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!

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  • 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!

Community Newsletter January 2026

 
 
 

Happy new year! From now on we’ll be posting newsletters on the final Friday of every month instead of the first Friday, that way they can encompass the entire month. Apologies that we didn’t mention that in the previous newsletter before making the change!

Progress

  • Our latest build of the Combat Arena Beta is in the late stages of testing! Earlier this week, we sent a build to our Advanced Testing Group to find any additional bugs. We’re looking forward to having this build available to all of our Beta players! Here are some of the latest changes:

    • Prophect has been added as a playable character, including functionality to evolve from Skulken.

    • Marking abilities can now optionally have their mark transfer to the incoming teammate when a Kinfolk swaps. Tidemark and Tidemark Dash use this.

    • Fixed a bug where Tidemark dash was occasionally not dealing damage with the dash finisher. It seems like the ability was ending as soon as the dash finisher was fired, and if the frame rate is high enough it could end the ability before the physics got a chance to do their thing.

    • Tidemark dash has slightly larger finishing slash and damage, increased from 50 to 75.

    • Polished Tadalon using aqua launcher to prevent footslide. Tadalon now also uses headlook when aiming/firing this ability.

    • Dark pulse now has a new vfx (from the Prophect trailer) and Kainite has a special animation for it.

    • Improvements to our lighting suite based on the Prophect trailer.


  • Bright_Horn’s rigging is coming along well, and we expect to have a first pass on their idle, walking, and running animations over the weekend! We’re updating our rigging process for facial expressions to be lighter and more flexible for Kinfolk we work on in the future.

  • We’re looking into options for updating the version of Unity we use to develop the game. On the version we’re using right now, our files are so large that loading things takes up a large chunk of time.


Community

In case you don't know, we post weekly on Bluesky! Here's what we've posted since our last newsletter:

Updated Evolution Graphics: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3m7omwaqx7s25

Back from the holidays: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mbuwovvsts2d

Awburn bug: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mcgoh77qhk2e

Prophect in the meta: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mcy7rr6eks2p

New Dark Pulse VFX: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3mdjwucv57k26

LEXICON

The full lexicon can be found here.

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

  • VFX: Visual effects. Kinfolk attacks, dust clouds, water splashes are all examples of VFX.

 
 

Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on February 27th!

Community Newsletter December 5th, 2025

 
 
 

Progress

  • We’ve been making great progress on the Training Dummy bond activity! At the moment, the exercise for increasing a Kinfolk’s Speed stat is the most complete. While there are still plenty of details to perfect, we’re excited to have a more complete experience for the first of these Training Dummy mini-games.

  • We're enjoying how this mini-game works for the Speed stat so far, but we’re still in the earlier phases for some of the other stats. For example, we’re currently planning a mini-game where a Kinfolk needs to successfully dodge attacks to train Special Defense, and successfully shield from attacks to train Physical Defense. We’d love to hear your ideas for mini-games that would be fun and thematic for training Health!

  • We’re giving Prophect a bit more polish, and then we’ll be adding them to the Beta Combat Arena! Here are our main goals:

    • Smooth out the transitions between attack animations and non-attack animations. At the moment there’s a disconnect between the timing and motions for a few of Prophect’s attack animations.

    • Add a few more abilities to the move pool and improve VFX for a handful of existing abilities.

    • One of Prophect’s current attacks needs to be removed for now, because we’re saving it for a special moment in the story when a different character uses it. That being said, every ability in the Monster Taming Direct trailer will be a part of their move pool in the Beta Combat Arena!

    • We expect to be finished updating Prophect within the next few weeks and are so excited for players to have a new Kinfolk to play!

  • We’ve added a few more held items to the game! These include:

    • Insurance Policy: If the holder is hit by an attack that stuns them, the holder's Physical Attack and Special attack are raised by 2 stages. Only activates once per battle.

    • Crystal Ball: Perfectly dodging an attack significantly reduces the user's cooldowns.

    • Energizer Ring: The holder's Stamina regenerates 1.25x as quickly.

  • We’re excited to share that we recently welcomed a new software developer to the team! Initially most of their time will be spent coming up to speed on the project, but once they’re familiar with the ins and outs, we expect this will have a big impact on our current pace of development.

Community

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

Tadalon’s Important Question: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3m5i2x4cuis2l

Happy Thanksgiving: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3m6lmzpxuts2k

Awburn Cold Weather: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3m7536ijuok2l

LEXICON

The full lexicon can be found here.

  • VFX: Visual effects. Kinfolk attacks, dust clouds, water splashes are all examples of VFX.

 
 

Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you in the new year and hope you have a wonderful holiday!

Community Newsletter November 7th, 2025

 
 
 

We’ve had some very exciting developments recently behind the scenes. While we're not allowed to share details publicly yet, what we can say is that our studio now has a much more stable and reliable foundation for the next couple of years.

This doesn’t mean we’re suddenly fully funded, or that we have a publishing partner, but it does mean we can breathe easier, plan further ahead, and keep pushing the game forward with renewed confidence. It’s a huge moment for us, and we couldn’t have reached it without your continued support for Kindred Fates and belief in what we’re building.

We can’t wait for the day when we can tell you more, but for now, know that the future looks brighter than ever.

Progress

  • We’re very excited to share that we’re currently implementing one of our bond mechanics: The Training Dummy!

    • Using this in camp will allow you to train your Kinfolk with different mini-games for each stat. The more you succeed at each mini-game, the more the associated stat increases.

    • Each time you train, your bond with the Kinfolk using the training dummy will increase regardless of how the training itself goes.

    • The core functionality is complete for interacting with the dummies in the mini-games, and we’re currently working on the UI for the mini-game scoring system as well as logic for starting and finishing the training. We also have some plans for how we’d like to update the appearance of the training dummy.

    • This video shows an early demo of the dummy interacting with attacks and spawning/despawning in different locations for the mini-games. We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas!



  • As mentioned last month, we’ve added more held items to the game! These include:

    • Echo Ring: The holder's Physical Attacks have 1.5x damage but they may only use the first attack they select.

    • Eerie Medallion: The user's attacks deal 1.3x damage but the user takes damage equal to 5% of their max health whenever they deal damage.

      • This item will be found in a unique area toward the end of the game’s story.

    • Evil Hourglass: Status Effects inflicted by the user last twice as long.

    • Lucky Clover: The holder has 1.25x as many I Frames while dodging.

      • An NPC will give this item as a gift after a major accomplishment.

    • Training Weights: While holding this item, the user's movement speed is significantly reduced. The longer this item is held in combat, the greater the user’s Physical Attack power will rise once it is removed.

Community

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

Closeup On A Brihorn Animation: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3m2q2uduimc2s

Have You Spotted This Rare Animation?: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3m3c33rxz722a

Tadalon Drowning: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3m3tiac7rdc2c

WIP Character Animation: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3m4erzhx33c2d

Happy Halloween: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3m4juveolqc27

Winter Weather GIF: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3m4wra5oep22d


LEXICON

The full lexicon can be found here.

  • Logic: The programming side of any feature. For example, “cooking logic” would be the base level programming for the cooking mechanic.

  • UI: User Interface. The layout of information on the screen, including menus, health bars, etc.

 
 

Thanks for stopping by and for your patience as we took an extra day putting this newsletter together! We’ll see you for our next one on December 5th!

Community Newsletter October 3rd, 2025

 
 
 

This past month looked a little different for Skymill Studios. A big deadline at our second jobs meant less time than usual for Kindred Fates, but this isn’t what you should expect to see month to month and won’t be a frequent occurrence. Even so, we’re excited to share the progress we made on Kindred Fates and give it a closer look than we typically would!

Progress

  • Last month we consolidated the code for held items, consumables, cooking, and powerups in Ether Run. This makes it easier to mix and match effects and status conditions to make items in the editor. One of our first points of focus was migrating all of our old items and food to this new system.

  • As we reviewed these items, we noticed that their effects had become increasingly unique over time. Because of this, we made a new system for organizing these effects and made sure they all meshed seamlessly with the existing processes in other parts of the game that need to access held items and their effects.

  • We added some new items to the game that have been planned for a very long time but until this month only existed as concepts! These include:

    • Security Blanket: Raises the user’s Physical and Special Defense stats by 1.35x and makes them immune to Fear effects, as long as the Kinfolk holding it can still evolve.

      • This item doesn’t raise the holder’s stat by several stages; rather, it literally multiplies whatever their current defense stats are by 1.35. A player can hold this item and buff themself further with stage changes. We plan on having an NPC give this item as a gift at the end of a side mission.

    • Vampire Fang: The holder gains 1.3x health from any ability that transfers health from one character to another.

      • We plan on this being found as a pickup item somewhere in our Sanguine Forest environment.

    • Memento: The user retains their stat changes for 50% longer.

      • This item is something of a double-edged sword. While your buffs last longer, any debuffs that affect you will last longer as well. Memento will likely be found as a pickup item in the mountainous Omenoks region.

    • Steel Bracer: The user is immune to staggering and stunning effects.

      • This item’s effect is pretty straightforward. While any Kinfolk would certainly benefit from its effect, it can be especially useful in the hands of Kinfolk like Mechid who are already immune to having their stats changed by their opponents.

    • Spiked Collar: If the holder is hit by at least three melee attacks in quick succession, the attacker loses a significant fraction of their Maximum Health.

      • We’re still playing with the percentage on this one, but expect it to be a little larger than Poison or Burn damage, but still comparable.

  • We plan to continue adding new items like this for the next month, so we look forward to sharing more in our next newsletter. In the meantime, we’d love to hear your ideas for other items you think would be fun to have added to the game!

  • We’re starting to spin up art for some character models and animations. Most recently we made adjustments to Bright_Horn’s eyes to give them more depth when viewed from different angles. We’ve also mapped most of the expressions from their animation reference sheet onto the model so they can show different emotions, and started working on their idle and idle rare animations!

  • One last thing we’d like to share with you this month is a concept art piece for a Grand Chime. You may recognize it from the Grand Chime arena in the Combat Arena Beta. During your journey, you’ll find these massive structures dotting the horizon and towering over the landscape. As as summoner you can attune with these chimes to strengthen your abilities as a summoner, granting you boons and allowing you to bond with more powerful Kinfolk.

Community

In case you don't know, we post weekly on Bluesky! Here's what we've posted since our last newsletter:

Kainite Wallpaper: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3lz3jvz32722y

Nighttime Trio: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3lzofrc3adc2x

Spooky Screenshots: https://bsky.app/profile/skymillstudios.bsky.social/post/3m26h2y4d7s2b

LEXICON

The full lexicon can be found here.

  • Editor: (aka Unity Editor) The program developers use to make changes to the game. Developers can test their work here before their changes are added to a build.

  • Ether Run: The new wave survival mode included in the Combat Arena Beta.

  • NPC: A non-player character.

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

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

 
 

Thanks for stopping by! We’ll see you for our next newsletter on November 7th!