When you first drop into the game, you start on the Isle of Dawn. It’s actually a deceivingly complex zone, that designed in a way that hides this fact. Part of what helps this is that on the initial visit, it very much hand holds you through the trip. It pushes you through the opening cave, then later encourages you to go and collect that first Winged Light upgrade, and then to fly up the little cliff, and from there there are obvious cues in the form of two obvious, large hills, and a giant castle up in the sky.
The first trip funnels you right up to that castle. And given the level of availability and WL, that’s about the only option for where to go. There also isn’t a lot of incentive to return here much. It never has daily quest content, there aren’t a ton of wax spots, there isn’t a lot of seasonal content here. Why bother?
At some point, you go back, and realize, there are a lot of little extra places to go here.
The Desert Area
I am not sure that’s the official name, but that’s essentially what it is. MOST of the Isle of Dawn is this huge empty desert. It has a couple of large hills and leads up to the Temple. But there is quite a bit more here. The large rock at the opening that the game tunnels you through, can be climbed. Off tot he left, in a hard to see area is a tunnel that goes very deep and contains a seasonal spirit. There is a little cave and mountain area hidden among the clouds high and to the right of the desert as well.
There is also a tunnel through the clouds off to the right of the main Temple Path that leads to the Trials.
But on the main path, to the Temple.
The Temple
Like every other zone, there is an Elder Temple and alter at the end of The Isle of Dawn. Any collected spirit memories will show up here and give you options to unlock rewards. There is a cave hidden on the left hand side behind a spirit gate and a cloud tunnel going off on the left hand side.
The Hill
I mentioned the hill off to the left of the desert. There isn’t a lot there, but it’s hardish to see since it’s so high up. There is a Winged Light up there and a Seasonal Spirit that requires some puzzling to retrieve. I believe it also requires multiple people to do the puzzles, which is a pain.
The Trials
This is the real hidden meat of this zone. Through a cloud tunnel to the right of the Temple path is the entrance to the Trials. There are 4 of them, and they must be done in order the first time. They are actually pretty difficult, especially the last one, the Trial of Fire, which basically requires a map.
Each Trial also has a seasonal spirit available, once you have completed Eden once.
All of the trials remove your cape and ability to fly, though dying during the trial just resets to a checkpoint.
The Trial of Water
The first trial is Water. It’s a series of small islands, some of which must be raised by activating small alters, in the middle of an ice island. The island has water which flows up and down, covering most of the island’s surface (hence small islands, on a large island). Touching the water is instand “death”. This trial is a lot of patience waiting for the timing of the water flow and discerning the correct path. Completing the trial rewards one WL and gives access to the second trial.
The Trial of Earth
Honestly this feels like the easiest of the four trials. It’s basically a big mase with a bit of platforming. There isn’t a lot of risk most of the time, it’s just being able to keep track of where and when to go back to a door that was just opened.
Like all the trials, completion yields a WL and unlocks the next trial.
Trial of Wind
This one can be tedious. It’s a LOT of platforming, over a pit, with moving platforms, and often little wind based momentum pushing jump platforms, that are extremely flakey.
Trial of Fire
Definitely the hardest trial. Find a map online. Trust me, you want a map, and you will STILL die a lot and get lost. All of the online maps suck.
The trial itself takes place in complete darkness. Don’t bother raising your phone brightness or anything, it’s black as black can get. Stepping into the darkness means death within around ten seconds. The trial consists of lighting candles along the path and following the path. Most of the time, you can’t see the next candle, so it’s a literal shot in the dark. During the 2nd stage there are these large worm things that patrol around and will kill you, on stage 3, there are even more of them. Did I mention it’s black as black, and the worms are also black? You can sometimes see their eyes, but many times you only hear them coming.
It’s rough, and annoying, and kind of awful. I think in theory you can Deep call as a sort of sonar, but it doesn’t really help at all.
All that said, I do kind of enjoy the challenge of the trials, but I am not running out to do them over and over.
I’ve been playing this game Sky: Children of the Light for a while, and like many games I play regularly, I’ve felt compelled to sort of, write up my experiences. Now, I’m calling this a “Guide” but it’s not really. I’m not going to detail where to find everything exactly, “fly here, do this, hop 5 times to the right”, more, just a free flow of thoughts on the various parts of the game and things I’ve noticed or learned along the way.
I don’t promise to be an expert or that I’ll turn anyone into an expert, I just want to write about my experiences with this game. It’s going to be a series of articles, one for each of the 7 zones, plus this introductory article. For this introduction, I wanted to just run off some of the terminology and some general tips to get the best experience with the game.
What is Sky: Children of the Light (CotL)
The plot of the game is not super complicated, though there is some vague lore going on for anyone really paying attention to all the little clues and spirit stories. I’m not super into the lore part of the game, more the visuals and relaxing gameplay loop. You’re a Skychild, you explore the world collecting wax from candles and reliving the memories of lost spirits. You also collect these sort of lost souls called Winged Lights, which make you stronger. Light is essentially your health. Lose all your light you go dark, continue to take damage, you lose Winged Lights, lose all your WLs and you die.
Don’t worry though, after death, you are simply reborn at the start of the game.
There is also a bunch of cosmetics and an alright music system. It’s also all online so it is a very social game, while also being extremely anti social. You will see lots of other players, but unless you mutually light each other, they appear darkened. You may then become friends with them if you’d like. You can only chat briefly at special benches, or if you have unlocked the chat feature in your friend tree.
Being a mobile game, it has some micro transaction elements, mostly cosmetics. The are also seasons and season passes for limited time cosmetics. There is also plenty to unlock for free though. Everything costs in game currencies, of which there are five currencies.
Candles – The main common currency, collected in game by lighting candles and collecting Wax. It’s a sliding scale each day, the more wax you collect, the more it takes to forge a candle, but if you collect every piece of way, you can forge around 20-21 candles. I don’t recommend doing this. It’s incredibly tedious to do and will take 3-4 hours. You can also simply buy candles, if that’s your thing.
Hearts – A secondary social currency of sorts. You get heart either by being gifted them from friends (at a cost of 3 candles), through the daily lighting from friends (60 lights = 1 heart), from people liking a message candle you placed, or from some spirits, usually at the cost of 3 candles. You cannot buy hearts, and as such they are the hardest currency to get.
Seasonal Candles – When there is a season going on, you can collect Seasonal Candles, 5 a day for free, 6 for pass holders. They can be used to unlock special Seasonal Only items from Season only Spirits. After the season, remaining Seasonal Candles convert into regular candles 1:1
Seasonal Hearts – Once a seasonal spirit is fully unlocked, a seasonal heart can be gotten. These are used to unlock the seasonal “Ultimate Gifts”. Like Seasonal Candles, unused ones convert to regular hearts, though there are only like, 4 available all season, so it’s not an effective way to farm Hearts.
Ascended Candles – These are used primarily to unlock Ascended Windged Lights. You can get them from Red Shard Events and at the end of the game. I’m not going to go into much more details here for spoilers, but will cover them in the final part of this guide when discussing Eden and the end.
Spirits
These are characters you find in the game that are used to unlock progress, cosmetics, and emotes. Aside from collecting wax from candles, this is the core gameplay and all of the lore comes from the spirits. They are found throughout the various areas. You light them with your candle and then relive their memories through several different methods. Once you relive the memory, you will gain the level 1 version of an emote, which is the primary way Sky Children express themselves to each other. They come in two main flavors, regular and seasonal.
The memories are told through static posted little snapshots of a story and there is a lot of detail to be found in them for those who really observe and break them down. Once a regular spirit is unlocked, the player must meet them again at the Temple at the end of the zone, and then they become available in the constellation of that zone, to unlock further cosmetic items and emotes and spells.
Seasonal Spirits can’t be revisited until they return as a Traveling Spirit. Every other week, a Traveling Spirit shows up in the Home zone and their cosmetics can be purchased. Without going into a lot of spoilery detail, it’s general worth at least trying to unlock their Ascended Wing Light when they come, it’s the stage just before the first clouded part of the tree. This will usually require around 10 candles to reach and 2-3 ascended candles to unlock. I only mention this because they sort of return at random, and there are a lot of them, and this is the only time they are available to unlock for anything. The cosmetics may or may not be interesting, but the Ascended WL is always useful.
Something notable, except the Skater in the Valley, which is bugged, spirits will glow when they have been uncollected, or when they are part of the daily quest requirement.
Anyway, the actual activity varies. A few have unique, complex mini games, but most fall into a few categories.
Collect the Memories – They show up, you go to the spirit, for each stage, until you get them all.
Escort – These can be extremely tedious, and some of the hardest spirits are escort types. The basic mechanic is the same as regular collection, except you must also slowly escort a glowing light to each of the stages.
Collect the Items – A few spirits will spawn a large number of glowing shards that must be collected in a limited amount of time.
The Skater – The Skater quest line in the Valley of Triumph is a series of collection type quests, but you must often do some sort of race as well. I also want to mention this quest giver because it’s bugged and always glows. So it’s easy to think it’s not been done yet. There are something like 4 or 5 instances of the Skater in different zones.
General Tips
Let’s start with some tips. I’ll probably slip and use some terms here that are “game terms” but I’ll try to define them some in the next section.
For your first run through the game, don’t stress things. Lust, enjoy the journey. Make a note of that area you can’t get to, maybe get back to it. Don’t worry about maximizing your candles or getting everything in one go. Until you finish the Vault and get to the entrance of Eden.
That said, don’t do Eden your first trip. Avoiding spoilers for now, but you’ll want to maximize how many Winged Lights you have before entering. Also, Eden is rough. Super rough, it will take a lot of time to pass through. Like 95% of this game is 15/10 on the chill level. Even is a -20. You spend the whole game exploring this beautiful peaceful land, and top it off by terror at every turn and a constant rock storm. It’s worth going, just, collect up like 100 WL or so first, and have a block fo time to do it in.
Collect the map stones. The little stones with 4 candles in front that you kneel at. Having these is super helpful for finding WL, since the WL show up on the map.
Once you start grinding candles a bit, make sure to use things like Grandma’s Table (Discussed in the Hidden Forest) or Geyser (in the Daylight Prairie).
You will constantly discover new and neat stuff and that is the point. I’ve been playing this game for around 6 months, I’ve gone through Eden several times, I have collected all the spirits, and yet, I still occasionally stumble upon some neat new stuff.
Friends are mostly good. You might get friended by random people. They are good to have for daily light ups, but you don’t have to talk to them or hang out with them. Unfortunately the game has no “unfriend” mechanic so you have to just block people to unfriend them.
Eventually you will get some cosmetics. Being a Moth is fun, but eventually you’re probably going to want to fancy up. Most likely by getting some sort of hair or a new cape, as these are the most obviously visible.
Do the daily quests. There is a stone in the Home area that gives daily quests. They are usually easy and easy extra candles. It’s not required, but I wish I had known about it sooner.
You can knock over crabs with a deep call. I don’t think this is ever explained in game, but if you deep call (touch hold on yourself then release), you can knock over crabs. Then you can carry them around and torture them.
There is no real point to carrying crabs around.
Krill are scary. Sometimes called Shrimps, officially I think they are Dark Dragons. They rely on line of sight though, so if you get spotted, put a wall between you and the eye. You can’t out run them and they WILL take Winged Lights.
During the first trip through the game, you cannot see Seasonal Spirits unless they are the current Season Spirits, or they are the current Traveling Spirit. Once you finish the game once, all of these spirits become visible and available.
Terminology
Some terms I’ll probably reference in these write ups. Most are official, at least for the community, some in the game itself.
Moth – A moth is a new or inexperienced player. They are brown and kind of look like moths, and they frequently run to the light because they usually have few cape slats.
Cape Flaps – Sometimes just Slats. Basically, how many “flaps” of flight you can get. It’s been a while, I think you start with 1 but get to 3 pretty quickly. You can get up to I think 12, at 200+ Winged Lights.
Winged Lights – Also called Wing Lights, often abbreviated WL. These are the little flowing child souls you collect. Collecting them upgrades your cape, but you need an ever increasing number to get more slats.
Spells – These are special items you collect that do special things like make you glow or temporarily wear a cosmetic ot grow and shrink in size. I don’t personally use them a lot so I won’t talk about them much, if at all. There is one that shields you from Krill temporarily though, which is useful.
Krill – As mentioned above, Krill at the giant black one eyed monsters, they look like Shrimps and are also called Dark Dragons. They appear only in the Wasteland zone and in Eden, the final zone. If they see you, the light turns red, and you will need to hide because when they strike a few seconds later, you WILL lose 3-4 Winged Lights. Recollecting WL is a pain for a variety or reason I’ll probably touch on later.
Crabs – The only other real “threat” besides Krill, but these little guys are not anywhere near the threat level. They will charge at you if you get close, you can deep call to knock them over. There is a more dangerous variant during Red shard Events that are covered in shards that can’t be knocked over and will be attracted towards calls.
Call/Deep Call – On consoles it’s probably a button press, but calling is the main way Sky Children communicate. It just makes a little noise and sends out a small pulse of light. Holding and releasing does a Deep Call that will be more obvious and knock over crabs.
Red Shard Events – I keep mentioning this so it’s worth actually explaining. Somewhat randomly, there will be a darkness eruption in a zone. You can tell which zone because it will have red shards on it’s portal. I believe it’s also never the Daily zone or the Daily Bonus Candle zone. During these events, somewhere in the zone, there will be large red shards and red Darkness plants to burn. Burning enough will unlock a light collecting mini game, then award Ascended Candles. The type of Shard Eruption varies in difficulty. Some are super easy, with just regular crabs. Other will have swirling red rocks and shard crabs and take a long time to “complete”. Afterwards there is also a portal that can be entered, each different memory in these portals has a WL to collect somewhere.
Emotes – Aside from cosmetics, the main collectible is the various emotes. Every single spirit gives an emote of some kind, usually related to their little story. My chief complaint is there is NO way to organize these things, and once you get to the point I am at, you have a WHOLE LOT of them. It would be nice to have categories to drop them in to make them more quickly accessible.
Bowing – Bowing is definitely however the most used emote. It’s not required, but it’s essentially become the community agreed upon formality. Especially after lighting candles. You bow. You help someone or be helped, you bow. It’s not required, people probably won’t think much if you don’t, but it’s just, polite.
There have been quite a few “Virtual concerts” in video games in recent years, and on December 8th, the game Sky: Children of the Light became one the games that has hosted a concert in game. Though “Concert” feel like a bit of a stretch, it’s more like a Musical Event. Similar TO Fortnite’s Soundwave Series Events. All of the songs also seemed to just be the Studio Tracks, which was kind of a bummer. I didn’t really expect an actually live event, but a bit of a live feel to the music would have helped make it a bit more unique.
It was still quite a lot of fun, and a fairly unique event. It was also a bit of a technically impressive feat, at least for this game.
So what is Sky? It’s a pretty simple game, that feels much more like a relaxing social space than a real “game”. There is some plot to it, you go around collecting spirits which tell little visual stories, and collecting Candle Wax, because the game is all about the Deepest Candle Lore… Or something. The Social Interaction is heavily emphasized, though ironically, because, you can’t actually chat or talk to other players except in a few select spaces or if you are good friends with them through the friendship tree.
I started playing just before the Aurora event in anticipation of the event.
The game also has “Seasons” around various themes with special unlock-able cosmetics and such. In a first for the game, it has tied in with a real person, and not a made up special spirit, in the Season of Aurora. Every few weeks, a new special quest would unlock where you would escort a spirit through a lengthy story set to a song from Aurora, Runaway, All is Soft Inside, Warrior, and The Seed. There are also a bunch of Aurora themed cosmetics to unlock, some free, some exclusive to the Season Pass, some simply purchased in game with money.
The Season has sort of culminated in a giant Concert with an “appearance” by Aurora herself. Or at least, a Sky Child style avatar of her. The Concert consisted of Exhale, Inhale, for the opening and then a repeat of the previous 4 songs, Through the Eyes of a Child, then Queendom as the closing song. Each song however had the players transported to these elaborately orchestrated set pieces where the player was transformed into some sort of creature and transported along side Aurora in a fantastical light show set tot he music. Like the individual quests, these would tell short visual stories involving spirits, which seemed to be more elaborate versions of the stories previously done. It’s honestly kind of hard to tell.
Between each song, Aurora would speak a bit to the crowd and encourage players to use in game emotes and such to react. I feel like on a technically level, this was sort of done to keep players in sync and allow for some catch up for anyone who might be lagging.
The technically impressive part of this, is the size of the crowds. In a normal game of Sky, each, whatever you want to call them, environmental pod thingy, has 8 people, max. So you will encounter people fairly frequently, but not really a lot of huge crowds. For the concert, they ran several simultaneous instances, each maxing out at 4000 players each. At the end of the show it shows how many people were in your instance, mine was 3900 something. Another person on the Aurora Discord I am in had 3800 something. Now, granted, there were some limitations to make this happen. Most of the people in each instance during the arena portions, only show as very basic and generic Sky Children avatars. Once you pick a seating section, you got grouped with a smaller set of avatars and you could see all of them in their full outfitted glory, and chat with them as well. Especially given this is firstly a Mobile Game, I can’t imagine it wouldn’t have completely melted people’s phones trying to render out 4000 elaborately dressed avatars at once. I imagine the smaller song segments were helped as well by transforming the players into simple animal avatars, birds and butterflies and jellyfish.
In general, it was quite a sight seeing everyone flying around all over in the huge crowd. Especially at the end of the show when a giant Aurora spirit would suck everyone into a giant tornado of Moths swirling around.
Anyway, if you missed it or want to see the show yourself, it’s running through Jan 2nd or so in game, every 4 hours, and is free to everyone. There is also a special item that can be bought that will let the player relive the show indefinitely. I’m also sure it’s on Youtube somewhere. I tried to record my show but the phone would record for a few minutes then just stop.
According to the Sky Facebook Page, 1.6 Million people watched the initial showing on the 8th.
