slightly comical moment of people losing WL to rocks and me getting dropped to slow crawling all while we scrambled for cover.

But we all made it to the final cave and the final zone.

I was wondering what would happen in the final zone, given that I had, zero WL. Well, as soon as I entered, I died. Before the opening cut scene bit ended.

My friends cried over me, it was nice.

I watched them complete the end scenario, but then y game wigged out and I had to quit and resume things, so I lost them. Which was sad, because I wanted to chat with them at the bench in Orbit.

Then the normal ending moments happened, and I made it to Orbit.

No spirits greeted me there. No ascended candles were given. I just, walked to the exit to be reborn.

And when I was…. The game had given me the default 1 WL cape. Which was irritating.

What I’ve Been Playing – Light-Based Lore Edition

Oct 17th, 2023

by Ramen Junkie.

No comments yet

I kind of want to do these weekly, but I don’t really know if I rotate my game interests enough these days to do them weekly. I just wish I could get more consistent, though I have no one to blame by myself. Though part of the desire to do these sorts of posts was to maybe, encourage more variety in my gaming habits. I think part of the reason I don’t have much variety lately is that, anymore, I play games to fill time more than for enjoyment these days. It’s certainly not for lack of options of things to play.

Hyperlight Drifter

This game kind of reminds me of Zelda a bit in play, it’s top-down, and you go around swording and shooting things. It’s essentially an adventure game like Zelda, though visually it’s all stylized pixel art. In that department it makes me think of Dead Cells. The sort of, core mechanic, is that you can sort of hyperlight speed dodge a short distance. This comes up a lot in combat as the standard strategy tends to be, dodge then hit.

I was enjoying it though it’s a bit brutally difficult in places, it also doesn’t punish you much since dying just means starting the current screen over again. So you can get a feel for actually improving one’s skill.

But I also basically stopped playing. I’ll probably go back, but I got to the first boss. A first boss? I’m not sure the zones have any real order. I just, couldn’t beat it. Not for trying, and trying, and trying, and trying some more. The strategy is fairly clear, get the boss to kill the adds before they spawn in, then dodge and hit the boss. It’s all just a bit too annoyingly knife’s edge for difficulty for me I think.

The game’s fun though, and tells an interesting story despite no actual dialogue.

Omno

In a much different pace than Hyperlight Drifter, I played all the way through Omno. It’s a 3rd person platform puzzle title, and there isn’t really any way to actually die, so well, that makes it considerably easier than Hyperlight Drifter. It also takes maybe 4 hours to 100%.

I like this sort of relaxing play style these days. Interestingly, the game kind of reminded me of Sky: CotL in it’s story, though not really in it’s play style. Especially with the occasional light up hieroglyphics and light collecting game play.

Sky: Children of the Light

Speaking of Sky, I’ve jumped back on that bandwagon a bit again. It’s an enjoyable and relaxing title but it gets really repetitious after a while. I think the main thing is to stop grinding candles. Just stick to daily quests and events. Grinding candles is incredibly time-consuming and makes the repetition worse.

There was also a demo for the PC version. I’m looking forward to the PC release if only because it means I can set up a couple of extra accounts and send myself hearts. Hearts are the most pain in the ass currency to get in-game, You can get a slow drip of partial hearts from friends daily, assuming you fight people who light your candle, or a friend can gift you a whole heart for 3 candles. That’s not a lot of candles, but it adds up rapidly if you were doing it for several friends. The way the system works, the absolute maximum you can farm in a day if you get literally every piece of wax, is around 20-21 candles. This takes HOURS, even when you are super efficient. And candles are the main currency for other things, so you often want to save them up. Not a problem for a second account that’s just feeding hearts to a main account, 3 candles are fairly easy to farm out.

Anyway, on to the Steam Demo/Beta. I ended up doing two paths here, not really intentionally. When I first logged in on my laptop, my account wasn’t linking properly, so I ended up doing a fresh new run with a “local save”. I ended up running through the entire game, including Eden, and eventually, linked it to a secondary Steam Account. When I loaded it up on my Desktop, everything linked fine. I did some runs and collected Winged Lights on my main account, as I had recently run Eden again and needed to regather them all, and I recorded some gameplay of the Trials and posted it to YouTube.

The game plays pretty well on PC, it’s neat seeing the world in nice huge glory after playing so long on my phone. There are a few issues I came across. Both may be related to some core issue with controls. First, in some tight areas, when flying, it was super easy to end up caught in the clouds and bouncing around. This happened most often in “entry corridor” zones, like at the start of Daylight Prairie and Hidden Forrest, but also during the final ascension sequence at the end of the game. I think what’s happening is the PC controls don’t handle, I’m not sure the proper name, “Pressure based movement”. On the phone touch controls, you push forward a bit, your character walks slowly. Push it all the way, they run. On the PC, with WASD, the movement seems to always be the same speed. This actually makes things feel incredibly sluggish at times. I had trouble during the Trial of Fire at times because my character just felt sluggish and wasn’t quite able to make it to light the next candle or avoid a squiggly slug monster.

I’m not entirely sure how to fix this with KB controls aside from adding a “sprint” button.

Fortnite

I’ve ended up playing Fortnite this season more than expected. I mentioned before the pass was super lame and I wasn’t really interested, but I did manage to accumulate the free tier V-Bucks in order to have enough to buy the pass. This was worthwhile since spending 950 V-Bucks unlocked the paid tier V-Bucks, giving a return of 1200 V-Bucks total. Also, while the pass is really mediocre, I really like the heist elements of the map. There are three large compounds you can infiltrate for good loot. It’s fun infiltrating these places.

Sky: CotL Guide Part 7 – The Eye of Eden

Mar 15th, 2023

by Ramen Junkie.

No comments yet

The Entire series can be found on this page.

The end of everything lies in the Eye of Eden. I’m going to throw out plenty of spoilers in this page, and I recommend doing Eden blind the first time through. It wraps up everything in a nice, somewhat unexpected way that works better not knowing. I will give some spoiler free advice first though.

Eden resets once a week. You can make as many Eden runs as you want, but the final bit only works once a week, and resets I believe on Sunday or Monday.

Bring a stock of regular candles, maybe, 40-50, and as many WL as you can get. You will want the candles at the very very end before finishing the game.

This place is rough. The Golden Wasteland is scary and spooky, Eden is just a brutal nightmare. I cannot stress this enough.

Just. Keep. Going.

Push on, you fall, get up and find a lamp to recharge. Lose some WL, it sucks, just get up and keep pushing on.

Be patient, because there are places that require waiting for an opening to pass, and there is a lot of waiting behind rock outcroppings while waiting for a rock storm to pass.

Stick with the others as much as you can, help them when you can. You don’t need to bring friends to Eden, but you will probably make friends along the way. The whole zone works better when everyone works to bring each other up and along. Light them and collect their WL if you can’t though don’t kill yourself in the process, because two downed moths are less useful than one downed moth.

The final zone has you lighting some statues under a constant barrage of lava rocks, just, get as many as you can. Keep pushing forward and onward.

And with that I’ll go on to the individual zones, which will get more and more spoiler filled as things go along (not much to really spoil until the third area).

Wind and Rock Cliffs

Eden is reachable either through the final alter area of the Vault zone, with all the thunder and lightning, or through the large portal on the back end of Home, if you don’t want to go all the way through the Vault. Funny enough, there is a social area at the start of Eden. The area itself is locked by a multi person gate. At one point, it required I think 5 people to open the gate, but it’s been changed so one person can unlock it alone. Usually there are other people around though.

The first area is pretty basic, you fight the wind to climb up a long winding path to a small enclosed rest area. Being blown off is bad, and flying will get you blown around through most of Eden, so don’t even bother trying to fly anywhere really. If you are an extremely skilled flier with a lot of flaps, you can fly through this zone however. Personally, I don’t recommend it, it’s not too hard of an area. There are like 2 or 3 spots where you need to pause and wait for gaps in the wind and rock storm to run to the next safe area starting about halfway up.

Krill Battlefield

This is where the real fun begins. There are several sections, one right off, and one near the end, where you have to fight the wind and hide behind rocks to avoid being pummeled during the times the wind blows. The trick here is to be patient and not get greedy with progress. Just, run to the next rock outcropping, especially early on when you may be uncomfortable and unfamiliar with the area. Halfway through there is a sort of, climbing maze, with Krills patrolling around. There is plenty of cover to hide from them, but once again, it’s about patience. Also if you fall off, you pretty much have to start the climb over again, but sometimes falling down to cover is preferable to a Krill strike.

The third part of this area is more rock storm and rock outcropping cover. Some of the cover is just low spots in the cliff and not so much an actual rock outcropping. There is also a Krill patrolling around to watch out for.

At the end is a long tunnel full of Winged Lights.

At the end of the tunnel the game will give you a message that you have reached the point of no return. Proceeding beyond this point means finishing the game. You can’t go home, if you leave the game you will return to Eden on reload. There is no going back.

Statues Area

The final area of the Eye of Eden. There is a constant barrage of red lava rocks that pummels the area and you’ll need to run from outcropping to outcropping to avoid them. Along the way, you must place your Winged Lights into statues scattered throughout the area. I believe that in total there are 60 or 70 statues, you do not have to do all of them, just do as many as you can.

In case you didn’t put 2+2 together, placing WL, removes them from your inventory. As you proceed through this zone, you will become weaker and weaker. The farther on, the less cover there is as well, I believe to reach the final 4 or 5 statues you basically must crawl to them, losing WL to the lava storm as you go.

The zone ends once the player is dead.

There is no other exit, as the warning stated, Death is the ONLY way out.

After dying, if there are other players left, your spirit will follow them around, and you get to watch them die as well. FUN right?

Once all of the players are dead (or if you skip watching the other players), all of the statues will burst open and all of the freed WL and your own spirit will break free and the game continues on.

Ascent and Orbit

Not much to say about this area itself. After breaking free, your spirit flies through a long sequence. The cloud area basically follows references to the other Zones of the world in sequence until you ascend up into space among all of the other spirits and enter Orbit. It’s quite beautiful really.

Eventually you wake up and rejoin your body. In the final area you will receive pieces of Ascended Candles for each WL you placed in a statue. The total possible is around 15.5 last I checked. There is a constellation alter here. Remember I mentioned bringing some candles? You will want to unlock as many of the Ascended Candle locks as possible now. Don’t bother with branches, find the 1-2 candle locks, and unlock up to them, then unlock them. You only need the first level, the few second level ones don’t count.

Once done, continue onward, or socialize a bit with your fellow Sky Children if you’d like, to the final portal. Along the way you will collect all of the unlocked Wing Buffs (from the Ascended Candle locks). These Wing Buffs can be lost in the world like regular WL, but you always regain them when passing through Orbit when reborn.

If you’ve done the Little Prince quest line, the Little Prince will appear just before exiting Orbit and you will be reborn into the Starlight Desert. Otherwise, you will be reborn back on the Island of Dawn. All of the WL in the world will have been reset, Spirit Memories are kept. If it’s the first time completing the game, additional Spirit memories from the various seasons will now be available throughout the world.

And that’s it for the game. After this it’s all pretty much making Eden Runs to get more Winged Buffs to try for that sweet 12 flap cape (200 WL level) or just hanging out and collecting cosmetics and emotes.

Sky: CotL Guide Part 6 – The Vault of Knowledge

Mar 14th, 2023

by Ramen Junkie.

No comments yet

The Entire series can be found on this page.

The Vault is the final zone before reaching Eden and the end. It’s arguably the most important “lore” zone, less so from the lore it’s telling, and more the lore it represents, as a library of memories. It’s also sort of a gateway between the world and Eden. It’s actually a very simple zone, but also extremely tedious to navigate through. There are almost no real threats in this zone either.

Unlike the previous zone, there is no social area at the start. Or at least, no way to go and change outfits. I guess they figure by now you know how to work Home. Though even Eden has a social area. You start out in a lowered hallway, immediately connected tot he temple at the end of the Wasteland. All of the branching of this zone occurs at the bottom floor, most in the first entry room. Which makes it easier to sort of start off with the branches this time.

Main Floor

The main floor is the entry area and a large open area with a platform in the middle. Generally speaking, there are 2-3 seasonal candles in this area, and 1-2 on the “first floor” which I’ll get to later. The daily quest sapling is in the large open room as well. Off to the right just after entering the larger room, there is a 4 person door which leads to a spirit, getting people to assist with this door can be a pain as most people rush past and don’t bother.

There are also several branching zones.

The Archive

To the right of the spawn point for this zone, up high is a 2 person door that leads to the Archive. The Purple light daily quest is in the archive as well as a couple of WL and one Spirit Memory. Also notable, because it took me forever to find, the map stone is up in a little cubby directly across from the entrance. This is also the only space with a real threat, there is a sort of multi floored maze that the Spirit Memory passes through that is full of crabs.

After following the memory through the maze, there is a second exit which leads to the same entrance in the main area. I believe this is the ONLY place in the game where this occurs (two exits to the same point). Not really important, but just random, possibly true, trivia.

The Secret Area

From spawn, going up to the left, then back towards the entrance leads to a crack tunnel that can be traveled through. This leads to “The Secret Zone”. It’s neat to experience blind, so I won’t go into a lot of detail here, but under normal circumstances, you can only get there while wearing the supporter cape. During holiday events, there will be a special spirit that will take you through. This is the area where events take place. Also notable, this hand holding counts for the daily quest “Hold hands with a friend”. Which can be tricky to get sometimes.

The Season of Remembrance Area

This probably has a proper name, but I’m not sure what it is. As of this posting, this is the newest zone, and it’s related tot he (as of posting) current, season. Next to the sapling in the large room is a new door to the “right” of the tree, which leads to a large room with spirits relating to the Season of Remembrance.

The Starlight Desert

Before Aurora, the “biggest season” was The Season of The Little Prince. This was also the only other collab season outside of Aurora. The Little Prince is a book (and other media) and this season is a sort of, Sky version of the story. In the middle of the desert is a Rose which will give quests that take place throughout all of Sky, where you meet with The Little Prince and learn his story. There were also some popular cosmetics available during the season, like Sword Pants, which are no longer available.

This questline is also notable because it requires completing the game to finish it. The final quest involves meeting The little Prince in Eden, and results in a “special end” that occurs once.

Also, after completing Eden, the other spirits related to the quest will open up around the zone in the various areas surrounding the zone (the stage, the large pot, the garden, the little boat area off to the side, the large memory).

There are a lot of WL in this area as well. It’s also generally a pretty and peaceful area to hang out.

Second Floor

Heading back to the main path. In the large room, after lighting all the torches around the platform, then the phantom torches, lights up the platform which will take the player all the way to the top.

But not without stops.

The second floor is a small room full of memories. It has a similar “puzzle” to the main floor, to power up the platform and get it rising again. This is a trend for this entire zone. There is also a 4 player door here that leads to a large candle cake and a spirit (hidden in the back). Unlike the main floor, this 4 player door is pretty easy to get opened, I guess it’s more obvious and the candle cake gives more incentive.

This is also the only other place where daily seasonal candles will show up.

One last notable thing that applies to the rest of this zone, you can’t fall. My first visit, i took great effort to not fall. Then later, learned that you can’t. In fact, “floating” at the bottom is a good way to recharge.

Third Floor

As the platform rises, it leaves the library. There isn’t a lot on this floor, just one spirit and a few candles along the path fo the spirit on some floating islands. The candle puzzle here is a bit more tedious because the final step involves lighting some dozen candles in a circle around the platform. The problem is, every other candle is slightly too high to each, making them hard to hit.

Fourth Floor

This is the busiest zone outside of the Starlight Desert. There are some 2-3 candle cakes, 3 or 4 spirit memories, and a large spacious area to explore with lots of platforms. This zone is a lot easier with more flaps on the cape, since it makes it easier to navigate between the various platforms, or simply bypass them by flying.

Fifth Floor

There is nothing left really. There is a WL hidden out on the floating bones, but otherwise it’s just a matter of lighting up the torches on the back of the giant phantom snake and riding the mantas up.

The Top Floor

Are they really floors anymore? Th final island here has some candles to collect and the final alter. Lighting the article teleports the player onward, so it’s worth collecting everything before using the alters. In face, it’s worth nothing that all of the main path here is one way. Once the platform goes up, there is no going down.

After using the alter, the player is deposited in a final sort of alter room, with a continuous thunderstorm happening. If this feels ominous, it should. There is a portal leading back to Home and a Spirit Gate which leads to Eden. I recommend having some 50-70 WL on your cape before proceeding onwards to Eden, so if not, head back to Home and start exploring.