Community Newsletter September 2026

 
 
 

Progress

  • On the animation side, we’ve spent some time focusing on the tail animator. Here’s an early WIP of Nyazen using the animator! You can see the tail flows smoothly behind them, even on tight spins, though we’re still tuning how much the tail “stretches” behind them in some instances.


  • The engine upgrade is in its final stretch! We're now running internal playtests of full Combat Arena Beta runs on the upgraded engine, and any issues we notice get fixed before the next run. Once those runs come back clean, the upgrade will be wrapped up and we can get back to making new content for the Early Access version of the game like we’ve been wanting to do.


  • As part of the upgrade, we streamlined how abilities are set up. Many abilities used to need their own custom code, so every new move meant writing and debugging something from scratch. Now abilities share a small set of common shapes (a projectile, a melee combo, a dash, a mine, etc.), and each one can be given their unique characteristics via the settings on those common shapes. Implementing a new move is now mostly setup time rather than new code, which means more variety for the same effort.


  • We’ve brought a lot of odds and ends to the upgraded engine this month. This includes 34 abilities, camera lock-on, NPC summoners, character death logic, a whole host of NPC behavior tools, and lots more.


  • Back in May, we talked about how our new combat-effects system would let our list of passive abilities grow quickly. Every passive from the Beta now runs on it, and we already have a few new ones working too! Passive abilities have also received the same treatment as active abilities. They have become more standardized and templateable. Just like for active abilities, this makes creating future passives easier.


  • We developed a very easy system to record combat and replicate bugs! Before, when we found a bug in a playtest, we had to try and recreate it by hand. Depending on the bug, this could take a ton of time to do and be hard to diagnose. Now we can record a fight frame by frame (where everyone stands, which way they face, every ability, every hit, plus snapshots of the screen) for later review. An automated checker then reads the recording against a list of gameplay rules we've written down (ex. feet should never slide across the ground, Kinfolk NPCs should never stand around doing nothing in the middle of a fight, etc.). Anything that breaks a rule gets flagged at the exact moment it happened, and whenever we add a new rule, we can make sure that all of the previous fights we recorded follow it. Problems that used to take hours to pin down now get detected automatically!

Community

In case you don't know, we post weekly on Bluesky! Here's what we've posted in the last month:

Fall Camping https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mwae3skggc2s

Unity Upgrade Progress https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mvoscpgyts2e

Improved FPS Performance https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mv52up5fi22l

Thoughts on Bargeist? https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mulq6lqsuk2o

LeXICON

The full lexicon can be found here.

  • Automated tests: Tests that are programmed to run automatically whenever a new build is made. Reduces the need to manually test features repetitively (ex. making sure every ability works as intended for every character).

  • Build: A playable version of the game. We create new builds multiple times per week to test new changes.

  • NPC: A non-player character.

 
 

Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on October 30th. Until then, take care!

Community Newsletter August 2026

 
 
 

Progress

  • Since we’ve been making so much progress on Deerdog/Humble_Shepherd, why don’t we get more acquainted? Internally, we’ve been referring to this character as Bargeist! The name draws inspiration from Barghest, the Northern English mythological canine, and the German word for ghost, “geist.” Given that this is a community-created Kinfolk, it wouldn’t feel right to finalize the name before getting the community’s opinion. We’re excited to hear your thoughts!



  • Bargeist’s animations are finished, so we’re looking forward to sharing footage of combat soon! With that finished, we’re moving onto polishing Nyazen’s standard animations and starting their combat animations. We’ve also started on animations for Briar_Runner, one of Brihorn’s evolutions.

  • We spent this month on a focused performance push across the overworld, and it paid off massively! The world now runs somewhere between 1.5x and 2x faster than it used to. This progress came from a lot of small advances, including a more efficient system for handling shadows and a pass over the grass rendering. None of it changes what you see, but it means more of the processing power is left over for the world itself, allowing us to keep adding more things that you would notice.

  • We recovered about 1 GB of RAM usage across several different fronts. The largest single improvement was changing how the game packages and loads content, so world pieces arrive on demand rather than everything being held at once. On top of that we found terrain textures that were being loaded into memory and never actually used properly, and adjusted how much detail is kept once it’s a certain distance away from the player. With this and the performance improvements, we’re excited about how much more comfortably the game should run on lower end hardware!

  • The world streaming system has been reworked to run on Unity's Addressables system. Previously the world would come in with a noticeable hitch as you crossed from one terrain tile to the next, and memory that had been used for a tile behind you didn't reliably come back when the tile unloaded (walk far enough and the game would keep growing). Both of those are fixed! Terrain tiles stream in without stuttering, and when they go, the memory goes with them. It’s not flashy, but it will prevent a case of immersion-breaking stuttering on lower end hardware.

  • Our grass is looking much more lush since we moved it onto a new instancing system that draws far more blades for far less processing cost. Grass now holds its full thickness much further out from you, and thins gradually rather than popping in/out in a few steps. Along the way we found the system was thinning distant grass considerably more aggressively than we'd actually asked it to. Correcting this roughly tripled the amount of grass in the distance, for no extra cost whatsoever. The results are fuller fields that extend further when you look out across them.

  • The mountains and ridgelines you see out on the horizon used to be very costly every frame. When whirling the camera around, there was often noticeable stuttering when there were more mountains in the background. After this pass they're essentially free. That means we can be more generous with what's visible in the distance without it eating into everything nearer to you.

  • Our water and rivers have both been reworked onto the current generation of the tools we make them with. The foam was upgraded, both out on the open surface and along the line where water meets the shore, and we get proper waterfalls out of it now! Other parts of the game can also read the height of the water surface directly, which is what lets something floating on a moving river sit correctly on the water, rather than on a rough guess at where the water probably is.

Community

In case you don't know, we post weekly on Bluesky! Here's what we've posted in the last month:

Deerdog animation blocking https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mu263yp6z22f

Deerdog drowning https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mtil5xy3sc2c

Fixed terrain https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mswrrwktls2y

Deerdog sneezing https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mser3zovuk2h

LeXICON

The full lexicon can be found here.

  • Addressables: The framework Unity provides that allows developers to decide what assets are currently loaded into the computer's memory.

  • Optimization: Making the code run more efficiently, so it takes less processing power to achieve the same effect.

  • Overworld: The playable area in the open world exploration part of the game.

  • Texture: A 2D image that’s applied to a 3D model to give it color and shading.

  • World Streaming: The process of breaking up large terrain into smaller tiles that can be unloaded if they aren’t visible from the player’s current perspective. Reduces processing power needed to run the game.

 
 

Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on September 25th. Until then, take care!

Community Newsletter July 2026

 
 
 

Progress



  • Humble_Shepherd is our next focus for animations! We’re currently working on their standard animations, which you can see an early work in progress video of below.



  • Gatherable items like berries, herbs and other things you pick up out in the world are now stored as data rather than as gameobjects in the scene. Previously each one sat in the world fully loaded whether you were standing next to it or a mile away. Now the world holds a marker saying "a wildberry bush goes here," and the bush is assembled as you get close and then recycled once you've moved on. We can scatter far more of them around without the memory cost, and it fits neatly with the system that loads the world in pieces around you. This optimization should help the open world exploration to have better performance!

  • Puzzle objects like destructible crates, explosive barrels, rune rocks and lock spheres you come across while exploring got the same treatment. The useful change is that the element that sets each one off is now a setting we choose per object rather than something fixed into the object type. The same rune rock can ask for Fire in one place and Water in another. That means a lot more variation across the world without new work behind the scenes each time.

  • Missions now run end to end through the new dialogue system we talked about in April. Taking a mission from an NPC, asking them how you're doing partway through, and turning it in all flow through the same graphs, and twenty-eight mission conversations have been converted so far, including story and side missions. We also added cinematic beats that aren't tied to one specific location (camera moves, HUD fades, etc.) so a cutscene can play wherever the story needs it to.

  • Held items now run on the same combat-effects pipeline as abilities and recipes, which we covered back in May. Practically, that means an item can do anything an ability can: apply an effect for the whole time it's held, or make a Kinfolk immune to a specific status like poison or burn.

  • We’re continuing to make good progress on getting the terrain working with the Unity upgrade! We recently found a fix for a pesky shader issue, so now all the ground textures are finally behaving properly.


Community

In case you don't know, we post weekly on Bluesky! Here's what we've posted in the last month:

Terrain Texture issue https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mrt42yx26s2q

What happened to this chime tower? https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mrbqxhamss2k

Aura Discussion https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mqq4vrxvrk2z

Camping with Awburn https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mq6tvir6s22t

LeXICON

The full lexicon can be found here.

  • Asset: Essentially any in-game object. Buildings, trees, leaves, etc.

  • Rigging: Giving a character model a “skeleton” with joints that animators can move around to create animations.

  • Summoner: The people in Hinterlock who can summon Kinfolk.

  • Texture: A 2D image that’s applied to a 3D model to give it color and shading.

  • World Streaming: The process of breaking up large terrain into smaller tiles that can be unloaded if they aren’t visible from the player’s current perspective. Reduces processing power needed to run the game.

 
 

Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on August 28th. Until then, take care!

Community Newsletter June 2026

 
 
 

Progress


  • With the help of our community members on Discord and Bluesky, we now have an official name for Hull_Piercer! Please welcome Ravanuuk to Kindred Fates! Big thanks to everyone who weighed in on this and contributed their ideas for names.

    While we’re at it, here’s a new look at the big guy’s evolution tree, along with another new official name.


  • With Nyazen’s standard animations nearly finished, we’ve started on their combat animations! We’re keeping a few of their standard animations in a rough form so we can keep experimenting with movement options. Once Nyazen’s animations are finished, it’s Humble_Shepherd’s turn! Humble_Shepherd and Briar_Runner recently got updated rigging that allows for jiggle skeletons, a method that makes it easier to animate more natural motion in limbs and tails.

  • This month's big focus on the development side was an internal tool we've been calling the Kinfolk Setup Wizard. It takes the rigged 3D model and animations our artists create and walks through the entire setup process, assembling the character components for movement and hurt-boxes, wiring in animations, and configuring combat poses to produce fully functional Kinfolk in a fraction of the time it used to take us by hand. The first Kinfolk built start-to-finish with it is Bright_Horn, who's now up and running as a fully playable character! Every Kinfolk we make from here uses the same pipeline, meaning less time putting characters together and a lot more time designing how they actually play.

  • We also reorganized how each Kinfolk's animation controller is structured (the chart that decides which movement or attack plays, and when). Every Kinfolk now follows the same consistent layout. Ability animations are in one group, while movement animations are in another. It's invisible from the player’s perspective, but with the whole roster sharing a single structure, our animations are far easier to navigate and maintain as our character count grows

  • One of the mechanics we recently migrated to the new version of Unity is one we haven’t discussed publicly before: Auras. These are unique buffs that your Summoner can obtain from Chime Towers across the map, significantly increasing their capabilities in certain areas. For example, one aura increases your effectiveness with all Summoning Bells, and another raises the Summoner’s max stamina and stamina regeneration. Pretty helpful when rushing back to save a fallen ally, or bond with an especially powerful Kinfolk! The player can only have one Aura active at a time, and can choose from any they’ve previously attained.

  • One of the largest pieces of the project left to upgrade in Unity is the terrain and all the systems that handle terrain data (world streaming, texture mapping, automatically placing gatherable assets, etc.). The heightmaps, grass, trees, and rocks are generally where they’re supposed to be, and getting the textures up and running is next on our to-do list. Because these are such complex systems, upgrading the terrain is fairly time consuming, but it’s a clear sign that we’re most of the way finished with the Unity upgrade!

  • While the upgrade is underway on the development side, we’ve been taking a look at the game’s story with fresh eyes. We’re going back through everything we’ve written to improve organization, check for contradictions/plot holes, and ensure that the story we want to tell for the early access is suitable for its scope. We know the story is one of the most important aspects of the game to many people, ourselves included, so we want to make it the best it can be!

Community

In case you don't know, we post weekly on Bluesky! Here's what we've posted in the last month:


Kinfolk Beach Party https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mp3saiuqtc2i

Nyazen Improved Textures https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mojzx44uyk2j

Happy Summer! https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mnycjkrp722y

Nyazen Animation Before & After https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mngktfng3c2j

LeXICON

The full lexicon can be found here.

  • Asset: Essentially any in-game object. Buildings, trees, leaves, etc.

  • Rigging: Giving a character model a “skeleton” with joints that animators can move around to create animations.

  • Summoner: The people in Hinterlock who can summon Kinfolk.

  • Texture: A 2D image that’s applied to a 3D model to give it color and shading.

  • World Streaming: The process of breaking up large terrain into smaller tiles that can be unloaded if they aren’t visible from the player’s current perspective. Reduces processing power needed to run the game.

 
 

Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on July 31st. Until then, stay hydrated!

Community Newsletter May 2026

 
 
 

Progress

  • Nyazen’s unique body type continues to give us a fun challenge as we work on their standard animations! Most recently, we’ve been blocking out a rough version of their “walk” animation (if you can call it that) to figure out what works best. Here’s a preview of the most recent version, where we’re experimenting with a contrast between up-and-down motion at the front of their body and a slight spiral motion for their tail. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

  • As part of our upgrade to the most recent version of Unity LTS, we’ve reviewed and changed the structure for a variety of our systems to improve efficiency. Altogether, we’re looking at some massive improvements which increase both the quality and speed of development!

  • Character customization: We took another pass at how human characters are put together, and the new version is significantly lighter on memory and more flexible for the team to work with.

    • The old setup kept every possible cosmetic option loaded on the character at once (including all hairstyles, clothing items, etc.) and just toggled visibility based on what was selected. It was functional, but the more options we added, the heavier of a lift this method became. The new system only loads what the NPC is actually wearing. Human characters now have a much smaller memory footprint, scale cleanly as we add more cosmetic content, and load faster when entering scenes.

    • This update also unlocked something we've been wanting for a while: an in-editor NPC creation window. The team can now build new townsfolk and NPC presets visually in edit mode (as opposed to entering play mode and using the player-side character customizer to create a new NPC). Human characters now take less time to create, which means more variety in the world without the same cost in development time.

    • Here’s a look at the new character customization editor window. This window spits out character customization presets which we can plug into a human NPC to give them any look easily.


  • Combat-effects system: We’ve completely rearranged how we handle combat effects like poison, burn, stuns, etc.

    • Previously, abilities, passive effects, status conditions, and held-item effects each lived in their own little system with their own rules. Adding a new passive ability often meant touching three or four different systems, and held items couldn't really do anything interesting without dedicated work for each one.

    • We've now unified all of that under one combat-effects pipeline. Damage, healing, knockback, lifesteal, damage-over-time, healing-over-time, area-of-effect, status conditions, and crowd-control are all expressed the same way and can listen for the same triggers. Effects can stack, expire, get cleansed, or chain off each other, with safety rails to keep interactions from spiraling.

    • For players, the practical payoff is that we can now create dozens of new unique passive abilities and held items without creating new work each time. Expect to see this list grow quickly in the future.

  • Cooking ties into combat: While we were in there, we gave the cooking UI a polish pass and wired it into the new combat-effects system. Recipes can now apply any of the same effects that abilities, passive abilities, and items can.

  • Combat stability: A lot of this update's polish came out of a behind-the-scenes effort to make combat easier to test. Combat logic can now run on its own in the background without the camera, animations, or visuals attached, which means we can run hundreds of combat scenarios automatically every time we make a change. We are now constantly increasing the amount of our codebase that can be automatically tested. If a code update accidentally shifts a knockback distance or a dodge i-frame window, we can catch it before it ever reaches a build. It's not a flashy feature, but it's the kind of improvement that pays off in fewer surprise bugs and faster iteration on the combat depth we talked about above.

    As you can see, we're making meaningful progress toward Kindred Fates' Early Access release, and we want to share where things stand. A core part of that progress right now is ensuring our tools are fully up to date. Once the engine upgrade is complete, we'll be able to build and iterate faster than ever before. From there, our next milestone will be making sure everything we've built for the beginning of the story is working exactly as it should.

    We know many of you are eager for a concrete timeline, and we genuinely wish we could give you one. What we can promise is that we won't commit to a date until we're confident it's one we can stand behind. Your trust matters more to us than a date that we might have to walk back. Thank you as always for your patience and support. We're building something we're really proud of, and we can't wait to share it with you.

Community

In case you don't know, we post weekly on Bluesky! Here's what we've posted in the last month:

Nyazen texture test https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mmv33hr5zs2g
Terrain update https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mmdec35o4223
Who’s the cutest Kinfolk? https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mls42gd5u22b
Nyazen In-Engine https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3ml7f5zcwek2g

LeXICON

The full lexicon can be found here.

  • Build: A playable version of the game. We create new builds for QA to test new changes.

  • Codebase: All of the code that makes up the project.

  • LTS: Long term support. Unity versions that are supported with bug fixes and updates over long periods of time.

  • NPC: A non-player character.

  • Optimization: Making the code run more efficiently, so it takes less processing power to achieve the same effect.

  • Workflow: The sequence of steps someone follows to complete a task.

 
 

Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on June 26th. Until then, take care!

Community Newsletter April 2026

 
 
 

Progress

  • We’ve come a long way on Nyazen’s model and animations this month! The majority of the rigging is done, except for the smaller details of the fur on their ears and sides of their face. We want to be sure that all of their animations are appropriately majestic, and there’s no achieving that without close attention to the finer details.

  • In the meantime, we have the beginnings of an idle animation to share! Please note that this is an early draft, and while it showcases Nyazen with open eyes, they will typically have closed eyes as seen in the concept art.


  • Due to Nyazen’s unique body type, they have a somewhat unorthodox (yet oddly familiar) T-pose! This is a full view of the model’s neutral pose:


  • Over the last two weeks we overhauled the game's dialogue backbone. The old xNode-based conversation graphs from the previous version of Unity have been retired in favor of a new, more concise system where writers and designers get to use a faster workflow. We also created a tool that easily ports all of our old xNode-backed dialogues over to the new system.

  • As part of our dialogue overhaul, we’ve added localization infrastructure. All dialogue text now flows through Unity Localization, with English as the default. We have yet to translate these dialogues, but the underlying framework that links dialogue nodes to different languages is now working!

  • We’ve also added functionality that allows dialogue to work with our Addressable system. Conversations now only load into memory when triggered and unload when they end, which will be a massive help for scene load times and memory.

  • We're now using a maintained vendor framework (NodeCanvas) instead of a hand-rolled graph engine (xNode), so from now on our custom code is limited to things that are specific to Kindred Fates.

  • One of the most noticeable changes that came from this upgrade is the old system needed a dedicated node for every tiny operation. For example, we had separate nodes for the concept of "AND," “OR,” "NOT," etc., meaning graphs got crowded fast. The new system uses a blackboard for reusable variables that greatly reduces the number of nodes in each dialogue graph.

  • Here's a before and after of our dialogue graph that plays when learning a new ability via an ability shard or leveling up. Believe it or not, these two graphs do the same thing!

Before:

After:

Community

In case you don't know, we post weekly on Bluesky! Here's what we've posted in the last month:

Happy Earth Day! https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mk5aim45wk2k

Nyazen’s Model Size https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mjl7urxn7k24

Easter Wishes https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mj23mgyyjc2o

“New” Discord Icon Art https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mihzcz26t22g

LeXICON

The full lexicon can be found here.

  • Addressables: The framework Unity provides that allows developers to decide what assets are currently loaded into the computer's memory.

  • Optimization: Making the code run more efficiently, so it takes less processing power to achieve the same effect.

  • Rigging: Giving a character model a “skeleton” with joints that animators can move around to create animations.

  • Workflow: The sequence of steps someone follows to complete a task.

  • xNode: The software we used to use for handling our dialogue implementation.

 
 

Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on May 29th. Until then, take care!

Community Newsletter March 2026

 
 
 

Combat Arena Beta

  • Released a new version this month with Prophect as a playable character along with various bug fixes! We’re very excited to finally get a new Kinfolk in your hands. Their unique ability list should give plenty of options for those that enjoy Lumala and/or Skulken’s gameplay. They have one of the most interesting and unique playstyles that players have had access to so far. Prophect's combination of Light, Dark, and Mecha abilities mean that there's several different meaningful skill expressions available to different types of players at different skill levels.

Progress

  • We’re still continuing work on the Unity 6 upgrade with the main focus on our addressables asset pipeline. This mainly affects things like dialogue trees and NPC functionality. Addressables is basically just the framework Unity provides that allow devs to decide what assets are currently loaded into the computer's memory. For example, in a large open world with a lot of different environments, locations, characters, it's important for only the relevant assets where the player is currently exploring in the world are loaded into memory. That way there's never too much loaded into the RAM, which can overwhelm low-end hardware. Another example is ability handling. With these improvements, we can have something like a boss fight include a lot more projectiles in their attacks than before.

  • Worldstreaming (ie. loading and unloading chunks of the world) has gotten much more efficient as a result of these upgrades. We’re able to make the environment itself much more lightweight and the heavier assets like NPCs can be loaded in separately as the player roams the world.


  • All of this to say that performance should be much better when you’re traveling the open world and it allows us to design the environment with fewer technical limitations.


  • This month we’ve been working on rigging and animations for two different Kinfolk models in tandem, Nyazen and Humble_Shepherd! These are both special as their designs came from the community instead of us. Nyazen was the winner of the cat contest that we did way back in 2020. Humble_Shepherd was submitted in response to an art prompt. Both designs perfectly capture what we’re going for in Kindred Fates, and we’re still very grateful to both community members for letting us highlight their designs. We have an idea in mind for Humble_Shepherd’s official name, but we’re not fully settled on it yet, so you’ll have to wait a bit longer!

  • While Nyazen isn’t quite ready to show yet, we have a look at a freshly made animation for Humble_Shepherd ready to show to you all. Also as a reminder to those who haven’t seen it in awhile, right below we also have the original concept art vs our revision of it. For the animation, keep in mind this is the first pass and it still needs polishing!

‍ ‍

‍ ‍

  • Our main goal at the moment is finishing our upgrade to Unity 6. There’s still a ways to go, but we’ve come a long way so far. The process of switching will be worth it in the long run! Once that’s done, our focus will turn back to fixing up the current game for the Early Access release.

Community

In case you don't know, we post weekly on Bluesky! Here's what we've posted in the last month:

Better Look at Deadly Premonition: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mgbqdxv23s2b

Adding Prophect to Beta: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mgtftv2fak2k

Prophect’s Playstyle and Abilities: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mheve6pjck22

Animation Teaser: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mhvpxzu5oc2b

LeXICON

The full lexicon can be found here.

  • Addressables: Basically just the framework Unity provides that allow devs to decide what assets are currently loaded into the computer's memory.

  • Behavior Tree: The instructions that tell an NPC how they should act in different situations.

  • NPC: A non-player character.

  • Optimization: Making the code run more efficiently, so it takes less processing power to achieve the same effect.

  • Overworld: The playable area in the open world exploration part of the game.

  • Rigging: Giving a character model a “skeleton” with joints that animators can move around to create animations.

  • World Streaming: The process of breaking up large terrain into smaller tiles that can be unloaded if they aren’t visible from the player’s current perspective. Reduces processing power needed to run the game.

 
 

Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on April 24th. Until then, take care!

Community Newsletter February 2026

 
 
 

Six years ago today, our Kickstarter campaign came to a close, and with it, something incredible happened. Over 11,000 of you believed in the vision of Kindred Fates enough to back it, and that moment changed everything for us. It's a milestone worth celebrating, and we want to start by saying thank you. Genuinely, thank you.

We also want to be honest with you, because you deserve that.

We know progress hasn't moved at the pace any of us hoped for. There's no sugarcoating that. When you backed this project, you put your trust in us, and we carry that weight every single day. As many of you know, everyone on the team has taken on work outside of Kindred Fates this past year to support ourselves. While that's meant less time to dedicate to the game, it's also what's kept the project alive. Those jobs allow us to keep the lights on, keep the team together, and fund critical work like new art assets that move the game forward. It's not the path we envisioned, but it's the path that lets us keep building.

We want you to know: this team has never stopped working, and we've never lost sight of what we set out to build together. Kindred Fates isn't just a project to us, it's a promise. And we intend to keep it.

So today, we're looking back with gratitude and forward with determination, starting with some progress updates! Let's get into it.

Progress

  • The latest version of the Combat Arena Beta was recently given to the Advanced Testing Group for bug testing. We’ve gone through a few builds with them now, and the current one is a release candidate, meaning it will be released to all Beta players if no major issues are found. Here are some of our latest changes:

    • Fixed the follower version of Prophect having Restless eyes

    • Fixed an issue that caused darker lighting when choosing a starter

    • Fixed Prophect’s passive giving buffs with unlimited duration

    • Fixed additional scenes loading when returning from evolution

    • Ability Shards can't be assigned to the quick use menu anymore.

    • Items like bells can no longer be deleted by using them on Kinfolk in the menu.

    • Tide mark should go on cooldown properly if there isn't a target left alive with the mark anymore.

    • Tide mark's cooldown should display as intended if the projectile attack was missed.

  • Since Prophect will be available soon, we wanted to highlight a few of their moves that players might not be familiar with yet.

  • Confusion

The user emits a strange beam of energy in a target direction. Entities hit by this beam have their inputs inverted for a few seconds.

  • Photon Barrage

The user fires a stream of charged particles that explode with electric energy upon impact.

  • Deadly Premonition

The user marks a target with an ominous ball of energy. The ball explodes shortly after, staggering the target and damaging based on how much damage the target received between the start of the ability and the explosion.

  • This is currently a Dark Type ability, but we’re somewhat torn on whether it should be Light Type instead, since it has aspects of both. The Dark Type aspects are that it feels like it fits the “fighting dirty” style, and is an attack that you can’t dodge or avoid in most cases. Once it hits you, it acts like a debuff that amplifies damage, which feels right at home with Dark Type. On the other hand, the way that this mark acts like a buff for the user (in this case Prophect) feels like a Light Type ability. To add to this, Light Type abilities are currently short on Abilities that buff the user’s attacks. We’d love to hear your thoughts about where this ability belongs!

  • As mentioned in our January Newsletter, we’ve been considering upgrading Unity to the latest version to improve both our efficiency in developing the game and the game’s performance in Early Access. We’ve decided to move forward with this path and will be starting to implement the upgrades in the next few weeks!

  • Bright_Horn’s model is fully rigged, and their idle, walk, run, and sprint animations are in their final stages! We’re also in the early phases of their combat animations, so we expect Bright_Horn to be ready for implementation in the coming weeks. Next we’ll be moving onto a familiar face: Humble_Shepherd! We’re looking forward to sharing their animations as they come through the pipeline.

Community

In case you don't know, we post weekly on Bluesky! Here's what we've posted in the last month:

Engine Upgrade: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3me3pmp7nt22r

Valentine's Day Season: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3men73dvhv22g

Benefit of Bonding: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mf6laldvhs2s

Update on new Art: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mfqjc5fjh22p

LEXICON

The full lexicon can be found here.


  • Build: A playable version of the game. We create new builds frequently in order to test new changes.

  • Rigging: Giving a character model a “skeleton” with joints that animators can move around to create animations.

 
 

Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on March 27th. Until then, take care!