Hello Pilots!

Community Manager Roulbox here, welcome to the second edition of Air Command Center! A Sky Warrior’s developer blog where you will be able to read some development insights for the game! Today, we have a special guest. Some of you will recognize him from our very first video. 

Please join me to welcome Luiz Piccini, the Sky Warrior’s Game Director! 

 

Roulbox: Hello Luiz! Welcome to Air Command Center we are very happy to have you with us today! Can you tell us what’s your role in the Sky Warrior’s team? What are your responsibilities and what does your day-to-day work look like?

Piccini: Hello Roulbox, glad to be here! I am the creator and Game Director for Sky Warriors. I work on planning, managing product, engineering, art, and QA teams, and ensuring we are able to deliver the best possible experience to our players. My day-to-day work involves a lot of meetings to make sure everyone from the game team and from the other teams in the company is aligned on what’s the best for the game, but it’s also part of my job to play the game and think about how to improve it!

Roulbox: Great! it sounds like you have very busy days! Can you tell us what are your impressions of Sky Warriors now that the game has been released?

Piccini: I’m really happy with the reception we got, especially from players who were used to playing air combat games on PC or Console. My goal was to translate the experience I have with those games to mobile, and I think we are on the right track to do that.

Roulbox: That sounds like a big challenge! Speaking of which, Can you tell us about the challenges taken by the Sky Warriors team from the early development stages to the full launch of the game?

Piccini: Our main challenge was getting the controls right. It’s pretty hard to control an airplane as it has 6 degrees of movement and we are not used to navigating in so many dimensions. Making it so we could control the airplane with a touchscreen was a crucial part of the development, and one of the most interesting game design challenges I’ve ever had. As a bonus, here is an image from the very first prototype of Sky Warriors, back in 2020. We’ve come a long way since then!



Roulbox: Indeed, the game looks very different now and I am sure that our Community appreciates the change. Speaking a bit of content for Sky Warriors, the latest game mode introduced to Sky Warriors was Skirmish. Can you go over the process the team went through to come up with this new game mode? 

Piccini: We knew players wanted a game mode with more direct confrontation than Payload, but when we tried making Deathmatch of Free-for-all tests it didn’t go well because without an objective to draw players too, the conflict ended up sparse and uninteresting. So our lead artist suggested we made neutral objectives that both teams could kill for points, and Skirmish was born.

Roulbox: So which one of the two modes is your personal favourite and why?

Piccini: I play a lot of both, but I think I enjoy Skirmish more, as I can “carry” my team to win more easily. Payload requires more team play, which isn’t always as easy to coordinate. But that might change with the new Team Play feature…

Roulbox: Oh! Team Play? Nice! As you opened for spoilers… I have a question :). In the soft-launch video posted back in July, you mentioned that you want to add an option to let players join with their friends and increase the benefits of playing in a Squadron. Is there anything you can tell us about this?

Piccini: Yes! The new Team Play feature is coming with the next game update! It will let you play with your friends or Squadron mates, which will make wingman tactics much more important to win! There is also some new stuff coming to Squadrons soon, but I can’t give any details yet.

Roulbox: That sounds very interesting! Coming back to game content, you recently released Desert. What was the inspiration for this map? What’s the biggest difference between Island and Desert in terms of Gameplay?

Piccini: We wanted to have something very visually distinct from the Island map, so a Desert environment seemed like the way to go. We took a lot of inspiration from western US and northern Africa deserts and used props to give more identity to our Desert.

In terms of gameplay, the main difference is the canyon in the middle of the Desert map. While the Island map is mostly open and easy to fly around, the Desert map has a canyon that invites close quarter combat and will test pilots skills much more.

Roulbox: Close quarter combat inside the canyon really sounds like something hardcore players appreciate. One last question, What are the next steps for Sky Warriors?

Piccini: Keep growing! We have a lot of content I want to add to the game, we started with a new map. We also want to add a new game mode.  We have some ideas for new planes and new missiles, as well as special events. There is a lot to do, we are just starting!

Roulbox: This is very exciting! Thank you very much for being with us today Piccini, do you have any message for our community?

Piccini: Keep telling us what you like or dislike about the game! A game is nothing without its players, you folks are the reason we do what we do, so it’s important that we know what you are enjoying about it, and what you want to see in the future!

 

Pilots, I hope you enjoyed reading this blog as much as we enjoyed writing it. As you can see, there is a lot of interesting content on Sky Warrior’s pipeline and we are looking forward to reading your comments and feedback. Join our channels and talk to us!

We wish you tailwinds and clear skies!