Hello everyone!

May is coming to an end. We’d like to give you our final spring report before the summer comes into power! Today we are sharing new arts, screenshots, animations, and a piece of lore. Let’s go!
For starters, here’s something that’s still being developed.

Pneumatic elevators
Unlike conventional elevators, pneumatic ones can carry people and goods over very long distances at a high speed. We use them to quickly move around ARK.



It’s a pretty old technology, but it took us a while to make it safe for people to use. Nevertheless, the pneumatic network has existed for quite a while. Several Ark generations have can’t get around without it.



Hub gateway
The ginormous hub has a lot of separate rooms, connected by the gateway. Use it to get from one section to another.



In case of danger, the gateway can be used for isolating Hub sections. It’s fast, easy, and reliable.

Energy doors
The energy doors have a functionality similar to the Hub gateway, but they look completely different.
They’re ordinary doors that look like energy barriers, used just like ordinary doors. You can find them in all kinds of public places, but rest assured, you don’t want them at home.



The energy doors are used in warehouses and labs. They’re transparent, and yet they isolate rooms completely. The latest versions are also soundproof.

That’s all about the Ark’s high-tech lore. Let’s turn our attention to something truly spectacular now.

Creating monsters and interior elements
Let's take a look at the process of creation of ARK system terminal and Chameleon.
We begin the creation of the system terminal with a sketch in our design document. A sketch, along with a short description, goes to the artist, who comes up with a few concepts. After one of them gets approved, the artist continues working on it until the team reaches a final version. This is the version that the players will see.



When we created Chameleon, we used an almost identical approach. There’s just one peculiarity: it was the monster that needed animations. This was a painstaking but highly engaging process. We were to create a realistic animation, looking as naturally as possible in the game world (if a mutant monster can look natural at all).



What’s more natural than a Kamikaze explosion? Perhaps, your desire to run as far away and as fast as you can!



Speaking of which, don’t you think that the owner of the pincer is just too handsy? Although… who knows what this thing really is? Maybe, it’s just the correct amount of “handsy”.



And now to the summer! We’ll see you real soon.

Hi everybody!

We’ve spent a month working remotely, like almost everyone else in the world. We must say, this is an unusual experience! Thankfully, our pipelines are good enough to keep the development process going at full speed!
Today we give you a quick word about our latest developments. Let’s go!

Our enemies could drop valuable items, such as armor, rage charges, etc. We added a clot of biomaterial, which you will need to collect. It’s an important resource, exchangeable for other needful things: weapons, armor, and other goodies.



We introduce arrowheads for Eileen arrows, allowing you to fine-tune her tactics.



Meet the new NPC, the Storekeeper, who arrived at the Barracks. He’ll gladly trade fun stuff for the biomaterial you collect from dead monsters.



The young Chameleon’s animations betray his eager wish to prove himself in ARK.



And this is our remote office, 24/7! We thought you might be curious.



Take care of yourself. Stay healthy, stay safe, stay home.

Hi everyone!

Woah, has it been a whole month since our last post? It's gone by so fast!
It's time to review what we achieved! Are you excited? Let's go!

Spike Shooter is our biggest creation in more ways than one. He's hard to kill (and he's already nerfed, mind you!), but you just can't miss him!



We're happy to give you the first Lost in Sky's NPC ever: Ticola Nesla! The senior scientist around here, he has made hundreds of discoveries and inventions. He's one of the few survivors, who lived through the catastrophe in his lab. Who knows what other mysteries can be hidden in his safety locker!



We redesigned the City, and added new textures, posters, overhauled lighting, and parallax effects.





The representatives of the Kamikaze family have got new spine animations.



This one is ready to dive headfirst in battle: with the new animations, he looks more reckless in his bold attacks on the characters.



That's all for today! Stay home, and be safe!

Hi everybody!

We've been pretty busy over the last few weeks, and now we're excited to show you what we've done!

Monster animations

Fresh, smooth, well-polished: the new monster animations look familiar—and scary, and impressive, all at the same time!



Flying enemies
Let's do some shooting! A sword will do, too.



Training site
We added a couple of new simulators:

Monster holograms, an engineering marvel.



If holograms are too tough, special weakened species are at your service. There's nothing to be ashamed of, you're still in training... kind of.



Some good old-fashioned bloody fight to finish!

Hot-blooded young Headgrabber is eager to fight.



Here's what happens if you sneak up on an elite ARK fighter from behind.



That's it for today! We'll see you around, folks.

Hi, all!

We’ve been working hard to polish the Lost in Sky game universe based on your feedback. You can see the most obvious overhauls in our Developers’ Diary posts: the redesigned characters in cut scenes, new monster concepts, recolored locations.
It’s obvious that there’s a completely different way to show the Lost in Sky world. We can make it richer and deeper by adding more detail.

Today we want to show you the new concept art for the scenes we’re working on. Their atmosphere and mood are completely different, and you will feel it in every location you visit.


This level begins with the Headquarters. The external appearance is solemn and concise, with distinctive military flavor, dominated by light colors.




The city is divided into several very different districts.

Enclosed urban area
A corridor-type location, almost without windows. It features excessive artificial lighting, mainly in neon shades. The place is filled with screens showing bright videos.



Elite apartments
The uptown is the elite district. The architecture is concise and laconic, featuring huge spaces with hi-end furniture, home appliances, and decorations. The lighting is moderate. The information pollution level is kept at its minimum. This district hardly sustained any damage during the monster attack.



Lower class apartments
The downtown wasn’t as lucky: there’s destruction and dead bodies everywhere. Apartments are small and tense, and extremely minimalistic.



Barracks

The military premises with bare walls. No unnecessary or brightly colored items. Everything is designed strictly by the book. The discipline and order are in the absolutes. These are special technical facilities for research and development.

Presses
This is the industrial area with furnaces, smelter, and conveyor belt. The place is full of heaps of scrap metal and broken automatic manipulators. Tipped tanks with spilled hot metal create additional obstacles on your way.



This is just a small portion of our new concepts. We will continue with the new outlook on the Lost in Sky world and ARK. Share your opinions: tell us what you liked in particular and what you’d change. Your feedback is the fuel that drives us!

Hi all!

The Lost in Sky team remembers the past year by the incredible show cases where players gave us a lot of useful feedback. We carefully evaluated and considered all the feedback we received and decided to go a completely different way with the game.

As you may have noticed on our social networks (by the way, sign up if you haven’t!), we’re constantly drawing, coloring, animating, and implementing many new monsters in the game. Why? It turns out, we don’t have enough different easy and intermediate enemies! We were overly fixated on bosses (but they’re good, aren’t they? Nothing was in vain) and forgot about the population of minor enemies.

The task isn’t as simple as it seems. It requires a comprehensive solution. For starters, we came up with a system for creating new monsters. All names, terms, and paragraphs you’ll see below are drafts and placeholders.

Firstly, we introduce a Family, which consists of up to ~4 species, for instance:

• Larva
  
• Tadpole
  
• Youngling
  
• Mature

Each Family will have a specific game mechanics (shooting, poisonous, flying, ground families, etc). The players can see how the Family members progress along the game: each next monster will be more dangerous than the previous. The older a family member, the more developed their unique family feature, the more difficult it is to defeat.

And now it's time to proceed to the color concept arts. Remember: appearance, name, and features are subject to change.

Spider Family


Die-Hard Family


Gas-Blower Family


Chameleons


Here’s an animation of the Mature representative of the Spike-Shooting Family for dessert.



The year 2020 is going to be highly productive. Stay tuned and good luck to all of you!

Hi everybody!

Today we shall give you a brief review of the things we’ve done over the past couple of weeks.

Boss Tree
So far, you’ve seen the Boss Tree attack the characters in every possible way. It’s time we restored justice. Here are the fresh and crispy death effects of one of his eyes, followed by… let’s call them “consequences”.



Locations

Sometimes, the screen overflows with monsters, visual effects, and all kind of events. We completely overhauled the wall geometry on all levels, as well as the camera angle and perspective.
Because of the new contrasting volume and view depth, the visual effects and characters are now clearly visible.





Active space
Consequently, we tried our best at concealing all minor and unnecessary elements. They won’t be a distraction anymore.
Let’s take enemies, for example. Now the players can see only highlighted monsters and focus only on a current situation, without getting distracted by something outside the scene (building, room, etc).





New monsters
The ARK fauna has become even more diverse with the new tentacled creatures and spiders.
So far, they’re on the concept art stage, but it won’t be long till they appear in the game!





That’s all for today. We’ll see you soon!

Hi! Here's what we've done over the past few weeks.

The visuals.
We announced a big recoloring and changes in lighting of all game locations. Today we proudly show you the new Menagerie and the City. New color scheme, new lighting, and renovated 3D walls add visual depth to the picture.





We also updated the doors, both horizontal and vertical:





A lot of game characters were overhauled, too. We refined the artwork in dialogues: added a number of small details and cleaned up the picture:





Our good old Tree, which is at the same time a dreadful Boss, has learned some spectacular (and powerful) attacks. You could easily dodge the laser beams, but it's a whole different story with the projectiles.





While working on the main characters, monsters, bosses, and even guards, we almost forgot about the loyal companion, the self-propelled turret! We want to make it right.

The turret has got an energy shield that can extend her lifetime till all the enemies are dealt with:



In case if not all enemies are dealt with, the turret dies with dignity. We've already added a new cool animation of turret's death:



Last but not least, we give you concepts of completely new monsters - the kamikaze group:



We'll see you on the battlefield!

Hi everyone!

The past two months since our last update were fruitful. We visited Game Daily Connect 2019 in the USA. Distant flights, packed event days, and heaps of feedback! However, this doesn’t mean that we put the work on Lost in Sky on halt. Quite the opposite! We never stopped to work, and now we’d like to share the latest news with you.

Color and lighting

This was the biggest change in the recent weeks. We completely change the level color scheme and lighting. We’re also implementing new interior objects with parallax effect. The picture has become less “colorful” but acquired depth and distinctive atmosphere. And we’re being serious! Full stop.







Rage mode

If follow us on social media, you should’ve seen the presentation of this new feature. In fact, it’s very simple yet effective. You will find a new bar in the character interface. This is the rage bar, and the rate of rage accumulation will depend on several factors: damage done, damage received, and special rage flasks consumed.

When the bar is full, the rage mode activates. This is where the hardships are relieved: you gain endless endurance and increased damage, while the effect lasts. You only need to find more enemies—but no worries, we’ll take care of it 😉



Bot improvement

We’re well aware that it one can’t always find a loyal friend to play co-op Lost in Sky with. We’re trying to teach our AI character if not to replace but at least resemble a living human being and imitate normal human behavior. We made a step toward the ultimate goal.



Random cues

We focus on bubbles with cues that should replace big dialog windows covering your screen. Now players will receive incoming information non-stop along the course of action.
Characters can react with a cue to an enemy or a situation.



Minor fixes

With the latest reviews and suggestions from Game Daily Connect 2019, we’ve already started working on some new things:

- When a partner character dies in a co-op, your half of the screen expands full-screen. It’s simply too cruel to make you stare at your dead partner. And not very comfy, either.

- The enemies! Some thought they were sloppy. Others thought they were tough. We decided to give them some balance and ended up making them tough for everyone! Just joking. In fact, we’re following up on it, looking to find the right balance that every player would be okay with.

And that’s where the summer ends for the Lost in Sky team. We expect autumn to be no less eventful and rewarding.

Here’s a little something for you right from the development workshop. This is the redesigned Worm Boss location, creepy and depressing



We’ll see you soon!

Hi all!

Since our last article we added a few cool features to Lost in Sky we'd like to share with you. We're really excited about them!

Parallax effect

We added a frontal layer that moves past slower than the foreground layers, which adds depths to the scene. However weird this might sound, in fact, it's a very cool feature. Well, a picture's worth a thousand words!



Upgraded levers

Levers got a new look, now they're easier to be seen. It takes just one glance to tell an enabled lever from a warden, an elevator, or a health kit. And from a disabled lever as well. Just in case: green means ON, red means OFF.



Langoliers' new attack

We decided that a repulsive look of a langolier isn't enough to show how much it is, in fact, hostile toward players. Now langoliers swell and become bright red just before they attack. There must be no doubt as to what is happening.



Ally resurrection

Lost in Sky's main feature is a two-character action. If one of them died, we had to restart the whole level. We thought that the survivor deserves a chance to go on on its own. Now, if one of the characters mistakes a langolier for a lever and dies, the other can find a resurrection point and bring their buddy back to life.



Stamina visuals

We mentioned changes in Stamina system in one of our recent posts, so here are some quick facts. When you're about to run out of Stamina, here's what you see:

- the stamina bar blinks;
- Stamina level moves beyond the tick that indicates a low stamina warning;
- a white screen border appears.

Just a few minor things that might allow you to quickly notice that something's wrong. It's supposed to work like an insurance against situations, where you're surrounded by crowds of enemies—and you suddenly run out of Stamina. We hope it helps.



Critical damage visualization

It's easy. Old-school shooter style. When you character is almost dying, a red screen border appears, and your health bar starts blinking like crazy. Just like the Stamina thing, only red ¯\_(ツ)_/¯



That's all for today! We'll come back to you with more cool stuff! Stay tuned!