Celebrating 1 year of our community!
almost 4 years ago – Sun, Jul 05, 2020 at 05:55:17 PM

Looking Back...

A year ago today, we saw the beginning of our community! In lieu of our typical newsletter, we wanted to take this time to look back on the beginning of Kindred Fates and the  wonderful community that has grown from it. Along the way, we’ve shared some incredible moments and milestones that make us immensely proud of what this community has become.

Visit our website to view the full timeline!

We still have a long road ahead of us, and we’re excited to see what it brings! There’s so much we’re looking forward to sharing with you all, so stay tuned for more.

Beyond all of this, we’ve seen your amazing fan art, your kind words, and shared countless funny moments together. We wouldn’t be where we are today without your support. Thank you all so much for being here for this. We can’t wait to play Kindred Fates with you all in the alpha combat arena later this year.

Love,

The Skymill Studios Team

Community Newsletter: June 5, 2020
almost 4 years ago – Sat, Jun 06, 2020 at 08:41:21 PM

PROGRESS

• We’re continuing full steam ahead on new kinfolk designs! Alex, the original creator of Awburn and Kainite (and resident geology geek), has also been given free rein to generate ideas for Earth type kinfolk. So far, a total of 24 kinfolk concepts have been finished, 8 are currently in progress, and written descriptions have been made for dozens more.
  
  
• Animation work recently finished on Kodoki and Mechid, and Shovel_Butt isn’t far behind! Here’s a preview of one of the new animations:
  

• The design team is putting the finishing touches on documentation for the Alpha Combat Arena. We’re wrapping up the last few details, and are very happy with how it’s progressing overall.
  
  
• The development team has made great progress on the ECS/DOTS implementation of the game! We've laid the groundwork for multiplayer combat, and are now on to coding up attacks and animations. (And rest assured, we've managed to get in a wink or two of sleep, and even had a barbecue on Memorial Day!)
  

COMMUNITY

• We had a fantastic time talking to GymLeaderEd last week for Kindred Talks 3! The video is available to watch now on our Main YouTube Channel. Going forward, we plan to post streams on YouTube the day after they go live on Twitch.
  
  
• June Streams:
  
  Our next Chill with the Devs will be on Friday, June 12 at 3pm (15:00) EST. We have something different planned for this one! Keep an eye on the Discord for more details  ;)
  
  Kindred Talks 4 will be on June 26 at 2pm (14:00) EST. We’ll be featuring a few new people from the core Skymill Studios team! As we get closer to the stream, we will be accepting questions from the community to ask our guests.
  
  

Thanks as always for checking in with us. We’ll see you next time, on June 19!

-The Skymill Studios Team

Community Newsletter: May 22, 2020
almost 4 years ago – Wed, May 27, 2020 at 02:43:30 PM

PROGRESS

• The influx of new kinfolk concepts, models, rigs and animations does not stop! Earlier this week, we began rigging for Slyphur. The tail was challenging, but it's ready for animations now! Shovelbutt, Mechid and Kodoki have also received updates to their rigs and animations.

• The Design team has focused on official names / codenames for kinfolk, as well as creating documentation for new animations to reference. It's important to capture the character of the kinfolk's identity, so a lot of thought goes into these processes.
  
  
• The development team is continuing work on the combat alpha arena, including multiplayer combat using ECS and DOTS, Unity's latest high-performance technology. They're knee-deep in code, and only step away from their computers long enough to grab a meal and a nap every now and then! We can’t wait to show you the result of their effort when it’s ready.
  
  
• We are currently working on restoring the upgrade section of our online store. We’re also looking into creating an account system to allow users to manage their purchases and information more easily. This will be available prior to the Alpha combat arena release.
  

COMMUNITY

• We've created a new Skymill Devs Youtube channel for our fun/less official videos! Chill With The Devs streams, funny development bugs, and more will be featured here. This way, our main channel can remain focused on releasing official trailers and information.
  
  
• We had a great time on Chill With the Devs last Friday playing more Jackbox games! If you missed the fun but want to check it out, you can find it on the new Skymill Devs Youtube channel.
  
  
• Our next official Kindred Talks stream is on Friday May 29 at 2:00pm (14:00) EST, and will feature GymLeaderEd! We can't wait to talk with him about all of the awesome Kindred Fates videos he’s made.
  

Thanks for checking in with us! We’ll see you next time, on June 5! (JUNE?!?!? Time is really flying!)

-The Skymill Studios Team

Community Newsletter: May 8, 2020
almost 4 years ago – Sat, May 09, 2020 at 01:35:32 AM

PROGRESS

• We've been receiving tons of new 3D models and animations for some familiar faces! Here's a look at the progress for one of Shovelbutt's idle animations:
   

• Here’s another for Kodoki’s jump:

• One of the team's favorite parts of development is watching our kinfolk come to life like this. We hope you’re excited about it too! There’s lots more where this is coming from!
   
• A member of the design team has started generating ideas for puzzles both in and out of the game.
   
• We've recently started using new methods to generate terrain for the game using real-world data. This is especially exciting because it will drastically lower the amount of time it takes to create the world map, without sacrificing quality or level of detail!
   
• The VFX team has been hard at work generating new effects for attacks and abilities! Here’s a peek at one of the abilities:
   

• The development team is using Unity's new DOTS Game Development Technology to allow for massive open worlds. This will be incredibly helpful for building an open world with optional co-op and advanced environment interactions!
   

COMMUNITY

• Starting next Wednesday, we’ll be making weekly posts to our Instagram and Twitter! We hope to give you even more interesting insights to the game’s development process this way.
   
• The music contest ended earlier this week, and we were blown away by the results! Some of the songs are now on the devs’ personal work playlists, and we’re so proud of all the hard work and talent in our community. We’ll be posting the final results this Sunday, May 10 at noon EST. You can cast your votes for the fan favorite on the announcements channel of the Discord!
   
• We have 2 new streams coming to  our Twitch channel in the next few weeks!
  
  Our next round of Chill with the Devs will be next Friday, May 15 at 3:00pm (15:00) EST! We'll be playing more Jackbox games with both new and old faces (voices?). You can submit your ideas for Quiplash prompts on our discord!
  
  Kindred Talks 3 on May 29 will feature GymLeaderEd as our guest! GymLeaderEd is a gaming YouTuber who has been following Kindred Fates and creating some fantastic videos about the game! We’re so excited to get to talk with him!
   
• Crank’s stream on the  Fan Twitch channel this week was a ton of fun- artists had 1 hour to draw Nyazen pushing something off of a table while community members discussed several kinfakes from the Discord.
  
  The Faters are looking for suggestions from the community! What do you think the next stream should be about? You can drop your suggestions at the Fan Discord channel!

Thanks for checking in with us! We’ll see you next time, on May 22nd!

Community Newsletter: April 24, 2020
about 4 years ago – Mon, Apr 27, 2020 at 11:18:55 PM

PROGRESS

• Our artists have continued creating new kinfolk concept art, models, and animations! Backers can see the details of these developments on our Progress Board. Several unrevealed kinfolk have been given special code names and are currently being tracked on the board. We hope you’ll have fun guessing what their names could mean!
  
• The design team has been focusing on core game mechanics, including the capture mechanic, bond activities, and companion kinfolk personalities.
  
• In addition to these game mechanics, the design team is also creating a small-scale version of Hinterlock complete with towns, villages, and other points of interest to help with sculpting the full map!
  
• Progress on the game’s code base has been slower than usual the last 2 weeks, in part due to a family emergency with one of our developers. The dev team is also in the process of carefully planning out the complex network architecture required for features like PvP, Trading, Co-op, and Raids. It’s a slow, but vitally important phase of development. Luckily for us…
  
• We added a new senior developer to the team who we’re very excited to be working with! We have no doubt that their talent, experience, and passion will be extremely helpful as we continue building the foundations of our code base.

COMMUNITY

• We've received some AMAZING entries in our music contest! Many entries embody exactly what we hoped for, and several members of the team have caught themselves humming submissions stuck in their heads. There’s still time to enter your song! The contest will end on Friday May 1st at 11:00pm (23:00) EST.
  
• Our Q&A Stream last week with Meyuu and Kayla was a blast! Kayla gave a lot of great insight to the 3D modeling process, and Meyuu revealed some new drawings of Nyazen! The official phantom coloring is shown above!
  
• We plan to continue having more official streams in the future! Past streams are available to watch on our Twitch channel for 14 days after going live, and we’re looking into adding all previous streams to our YouTube.
  
• One of our community moderators, Crank, hosted a stream for Kindred Fates fans to discuss the game while playing JackBox games together last week!
  
• Crank’s next Community stream will be on Sunday May 3rd at 2:30pm (14:30) EST, and will feature a fun art challenge:
  
  Participants will be given a Kindred Fates-related prompt to draw within 1 hour. During that hour, a variety of kinfakes posted to our #art-contributions Discord channel will be featured and discussed! We hope to see you there!
  
  

BACKER REWARDS

• Digital Wallpapers and links to the Progress Board have been distributed to all backers! If you backed the game and didn’t receive an email, let us know by emailing [email protected]. Don’t forget to check your spam folder ;)
  
• We’re very happy to announce that we’ve finally received our first prototype of the Kickstarter Awburn Plushie! Here’s a first look:

• While this particular plushie is no longer available for purchase since it’s exclusive to backers, we are planning to have other plushies available in the future!
  

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you next time, on May 8th!