Sky: Children of the Light can be considered one of the most compelling, innovative multiplayer games of all time. It came to Steam on April 10 as an early access title, making the pre-existing mobile and console game finally available to PC players.
Sky also won and has been nominated for many awards, the most prominent being their Gamescom 2023 wins under “Best Mobile Game” and “Games for Impact”, as well as their nomination for The Game Awards in 2019. Sky is a game primarily based upon socialization between players, working together to overcome obstacles. It can also be played from a solo perspective entirely if desired.
With Sky, there is no exaggeration whatsoever in saying that the “sky is the limit” in terms of anything you might want to do in the game. If what you are looking for from a game is to reignite a “child-like” wonder and curiosity within a grand, expansive new world, then Sky is definitely the game for you.
Mechanics
You start off as a fresh “moth,” the common term given to those who are beginners. From there, you have six realms in total to explore (and seven counting the final endgame area).
Flight is accessed through the wing system, and the flight system itself is more or less very dynamic and expressive. It’s very easy to learn from a starter perspective, and without too much time, I am positive that most new players would get a hang of it very quickly. Winged lights are collectibles that you gain through interacting with them while close. They typically appear in-game as golden, glowing silhouettes, and would obviously be hard to miss due to this… but are generally placed in an “easter egg” like fashion in order to incentivize the player to search for them.
You might get assistance from the already helpful, active playerbase in your quest to explore areas and complete the entire base game. There’s a mechanic that allows help through requesting for more experienced players to find spirits with you, but they can also just help you progress through the game if they are willing to. The aptly, community named “Sky Kids” label for the characters each have various layers of customization possible from top to bottom. You can even customize your wings… but first, you would have to buy said customizations in the first place, some being with the in-game currency, and others being through special, paid deals.
Candles and Hearts make up the game’s main currency. You gain Candles through obtaining the wax associated with them around the game’s maps. You receive Hearts through means of trading said candles into spirits (typically three Candles for one), having a friend gift you some, and other possible, more miscellaneous methods.
There are also variant Candles that exist within the game. Those such as seasonal Candles which can be obtained from the same wax gaining methods with clear distinction in their design to differentiate them from regular Candles, or ascended Candles which can be obtained through clearing Eden (endgame) or completing Shattering Shard events.
Sky has seasons that last about three months each. These seasons are clearly associated with the seasonal Candles, where at the end of the season, any unspent seasonal Candles will convert into regular Candles in case you didn’t spend them on anything during the season.
Chevrons are what you need to pay close attention to when gaining wax around the various locations. Simply put, they are typically seen in the form of “arrow markers” that appear next to the gauge of your regular Candles within the UI. When you first enter the game during a reset period (after a day has passed), you will always start with three chevrons. The more wax you collect, the more these chevrons will deplete until they generally reach about one chevron. Then, upon the next daily reset, the process repeats itself.
Chevrons are a very important mechanic to note because they actually limit the grinding in this game. At three chevrons, the wax you gain through gathering will be much more than what little you would gain with one chevron. Essentially, the mechanic serves as a cap put in place to keep players from just grinding candles ceaselessly in one sitting, and to instead take the game in an arguably more natural, daily approach of playing it.
So where’s the risk, you might ask? Where’s the challenge? Well, despite Sky being a relatively lax game, there are indeed some challenges, most of which involve the chance to lose your collected wings through enemies or hazards in the game. There aren’t many of these, which might be something good for casual players… but when Sky wants to get difficult, believe me, it gets difficult.
Some realms, like Hidden Forest, for example, feature environmental hazards like rain that, if caught out in it for too long, will result in your wing resource burning and potentially lead to you losing your wings in the process if you do not find shelter or light in time. Others, like Golden Wasteland, put a much stronger emphasis on hostile creatures within the game that, if you are not careful, will attack you and run the same risk of losing your winged lights.
Story
Spirits, spirits, spirits. What would we do without spirits? The game has so many of them across the main realms that they could well be within the hundreds, and likely are. Spirits, when interacted with, display their past livelihoods. New spirits keep being added as the game expands, increasing the total number each time, and all of them definitely have something to show you.
When interacted with, the spirits will guide you through their past and also display bits of the location you’re in with them, which can especially be of help if you’re new to the area. They each have a variety. Some can be regular blue spirits, and others purple spirits (the purple indicating that they have more complex ways to obtain the spirits, like guiding a light or following a trail).
Regardless, the main method of getting them is to follow what path they lay out for you to go towards, and making it to the end where you “revive” them via holding a candle to their statue. In doing so, you gain the spirit’s gesture, and the ability to access any items pertaining to their “friendship tree” that usually require you to invest candles or hearts into.
Besides spirits, a lot of the lore can be seen through murals along areas within the game like caves and other rocky formations, typically upon lighting them up. This quote can be taken from one of the introductory murals that explains the very basis of the game’s lore and objective.
“All are given breath by starlight. The first of us lived in joy that we would one day return to the stars. Together, we built a Kingdom in the clouds. We connected the seven realms with the power of starlight. But then the Sky went dark, and our Kingdom shattered. Many of us are still trapped in these realms. Please, Child… Bring your light to our fallen spirits.”
The main six realms that you must explore require you to reach the end of all of them. These end locations are called “temples.” Temples must be reached successfully in order to move on with the game’s story. Each temple completed will unlock a new pathway of light upon the large door of the spawn area that will lead to the last endgame location of Eden, the final realm that makes up the seven altogether.
Gameplay
Playing this game for the first time will not be anything short of mesmerizing, and something that you probably remember for the rest of your life. This game on its first playthrough is something that I believe is good enough to warrant anyone playing through its entirety at least once.
The only factor of Sky: Children of the Light you may struggle with later on is the idea of the realms being repetitive. As in, if you want to gain plenty of wax daily for Candles, you’ll quickly find yourself returning to the exact same realms over and over again. And with this, the feeling is more than likely to not be the same filled with newfound wonder compared to your first times discovering the realm.
A lot of games struggle with this gameplay factor of the locations becoming “old” to the player after a while of returning, and just overall growing more accustomed to them over time. Luckily, I’ve found that Sky surprisingly has an ingenious solution to that which, while isn’t perfect, still manages to remedy the issue in a relatively simple, yet effective manner.
That’s right, Sky has returning areas. Places that, in previous seasons of the game, would have existed with limited time offers (especially with regards to the spirits), but still remain accessible to players willing to explore them. So, on top of the aforementioned, pre-existing realms that are already massive in size and well designed in their mapping… you would have all the returning areas you can visit anytime, that people like veterans of the game would have explored themselves prior, making the overall areas in the game (including subsections of realms) jump to about an estimate of 40 or more in total. New places to explore are also likely to be added through the game’s development as time progresses.
Criticisms
There are so few criticisms about this game I could gather together that saying I have a list of them would just be plain wrong. There’s not really much to gripe about with a game that has this much to offer, as well as being free and easily accessible to a variety of players on a cross-platform level, either. The only major gripe I would have to point out however would be how the game is directly monetized.
Generally, free-to-play games often have to use loot boxes, limited-time events, or other forms of ways in order to incentivize its playerbase to actually spend money. Sky’s main method of doing that seems to primarily be through the allure of cosmetics.
With each character having customization options, there is no shortage to what your character can wear through unlocking them with mainly candles or hearts. That is, until you mention the paywalling of a majority of these cosmetics. New players especially don’t really have that many outfit options whatsoever.
Many of those past, “free” outfits in earlier seasons that didn’t require paying for would be practically unobtainable, and only veteran players might have been able to take advantage of that luxury for themselves. The rest of the newer playerbase that doesn’t want to shell out money for a proper outfit might just have to give up on the idea of character customization past very few, limited options available. Customization categories like capes, headwear and other cosmetics are different, those are more available for F2P players (even though they typically come at a hefty in-game price anyway).
Outfit variants themselves with colors, different styles of clothing and so on don’t really exist for F2P players, especially if they are coming into the game for the first time. Even if the in-game prices were to be extravagant and cost players plenty of candles or hearts, this would be a much better alternative than having no actual outfits available to F2P players at all.
Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) exists in Sky as well through some of the seasonal, limited time events and spirits. The only “solution” made by the devs being to have some of those return over the course of time for players to be able to access them again. Nevertheless, when the return is strictly up to the developer’s discretion — where it could be months, or even years before you get to see them again to be able to interact with.
Summary
Sky: Children of the Light is a great game that does something different in the multiplayer gaming genre and casts a primary focus on socializing, whether it be having fun with friends, making new peers, and anything in-between. It’s an experience that you definitely would not want to miss out on, with its beautiful visuals, unique style, interesting lore, and fascinating characters in the form of both spirits and players alike. There is no end to what you can accomplish in the game, and with new content being added every season, it’s safe to say that the game will continue to have a successful run for a long time to come.
Sky: Children of the Light is available free-to-play on Steam in Early Access.
The Review
Great
